Well, since the stormtrooper armor is almost finished, I am beginning to think of my next projects. I am thinking about a Galactic Marine helmet, a ladies and kid sized snowtrooper and stormtrooper. There are so many great ideas for armor projects! We shall see!

***If anybody has suggestions, please send them my way!

On a much lighter note. It is a gorgeous sunny day and I have finally found a steel company who can provide me with the correct gauge of steel for a very specific TK part. Exciting news! For people who build their own armor, they know how tough it can be to find just the right part and then when you find it…well it is a good day. A good day for snowboarding! Haaa! Actually I am going to work on those TK molds and form some armor.

Well I have to say that the last couple days have been a little crazy out there on the armor forums! I really love the forums. Just the idea of armor fans getting together and talking about armor is so great. Big kudos go out to the forum founders who put out all the effort to create and maintain those forums. That is an incredible amount of work and those of us who love armor, salute you!!!

However, on a slightly more sour note. There are always people out there with agendas. You know them at work, the perpetual sour puss. There is always one. LOL! I have always done my best to steer clear of drama and negativity. I figure that life is way too short to dwell on anything negative. So, it is always a bummer when you run across those same old negative people with agendas on the forums. They might actually be quite sunny, happy people but for some reason they have established an agenda, perhaps an alliance with a particular armorer. Which is great. However when it is taken to the next level and they feel that they need to bash one armor maker, in order to garner perhaps additional orders for their armorer is so unfortunate. I kind of feel sorry for them in a way. Just the mere fact that they feel overwhelmingly compelled to spew ridiculous slanderings is such a misguided waste of energy.

Great armor speaks for itself. And I will always be the first to acknowledge fantastic armor, no matter who produces it.

For the ugly grey clouds on the forums who love to sling mud, it is time to move on. Angry is not pretty and it is disrespectful to the thousands of us who love our armor forums. So lets keep our forums packed full of good, meaningful and useful info!

And for those people who find themselves on the receiving end of negative forum comments, we wish you all the best and hope that things will look better very soon.  

I really love to support local charities and I have just recently been approached by a local childrens charity to help out. They are having a fundraising auction in May in the Portland metro area to help raise funds for a new building for their school. I am thinking that I may indeed offer them a finished stormtrooper helmet for their silent auction. That is what they want. So we shall see if anybody bids on it. Should be fun! And if anybody in the Portland, Oregon area is interested in attending the auction just to get their hands on what will probably be a highly discounted TK bucket…you can always email me and I can give you details on when and where this auction is, if you want to try to get your hands on, what I think is a pretty cool helmet. Cheers!

I have been working like a mad man trying to finish up some modifications to a new forming machine that I have. I am pretty excited about it. So I have been putting in long hours over the last couple of weeks, going to steel yards and welding supply places, getting everything that I need to do the work. Once it is up and running which should be in 2 or 3 days, it is going to be great. I cannot wait to do some test pulls!

Well for those of us who love armor and try to create fan-made armor and spend countless hours hand sculpting our treasures…it is very unfortuante when we run across a blatant recaster of our work. And this week, it appears that there may be another recaster of my work out there. This seems to be a regular occurrence and is very frustrating…especially when the recaster is trying to sell their recasted knock-offs as original handmade items. Those of us who really and truly know our armor would recognize the flaws that always become apparent with recasters. But for some people it is much more difficult to tell the difference in quality from an online photo.

So to those who have my back and alert me to the recasters who cheaply copy my work, I send you a great thanks.

And to those out there who are too lazy or not properly equipped to make your own handsculpted molds and to pull your own plastic, you will be discovered. That is a simple fact.

Luckily for me, there are many, many more good guys in this world, than bad guys and for that I am grateful.

I am getting closer to finishing up these bad boys and it is going to be an awesome feeling to have them done! I have been sculpting so much that I seem to spend almost more time at the hardware store getting replacement tools. But it is going well. Just need to fine tune several parts and do more, more, many more test pulls!

Time flies or so it seems. Before you know it, Comic Con and Celebration V will be upon us. We really wanted to attend both and now tickets are sold out for the Comic Con! That is going to be an awesome show. And then there is C5. August in Orlando. That is going to be an interesting combination. We shall see. We are still hoping to attend that.

Now about armor. The stormtrooper belt is awaiting a bit more sculpting today. I am almost finished with the whole set of armor, so it is getting exciting!!!! I cannot wait for this armor to be finished. I am thinking that it is going to be extremely accurate and hopefully people will like it. Those are my two biggest goals and really the only thing that matters!

Another year, another year wiser! Happy birthday to the greatest armor artist, Danny!
-RJ

Well it has been the LONGEST year of my life, trying sooo hard to finish up the stormtrooper armor. Who knew it would take this long! It is ridiculous almost. If I was a complete stranger and knew absolutely nothing about making armor, I would wonder what in the world could possibly take so long! However, since I am the one who is handsculpting each piece…I understand more. Although I never in a million years thought that I would still be working on it 12 months later.

So the helmet is done and it looks pretty great. I have been resculpting the butt plate this last week and then I have to fine tune the ab plate. I have been doing test pulls and I will not be happy until all the armor is absolutely 100% screen accurate and perfect. Although perfection is something we all strive for in the fan based armor arena, who knows if we really achieve it. All I can do is base success upon fan reactions. So hopefully with fingers crossed, everyone will love this set of armor as much as I hope to…when I am finished. Which will hopefully be very, very, very SOON!