Learn Mando'a

Void

How're you going to colour it?

Void

Jate! Now that I have access to a machine shop, hopefully I can get going on mine again, too!

What kind of metal are you using?

Oh this is neat. I just started myself a week or two ago? Started out with cardboard and fiberglass resin but my cutting sucks badly. Also it's a pain. Next set I'll be using sintra. Gonna finish with the cardboard stuff though for practice with the materials. Also for something to paint with and to be able to test which color of paint I prefer against the flight suit. Using spray paints to color mine.

Void

Void

Dickie's coveralls are honestly used by a lot of people in the Mando Mercs club. Really anything works so long as it gets the look across. Some people use yoga pants sewn to a matching top, for example. I'm using an air force flight suit because I was able to find a nice one for under 50 bucks.

As far as flak vests...One suggestion is to use a leather jacket that fits you snugly. Cut the sleeves off it. Then turn it inside out and wear it backwards. Check around thrift shops and the Goodwill for that sort of thing. Will take a long while but you can find nice stuff for costuming at them. If you want to try making one yourself the Mando Merc's board's got patterns for that. The suggested material for vests is duck cloth, but really anything that doesn't stretch easy like t-shirt fabric and that can hold up to frequent use and the weight of the plates will work. Things like t-shirts sag and stretch under the weight which isn't great.

List of the resources on the site: http://mandalorianmercs.org/get-involve ... templates/

You can find some vest templates in there. Also maybe check through the soft parts board on the forums and look through people's WIPs. You might be able to find some ideas there.

Void

Yoga pants and armour sounds like an epic combination.
I dig the necklace.

Nice bes'kar'ta and 'gam. How did you end up forming the codpiece? I chose Sintra for my gam and it was easy to form with a heat gun but also a bit of a pain, as it would just succumb to gravity without some kind of form/jig to hold it in shape.

Did you use WizardOfFlight's templates?

And I can second the Dickies coveralls method. Quite popular on MMCC. I have mine but have yet to alter it.

Were you overheating the sintra possibly? I haven't had trouble with that myself and I've heard that if you heat it to the point that it's floppy then it doesn't set right. Basically you want to get it hot enough that you can manhandle it into the places you want, but not so much that the stuff droops by itself. You need to be applying a decent amount of force when shaping when it's at the right temperature.

For heating evenly and tips for that...What I've been taught to do is just kind of wave the gun around constantly over the surface or move in nice little lines up and down the thing evenly. Then turn it over and do it on the other side. Do that for a bit and try bending. If it doesn't bend go back to the heating method and try again after a bit longer. Once you can manage to kind of force it into place do that and stop heating. You might need to heat things up again after shaping it a bit and that's fine. If you do it more slowly it doesn't droop out of place.

It's also good to have a shaping buddy around if you can get one. Especially with things like chest plates and it seems pretty mandatory with the back plate. There's also the question of when to shape and what to wear while shaping...Generally what seems to be done is first you do a rudimentary shaping over whatever you happen to be working in. If you're in a t-shirt or material that is thinner like that drape a towel over yourself while shaping. You're not really concerned with getting it just perfectly right at this point because the fit won't be perfectly right at this stage no matter what. You kind of want a general idea of the shape though that can be more easily modified as you near the final fitting. Final shaping occurs only after your flight suit and flak vest are completely finished, and the flak vest can only be truly fitted after you finish the flight suit. Fitting will be just a bit different when everything is all finished and on you, but that just a bit different is apparently super vital to a proper fit. So for final fittings you get in your soft parts and shape over them. Then you fiddle and fuss until it all looks just right.