Upgrading the Rebel persona: captured armor #2

While a good partizan should ideally do all their ambushing from a distance, after binge-watching a cool edutainment series on the SOE training curriculum (Churchill’s Secret Agents—highly recommended) this summer, I realized that sometimes up-close-and-personal hand-to-hand combat can’t be avoided. Adding to this realization were nightly examples earlier this summer of my city’s ‘finest’ beating protestors with batons just a few blocks away from my apartment. With these motivations in mind, I started thinking about what kinds of hard kit items I might use to improve my odds in the area of personal defense.

Not coincidentally, I saw someone on facebook selling a pair of TK stormtrooper forearms, pre-assembled and for less than what a single forearm would cost new. I snatched them up, figuring I would still probably have to do some tweaking to make them fit my scarecrow arms, but that would be no problem.
Sure enough, when they arrived safe and sound, I popped them on only to look like a white-armored Popeye. I swear, these things had to be at least five inches across the backs; serious reworking would be needed. After popping them apart, I wound up chopping at least one inch of material off each edge. I butted the halves up, sandwiched them between inner and outer cover strips, and attached everything together with my favorite rifle-bedding epoxy. Cover strips were stuck on with the plastic armorer’s go-to adhesive E6000, hopefully for a little flexibility.

As with the sniper knee armor, the key question then became What Color Should They Be? To help with the pre-viz, I drew up some color swatches to see the general palette of my Rebel kit:

I realized that the two shirt options I already had for this kit nicely aligned with the colors of Naboo’s Security Forces tunics, so how about something browny-red to reflect their leather armors as well?

I went down to my locally-owned hardware store and serendipitously found an inexpensive can of the absolutely perfect reddish brown, matte to boot! A couple coats of that followed by a clearcoat or two, and after padding the outer 3/4 of each arm (more military sleeping-mat foam), I finally had something to show off!

I haven’t yet done much weathering besides a couple spots of brownwashing, because I intend to put these through their paces in authentic manner. I’ve already noticed I’ll have at least one wear pattern on the right dorsal area, from my rifle stock being brought to bear.
What do you think? Is this too much armor for an underground partizan? Should I go more asymmetrical and just wear one forearm? Come discuss all manner of Rebel armor options with us on the SWLH facebook group, or just drop a comment below!

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