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7/10/2002
Today I finished up the assembly of the chest, back, shoulder bells, and bicep pieces. All of these pieces are connected together with velcro to form sort of a "shirt". The armor shirt can be pulled on over your head and the chest and back are connected together with elastic velcro strips.

Velcro strips attached to top of chest to attach it over the shoulders to the back piece. Chest and back pieces attached with velcro strips. Velcro applied to outside top of chest and back to attach shoulder strap.
Shoulder straps attached to chest and back. Elastic straps that attach chest and back at the bottom. Shoulder bell attached to shoulder strap with a velcro strip.
The bicep piece attached to shoulder bell. Armor shirt fully assembled Checking the fit of the armor shirt.




7/13/2002
The armor suit is now completed with the exception of the drop boxes and hand armor. I may grind down some of the uneven seams on the thighs as well. I now have to start work on the helmet. This portion of the project has intimidated me not only because of its complexity, but also because it is the focus point of the whole outfit, and any mistakes will be very noticeable. I decided to be very careful and start by assembling the helmet with masking tape.

Taping helmet together. Taping "earpieces" on helmet. The hardhat liner is very difficult to get positioned correctly (It is not correct as shown).
Helmet fully taped together. Plexiglass spacers used to make the hardhat liner sit farther back. The spacers need to be bent to the contour of the helmet dome.
Spacers taped in place in front of helmet dome. Liner attached to inside of dome with spacers. Closeup of liner attached with spacers.


I got my black body suit today as well, so I decided to try it on with the armor that I had completed thus far. I tried the helmet on for fit as well.





7/19-27/2002
I began work on the helmet dome today. The first step was to get the hardhat liner clips and spacers for the clips glued into the helmet dome. For this I used two-component epoxy.

Gluing the spacers together. Rank stripes painted on ear covers. Gluing hard hat clips and spacers into dome.
I used the dremel engraving bit to shave away the plastic on the frown area. Frown area all cut away Faceplate masked off with newspaper and frown area painted gray.
Faceplate is coming along nicely.... I used a piece of nylon on the back of the frown area...this allows air to flow through the grill. Earpiece attached!
The helmet is starting to look good! Yay! Helmet is completed! A side view of the completed helmet!


Now that the helmet is completed, I need to work on a couple other small things like the drop boxes and the hand armor.



That was the last step! The armor is now completed! In my rush to complete the suit, there were a few other things that needed to be done that I was not able to photograph such as adding the fan to the inside of the helmet and spray painting a pair of temporary "trooper boots" that I found at Wal-Mart.



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Questions? Comments? Mail Me!: tk873 _at_ gotarmor.net