Cardboard equipment builds.

[Moradath]

Hi Guys. This’ll be the first time I’ve posted here, but I’ve been lurking around for a while now. My name is Nathan, and I live in a small town called Airdrie (just outside of Glasgow) in Scotland.

The reason I’m posting is to ask for some advice from everyone here, and see if anyone has any solutions to a problem a friend and I have had while deciding to be Ghostbusters for Halloween this year.

Ok, here goes the backstory. My friend Joe and I decided this a couple of months ago, and started working on acquiring parts for uniforms. I bought my flightsuit, 2 hose connectors and the yellow hose from AJ on this very site (thanks btw AJ, awesome stuff, and rapidly delivered). The uniform parts haven’t been as much of a problem, the problem begins with the packs.

Joe has made most of the parts we need (packs, throwers, goggles and a trap) from cardboard, covered with papier mache.

That is the entire collection so far.

Trap and backpack bumpers (which are still to be attached).

Goggles and Throwers.

Packs themselves.

All of these parts still need to be painted and details added, but that isn’t the problem. What we have now also done is construct some pack frames from pieces of wood screwed together (we felt purchasing and attaching proper ALICE frames to cardboard packs would be a waste of resources, better to save that for if we were building proper scratchbuilds.)

This is what the frames look like, straps added.

What we are now wondering is what do you guys reckon would be the best way to go about attaching those frames to the packs which we have - remembering that the packs are made of cardboard and papier mache. The packs have dried pretty solid, but we can’t figure out a decent way of doing this. We still have until the 27th before we need them, so still time to paint, detail and clearcoat everything, then add LED lighting, but this is the sticking point.

Any ideas guys? Apologies for the stupidly long-winded first post,

[alphabeta001]

Zip ties? On the horizontal poles maybe. That’s if u have a motherboard on the back of your packs.

Which are awesome by the way.

[joeghostbuster]

impressive! cant wait to see it all painted! I wanted to make everything above with foam core (goggles too) but I dont think its gonna happen…

[Alan_Hawkins]

On our first packs that were foam core we used 1/4" medium density fiberboard (The stuff that is usually in the back of cabinets.) Then you could use something like the ribbon cable clamps to mount your frame to that.

[Moradath]

We were thinking about zipties or something similar. There isn’t a motherboard, as such, but there is a flat piece of cardboard on the back of the packs which is kinda like the motherboard. We had also thought about gluing the frames down and then duct taping over them before they were spraypainted.

I’m sure my mate Joe will come up with something. He’s built all this stuff so far, so I doubt connecting the 2 last pieces should be too much of a problem for him.

Might even go with the zipties as well as the glue and duct tape, just to be sure.

[Alan_Hawkins]

Duct Tape is great… EXCEPT when it fails. And it usually will right when you don’t want it too. I would figure out some what to add a motherboard so that the packs can’t flex. Flexing would be bad.

jmho

[Moradath]

Yeah, we need the packs for two nights, one on the 27th and again on Halloween night, and both nights we will be in a nightclub. We’d like them to stay attached as securely as possible, because I expect they’re going to take a couple of knocks.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire S A510e using Ghostbusters Fans on Android

[Alan_Hawkins]

@Moradath

I expect they’re going to take a couple of knocks.

Or more. It’s crazy how uch punishment these things take. And people LOVE to touch and pull on them. That’s why it’s good to go in teams so you can watch out for each other.

[Moradath]

Things are coming together. Everything has been spraypainted (minus a couple of touch ups), the frames were glued, with something sitting on them to make sure it sealed, then duct taped, then spraypainted, then cable tied (making damn sure :P)

The labels are all added, and the bumpers added with glue in the middle, then staple gunned to the sides. (They’re still drying though, so I don’t have any shots of the packs yet, but probably by Friday once they’re clear coated and touched up.)

What I do have, though, are a few shots of the trap I took just after we were finished tonight.

I am loving what Joe has managed to do with it. He said he thinks he’ll forego the lights at the moment, as one of the circuits is causing him problems, so there’ll be no lights on anything, but I’m not even that bothered, since most of the stuff came out looking so good.

[Moradath]

Ok, so I said Friday, but we tested the packs with the straps once they were dry tonight before clearcoating them…

(Sorry about the fairly poor quality of photos in the thread in general, camera phones are all we had to hand while building most of this stuff. Better quality pictures should be along later. :))

[Moradath]

Ok, hopefully this will be the last of the camera phone pictures, but Joe was finishing the packs off himself earlier tonight. I was playing Battlefield 3 with a headset on and never heard the text, but he sent me this about an hour ago…

[Moradath]

Well, I was expecting to have more pictures at this point, but unfortunately these are the only two I have at the moment. This was just before we left to go out last night.

And from the back…

Unfortunately, just before 1am, someone managed to steal the thrower (with the hose still attached to it) from the back of Joe’s pack. It hadn’t been ripped off either, because the connection where the hose gets screwed into is still attached to the pack. Someone must have physically unscrewed it and lifted it. Thankfully one of the girls that we know from the place we were in sent me a message earlier saying that someone handed it into the cloakroom, hose still attached. We’ll be going back in to pick it up later tonight.

Up until that point though, the night was pretty awesome. Loads of people commenting on it, and I lost count of how many people would walk past shouting “Who ya gonna call?” at us. Hopefully once Joe gets his thrower back (and it’s not destroyed) it’ll be a better night on Wednesday.