I would avoid sewing the netting to regular clothes, as this will make the suit much hotter. The netting is very nice because a slight breeze through it will cool you off very rapidly. Also, I recommend you reinforce all the seams of the net suit by tying hair into both pieces of fabric at the seems.

Well, I'm almost finished with my mechanical mask, and I'm not doing it that way. That was the method that Tom Twohy, who figured out the technique for us, suggested. I did some additional research and consulted some professional training materials, particularly an old video called "Cable Controlled Mechanical Mask" and they started the skin and worked backwards from there, making the skull to fit the skit. I highly recommend getting this video. It's out of print and can occasionally be found on eBay, but if you can't find it contact me privately and I might be able to point you to a source for it.

I think I understand why Tom did the skull first and insisted that it must be done this way. You have to make sure that your sculpture is thick enough so that there is enough room both for the silicone skin and the skull to fit. The video has several techniques to make sure that works. I used two techniques myself:
1) Use a pin to probe the depth/thickness of the clay to ensure that there is enough space between the outer surface of the skin and the stone life-cast.
2) Once the outer mold was made, lay in a layer of clay into the mold to determine the thickness of the core mold piece, then press the life-cast into the clay and see where it touches. Scrape away excess clay to ensure sufficient thickness for the skull pieces.

I'll let you know how my results turn out (I'll almost certainly be done before you have started your mask if you do the suit first.)

When you start sculpting the mask, get a cheap adjustable desk lamp and attach to your work area. This helps to see what you are doing better. Also, get some foam board and print out a couple of pictures of Chewie's face from my resource page and pin them up on the foam board and set them in front of your work area and start sculpting. I found the pictures of the unfinished (bald) Chewie face pieces to be especially helpful. Take pictures of your sculpt regularly and post them here for feedback. I greatly improved my recent sculpt by getting advice from the other Wookiees here.

The biggest mistake I see on fan-made Chewie sculpts are this:
1) The muzzle is too short. Chewie's muzzle is long and huge.
2) Bad upper lip. The lip sort of curves up in the center, and there is a line that connects with the line on the nose.
3) Making the eye-sockets too deep. They really aren't that deep.
4) Making the forehead too big.
5) Making the chin too round. It's fairly sharp and prominent, just like a real human chin.
 

That is what I am using. Specifically, I am using C1509 resin from Smooth-On. It is "semi-rigid" which means it has some flexibility and it was developed for high-impact tooling. It's very strong. Resin is actually the preferred material for making bucks/plugs for vacuum forming by many armor makers as it holds up to repeated castings better than plaster or gypsum compounds.

Tom used Epoxy Glass for his underskull.

A number of others have used fiberglass. The aforementioned training video also uses fiberglass.

I am fairly certain that the original trilogy underskull was made of polyurethane resin.
 

According to the folks who built the EP3 Wookiees, some of the hair was glued on using ProsAide, but most of the face was punched in. Also, they punched in single-strands of hair crossways to help hold the hair down against the mask. A lot of us have had trouble with the hair going all over the place and our masks looking much larger than they really are. This technique would seem to work pretty well. Here is the quote from the page:

"The Elsey's also explained that they punched in several hairs going cross-wise to help tame the hair and keep it down against the mask. Darren guessed that they would have punched in a single long hair running ear to ear over the top of the head with it being punched in every inch and a half or so. This hair would be concealed by hair from the face and would give something for the top most layer of hair to bond to using hairspray."
 

The original trilogy hands look like simple leather gloves. You can even see the stitching when you get up close, but it looks like the hair covers the top of the hand and the first third of the fingers, but not the palm or rest of the fingers.

The RotS hands are clearly sculpted rubber hands. I use black cotton gloves, but I am in the process of designing and building mechanical arm extensions. I plan on covering the mechanical hands with sculpted rubber hands.

The feet I am working on going to be slip cast in latex rubber, painted and furred and attached to my stilts. I have already sculpted and molded them, I just haven't gotten around to casting them yet. My current feet are carved from upholstery foam and coated with latex rubber. They are also designed to look like the ambidextrous feet from RotS. My new feet are sculpted to look like the classic trilogy feet.

I plan on laying in some snaps on the top of these feet, and sewing matching snaps into the bottom edges of my new pants. It appears that they did this with the RotS feet, to prevent the pants from moving away from the feet and exposing the shoes underneath.

For stilts I highly recommend 14" Dura-Silts. They are very light-weight and they also have spring and hinge system so the feet actually move. They are very easy to walk in and I have walked in several parades, gone up and down hills, and now routinely go up down large flights of stairs without even being near a railing. They are quite easy to walk in and much better than the 20lbs. plate steel ones that my dad and I made before.
I recommend bolting on a pair of your old shoes onto the stilts. This is the key to making them more comfortable and more stable.

I also recommend you buy a tall, folding director's chair for those events where you don't have a high table or chair to sit on to put the stilts on. It's much easier then sitting on the trunk of your car or some precarious table. Also, get a small folding step ladder. It will help your handlers to easily comb and style the mask hair without having to strain themselves.

I also recommend building a foam insert that goes in front of your shins to help make a smooth transition between your legs and the stilts, rather than having an obvious "shelf" where your reel feet are.

The other option for height enhancement is to use use shoes with lifts. Even though Peter was 7'3" and the other Wookiee actors in Ep3 were similarly tall, they all wore 4" lifts, even in the original trilogy, because George wanted Chewie to be 8' tall (the mask forehead also added a few inches).

Both methods are popular amongst Wookiees.

BTW, how tall are you naturally?

As for the bandolier, I had a friend make mine, but he hasn't been in the prop community for many years now. I would just find one of the many leather prop builders and ask him/her to make it for you. If you decide to do it yourself, please take lots of notes and pictures so you can make a tutorial.

There is a guy in the UK who makes pressed aluminium bandolier blocks. They are hollow and look pretty good. I recommend that your blocks be hollow and light weight. Mine are solid wood (although I am replacing them with hollow, vacuum-formed plastic ones) and they are quite heavy and my shoulder gets pretty sore after a few hours in costume.

Sounds good. Keep us up to date and good luck.