Armadillos and Pillbugs and Seams, Oh My ! (Part I)

Alrighty... here's the sit-rep. I know you've been waiting with bated breath for my solution for the elbow, knee and hip gaps... and here it is.

Feel free to insert heroic fanfare, anytime.

First, you're going to need a few things... one of those hand-rivet jobbies (they're around $25 or so unless you go all bells-and-whistles on it... and really you aren't going to need to punch any rivets stronger than aluminum... so there's no point unless you have OTHER projects. Oh yeah... and rivets. In the pics below I used 1/8" diameter (short) rivets... which means they have a length of 1/8" as well.
What does this mean? I'm sure it's crucial in SOMEone's world... suffice to say... I WOULD have gone with 'medium length rivets (1/4") but I didn't read the package before I bought 'em.
"Caveat emptor" and all that.
Read on.
Anyway... you'll also want to practice a little to get things right. My first thought was to go with bands overlapping - like the pillbug or (if you're a classic X-Men comic fan, Colossus's skin)... but then I saw a video by a Replica Prop Forum guru by the name of Starx... and HE gave me the idea to cut a slice into one side of each piece to add a little more range of motion to them. This will be perfect for the ranges that will need to bend MORE than the others (elbow flexion, knee flexion) and the extension sides will be fine with straight panels (so far as I am estimating... by the time I get around to them, that mindset may very well change LOL)
So here we have a panel... I suggest cutting one (or a bunch of them) out of some of your extra (or used) cardstock to get an idea for how it all works... use the correct tip on the rivet 'gun' that fits your rivet properly, insert the slim end of the rivet into the rivet gun, the snub end of the rivet will go into the hole of your pieces... pump once or twice (or three times if you have smaller hands making sure your rivet is fully inserted against the rivet gun 'tip'... and SNAP!
Rivet pop away, the remainder (a small shaft of the leftover aluminum) is discarded.
Now... here's where Starx (from the RPF) and the hardware store guy you will ask for these materials get to shine again.
BUY RIVET WASHERS!
They're small, they SEEM innocuous, but try doing a rivet without one first... and see the tip of the rivet... how it sorta gets all semi-bent and crumply... now slip a washer onto the end after you stick the rivet through your drilled holes and see what happens. The rivet - when it is being compression-forced into its new shape - has little room to expand inside the

Paper bands and no rivet washers equals crumply mess with no strength.

washer, so it goes around it and makes a really firm fixation point.

The difference is night and day.

So now you need some materials... something flexible - Starx recommended some waste-bins you can buy at a retail store, I used (snicker) an empty kitty-litter bucket. So long as the plastic is flexible enough to work with, whatever you use should be fine.
I bought a couple of those larger Rubbermaid bins which I plan to use for the leg bands, as I need larger slices... and I just don't have that many kitty litter buckets LOL!

So once you have your slices - for the arms, I made mine 2" wide and 7.5" long, but I have a fair bit of arm to cover, estimate a length of just inside (towards the elbow) from the mid-point of the bicep to the midpoint of the forearm... I used 9 pieces, but I could have gotten away with eight. You might find some different success with less-wide pieces (as the less wide they are, the more range of flexion you will have, but the greater potential risk of 'exposure' if the panels should come away. Truthfully, there's little chance of that happening... I just like round numbers. =)
Once you have your pieces, trace them with a sharpie marker onto your plastic thing and cut them out. I used tin snips... but then I tend to overkill everything. If your plastic is reasonably thick, regular scissors just won't... erm... 'cut it'... so save yourself the hassle, I say.

Each piece (regardless of whether you slice a wedge out of one side) I punched two holes in on ONE side, 1/2 inch from each edge and 1/2 from the side... if you want to do the wedge the way I did mine, it's an inch in from wither side and 1/2 inch deep. To keep things reasonably accurate and lining up, hold the adjoining pieces together when you drill (yes drill - this is plastic) the holes... and make sure you have something underneath that you can drill into!

Now the rivets! They should go in fairly easily without too much fuss at this point. The fuss comes momentarily.
See... in order to get everything lined up properly, as being bent will be the default position for these bands (we're doing the inside elbow, don't forget) to rivet them all with the bands lying flat would screw it all up and warp the look. So bend 'em. Here's where it takes a bit of manual dexterity to fold each piece, align them s best you can with one hand and drill the holes with the other hand... then AS YOU GO ALONG - rivet each one as you drill the holes.
Your end product should look something like this:

But that picture doesn't really give it the justice it deserves.
So here's one with be clutching the assembly so that it shows the 'bend' that will cover the arm and elbow gap (left) and articulating bands...
... and here's a shot of the assembly with a bit of an 'elbow bend' coaxed into it to show how the piece will conform to movement (right). I figure I have around 120 degrees of flexion altogether with it... which is more, incidentally than the upper-lower arms pieces of the armor will actually allow.

Not bad, eh!  Props once again to Starx and the RPF for setting me right on the path once I started tripping down it blindly.

Oh... and just for the sake of a little tongue-in-cheek humour and a display of the rivet washers in action... no, I WASN'T kidding when I said I used a kitty litter bucket. =)

Yes, I washed it first. Sheesh!