I started working on this a few months ago, slightly before finding the 405th.
I bought it as a wrecked suit and started patching it up and replacing parts from there.
Getting it to my country wasn't so bad, however explaining to customs why I had a 23 kilo box pass customs with armor in it was.
The thing was really beaten up (the trip half across the globe didn't help either), but seeing as I had some experience working with the materials before I felt confident I'd be able to fix it.
After about a month of after work hour labor I managed to get it to the point where the 'pants' was wearable and didn't look like absolute crap.
A week later I found a decent looking motorcycle visor and chopped away at it, had I known back then what I know now I would of tackled it differently seeing as now I have a fairly tight spaced helmet with no airflow and a fairly chopped up visor.
A few weeks and about 50+ fits of working with fiberglass (I now know why the air filter was invented) I managed to repair the bulk of the chest and make it sturdy enough to be worn.
At this point I deemed it good enough to be dragged of to a con half across the country which ended up almost killing me, after seeing some pictures of me in it I decided it might still need more work and started looking around therpf and the 405th for tutorials, advice and parts to replace/add to it.
Now well over 6 months after it coming in my possession I've ordered a helmet kit from blackula, am trying to get a nice knife kit from a 405th member and am slowly gathering other kits/casts/props to make my suit more complete.
I realize I'll probably get frowned upon for not building it from scratch but still I'd hope you guys can give some critic and advice for how to go on it.
I bought it as a wrecked suit and started patching it up and replacing parts from there.
Getting it to my country wasn't so bad, however explaining to customs why I had a 23 kilo box pass customs with armor in it was.
The thing was really beaten up (the trip half across the globe didn't help either), but seeing as I had some experience working with the materials before I felt confident I'd be able to fix it.
After about a month of after work hour labor I managed to get it to the point where the 'pants' was wearable and didn't look like absolute crap.
A week later I found a decent looking motorcycle visor and chopped away at it, had I known back then what I know now I would of tackled it differently seeing as now I have a fairly tight spaced helmet with no airflow and a fairly chopped up visor.
A few weeks and about 50+ fits of working with fiberglass (I now know why the air filter was invented) I managed to repair the bulk of the chest and make it sturdy enough to be worn.
At this point I deemed it good enough to be dragged of to a con half across the country which ended up almost killing me, after seeing some pictures of me in it I decided it might still need more work and started looking around therpf and the 405th for tutorials, advice and parts to replace/add to it.
Now well over 6 months after it coming in my possession I've ordered a helmet kit from blackula, am trying to get a nice knife kit from a 405th member and am slowly gathering other kits/casts/props to make my suit more complete.
I realize I'll probably get frowned upon for not building it from scratch but still I'd hope you guys can give some critic and advice for how to go on it.