TuckerN17
New Member
Hello everyone, it has been several years since I've even been on this website and my old username is long gone. This first post is going to be quite long as I have been working on my armor intermittently for about a year and a half.
This is not my first attempt at making armor. I have tried pep and fiberglassing a Halo Reach spartan before, but I ended up just endlessly sanding and bondoing so I quit.
Last year in January I saw AndrewDFT's tutorials for ODST foam armor and after thinking about it for awhile I decided to give it a shot. I started out by making a shoulder piece. I had never worked with foam before and decided to proceed with caution as I have a tendency to dive in to a large project and get overwhelmed.
Much to my surprise it didn't turn out half bad. So I kept at it and before I knew it I had all the foam pieces cut out and glued together. During this process I also started working on the under suit. I found fabric on Amazon that I liked and made a template from a button up shirt and a pair of pants.
The under suit was actually quite easy to sew (those 8th grade home economics skills came right back). That was in about November. The weather got cold outside so Plastidip wasn't an option. I tried sealing the foam with glue then painting it with acrylic paint but I wasn't satisfied. The armor just didn't look right to me. So I decided to shelve the project for awhile and ponder what to do.
So the project laid dormant for a couple months until recently it started getting warm outside. Over the winter months I would randomly think about the armor, what I liked and what I knew needed to change. The thing that seemed to bother me the most was the placement of the straps. So last month I pulled everything out of the closet and laid it all out on the floor. The first thing I did was carefully remove ALL of the straps. Next I Plastidipped all of the pieces. Then it was time to add on the strapping again. I bought adhesive Velcro for fabric and added it to the under suit where the armor pieces would go over top. The Velcro would do most of the work of holding the armor in place on my body. The straps were there to hold the armor piece against my body so it wasn't flapping around. I ended up liking how well the Velcro holds that I'm using it all over the place.
So this brings us to today, and the current state of my project. All of the foam pieces are cut out and glued together, with the exception of the chest plate which I am currently remaking. Today I finished adding strapping to the legs. The ab plate and back plate are finished and fit great. I am able to sit down comfortably which is a huge bonus.
The main chest piece is almost finished, it just needs the chest plate. The forearms are finished and are held in place just by sliding them up my arm. The shoulder armor need a bit of work as I don't like how they rest on my upper arm.
Last but not least is the helmet. I did originally build an AndrewDFT's helmet but I didn't like it very much. I tend to think that people look at the helmet more than any other part of the armor so I wanted to make sure it looked good. So I decided to 3D print the helmet. After many, many hours of printing, gluing, sanding, applying primer, and filling this is how it looks. I still need to put some work into it but I'm overall happy with it.
I do have a M6SOCOM pistol and a silenced SMG in the works, but I'll save those for another time.
This is not my first attempt at making armor. I have tried pep and fiberglassing a Halo Reach spartan before, but I ended up just endlessly sanding and bondoing so I quit.
Last year in January I saw AndrewDFT's tutorials for ODST foam armor and after thinking about it for awhile I decided to give it a shot. I started out by making a shoulder piece. I had never worked with foam before and decided to proceed with caution as I have a tendency to dive in to a large project and get overwhelmed.
Much to my surprise it didn't turn out half bad. So I kept at it and before I knew it I had all the foam pieces cut out and glued together. During this process I also started working on the under suit. I found fabric on Amazon that I liked and made a template from a button up shirt and a pair of pants.
The under suit was actually quite easy to sew (those 8th grade home economics skills came right back). That was in about November. The weather got cold outside so Plastidip wasn't an option. I tried sealing the foam with glue then painting it with acrylic paint but I wasn't satisfied. The armor just didn't look right to me. So I decided to shelve the project for awhile and ponder what to do.
So the project laid dormant for a couple months until recently it started getting warm outside. Over the winter months I would randomly think about the armor, what I liked and what I knew needed to change. The thing that seemed to bother me the most was the placement of the straps. So last month I pulled everything out of the closet and laid it all out on the floor. The first thing I did was carefully remove ALL of the straps. Next I Plastidipped all of the pieces. Then it was time to add on the strapping again. I bought adhesive Velcro for fabric and added it to the under suit where the armor pieces would go over top. The Velcro would do most of the work of holding the armor in place on my body. The straps were there to hold the armor piece against my body so it wasn't flapping around. I ended up liking how well the Velcro holds that I'm using it all over the place.
So this brings us to today, and the current state of my project. All of the foam pieces are cut out and glued together, with the exception of the chest plate which I am currently remaking. Today I finished adding strapping to the legs. The ab plate and back plate are finished and fit great. I am able to sit down comfortably which is a huge bonus.
The main chest piece is almost finished, it just needs the chest plate. The forearms are finished and are held in place just by sliding them up my arm. The shoulder armor need a bit of work as I don't like how they rest on my upper arm.
Last but not least is the helmet. I did originally build an AndrewDFT's helmet but I didn't like it very much. I tend to think that people look at the helmet more than any other part of the armor so I wanted to make sure it looked good. So I decided to 3D print the helmet. After many, many hours of printing, gluing, sanding, applying primer, and filling this is how it looks. I still need to put some work into it but I'm overall happy with it.
I do have a M6SOCOM pistol and a silenced SMG in the works, but I'll save those for another time.