As the name of the game in rigorous reenacting is ‘continual improvement’, I’m always on the lookout for things to help add some depth or otherwise level-up my impressions. While Rebel characters typically steer away from the plastoid armor side of things, I realized that the ribbed vests worn by various characters were probably meant to protect the vital organs and so would be perfect for a partisan persona as well!

A few months ago, my buddy Anders (of DT Blasterworks) sent me a link to a lower-priced rebel pilot-style flak vest he was thinking about buying. Since my initial impetus for building a SectorForces partisan/guerilla kit was to pair Alliance-issued materiel with local planetary style, I had initially considered including one of these vests. The only one I had looked into was produced by Wampa Wear; at $125, while it’s probably—if anything like their flightsuits—extremely well-made and screen-accurate, I couldn’t justify paying that much for a purely costume piece…so the idea returned to the back burner.
However, Anders’ link (and his report that it was decent quality) renewed my interest, so at about 1/3rd the price of a Wampa Wear vest, I pulled the trigger. Out of the package, I could tell the vest fell in the category of “close enough”, about which I’ve written before: presumably, there are variations on the flak vest throughout the galaxy, and they’re not all produced identically. All the same, I still wanted to try my hand at ‘accuratizing’ the cheapo vest to see if I couldn’t get it a little closer to Alliance specs, as a few things stood out to me that could use tweaking:

-fix the diameter and spacing of the sewn channels
-bind the curved edges with twill tape
-replace the rear buckle
-replace the large side clasps (down the line)












