Looking for help on where to start

[Quinnafred]

Hello everyone,

I’m very interested in making my own Sandtrooper. I’ve been doing a lot of digging and looking around for good places to buy armor and accessories like shoulder pauldron, neck seals, gloves, and boots. I’m not quite sure where to start. 

I found a shop on Etsy that is very pleasant. They have lots of kits and many good reviews. MonCal’s Prop Shop. They have a kit for $700 and offer strapping and magnets, etc for around $50-80. Can anyone verify for me that this is a good place or start? Or should I keep looking?

I joined Facebook to look into Walt’s Trooper Factory, I’ve gotten some people there too who have offered just the hard pieces. 

I have little to no clue to where I should look a backpack. Is Etsy a good place? I was told Normex flight gloves are appropriate. What about neck seals and pauldron? Any preferences? The next big thing is shoes, what’s the best? 

Lastly, I’m concerned about painting. But I’ll wait for that till I have to paint. 

Any help and recommendations is greatly appreciated!

-Quinn

[Hausi]

Hi Quinn and welcome to the MEPD. A sandtrooper is a great choice. As I am located in Germany, I have other preferred makers, mainly from the UK, and do not have any personal experience with Moncal or Walt's kits but I've seen people having been 501st approved with those kits, so they seem to be good. 

Nomex flight gloves are a more comfy alternative to screenaccurate rubber chemical gloves and should be good for basic approval but that depends on the person checking your request, however, I would recommend using rubber gloves from the beginning. 

As for backpacks, the only company that offers completely built packs is RS in the UK and I think they only do with complete commission armors.

I suggest you look at the pinned posts in the fieldpack section of our forums, you will find a list of all the parts necessary to build one yourself there.

[Quinnafred]

On 11/19/2022 at 3:29 AM, Hausi said:

Hi Quinn and welcome to the MEPD. A sandtrooper is a great choice. As I am located in Germany, I have other preferred makers, mainly from the UK, and do not have any personal experience with Moncal or Walt's kits but I've seen people having been 501st approved with those kits, so they seem to be good. 

Nomex flight gloves are a more comfy alternative to screenaccurate rubber chemical gloves and should be good for basic approval but that depends on the person checking your request, however, I would recommend using rubber gloves from the beginning. 

As for backpacks, the only company that offers completely built packs is RS in the UK and I think they only do with complete commission armors.

I suggest you look at the pinned posts in the fieldpack section of our forums, you will find a list of all the parts necessary to build one yourself there.

Will do! Thank you!

[RedMorpheus]

Hi Quinn, welcome! 

I really recommend the Backpack-Kit from Crashman (he is here at the forum). He sends you a fully equipped package with all the goodies you need. Especially the hard to find parts (like the radio) were top notch. I attached some fotos of mine over here. It was fun to build but obviously is quite some work. 

For the boots basically a lot of people tend to buy riding boots and paint them white with Angelus-leather-color. That works well and I like the not perfectly white appeal in the end, that seems accurate to me. But there are also sellers with white boots from the getgo, especially imperial boots.

For Pauldrons, there are quite a few alternatives. But also a lot of bad ones. Got one that is very flimsy (you can have it :D) and went the extra mile to trooper1, who seems to be the preference for most people over here 

Cant recommend RS-Propmasters enough. Especially cause they have a complete youtube-tutorial service for the whole build that is so much fun to watch, because the show you the construction but also have so much background information on all the parts. Really entertaining. They also have neckseals, blasters etc. 

Cheers