I know there are people on here selling some great resin parts and there are also a lot of people building awesome packs from purchased parts. I respect all of them and I’m not really trying to reinvent the wheel; It’s just that the hobby, for me, really comes in building every part from scratch myself. Or finding them. Even the resin parts I have, I’ve acquired through trades for found parts.
Now here’s my question:
I understand that the grooves on either side of the booster frame are cut from an old rubber floor mat that is referred to here as “triangle mat.” I’ve done some forum searches and can’t find out much more about it, other than it is no longer available at Home Depot…? Anyhow, has anyone discovered a suitable alternative found-object? Or does anyone have an alternative method for creating these grooves? I’ve tried sculpting them but haven’t had a lot of luck with the materials I have.
You can see the current state of my booster frame (and where I’ve been stuck) near the end of my build thread.
If you search for “corrugated rubber runner” you get a ton of hits, just dig through a bit and you should find something close. Otherwise you could buy or make a clay scraper like this:
Thanks Jack! Corrugated and runner were great words to add to my search.
Have you used a scraper like that? I made a thing like that, but was working with some different epoxies that are thinner than traditional modeling clay, and wasn’t having much luck. Would you recommend modeling clay?
Haven’t tried it myself as I have a piece of accurate rubber I used for my frame. It was just something I thought of as an alternative. If you essentially made your own sheet out of clay then cast it up and poured a resin copy it’d be no different than the real stuff.
I know the feeling, sir. After searching high and low at Lowe’s and HD, I nearly gave up until I came across a local Dollar Tree that had these gold plastic picture frames that just called out to me.
I have contemporary ticonderogas. I’m keeping my eye out for the proper vintage ones, but I’ll probably just use the ones I have if I don’t run across them soon.
They pop up from time to time on ebay. I picked up 2 boxes of them not too long ago. I have a small amount of the matt but am looking for more…has anyone found a decent supplier?
I haven’t found anyone online that sells just a little bit of it. The ones I’ve seen are selling massive rolls. And I mean more than I could ever hope to sell, given that a lot of people buy complete cast booster frames.
I could. Lemme poke around a bit, I might still have my mold of the rubber mat and some MDF pieces too. I did a run about a year ago but interest petered out. I’ll post an interest thread later tonight if I can find the stuff.
