Hold on to your equipment, I’m going down a new rabbit hole thanks to a total surprise that arrived in the mail from a wonderful friend as a birthday gift!
He was kind enough to send me a Throwing Chicken resin kit that he’s been sitting on for a while and will not really be using since he is pursuing the Freeky Geeky build. So here it is!
He was also kind enough to throw in a label set from Ectolabs! I have been slowly collecting vintage pedal/trap parts for an eventual build, and the arrival of this kit just launched the project. I have my other collected parts in storage but will share them soon - they include a real vintage relay, Spongeface vector pedal plate, nickel connectors, red trap light… etc.
I am seriously thinking of going for the ballroom trap as I feel it is the most iconic of all the 84 trap scenes. Stay tuned!
Also, this is kind of perfect because I too want to start building my trap pedal. I have all the parts for it, so just like with our Spengler packs, we can go down the rabbit hole at the same time and enable one another to make awful(ly great) decisions.
So I made a little progress. At first I was not sure how to proceed as the kit doesn’t have any instructions, but after looking through some build threads and pictures over on the RPF I have a pretty solid idea on how to proceed. First item of business was drilling and tapping holes where needed.
I then ran into a hiccup to drill the holes for the ejector pins and lower chasis panel near the rear wall. The corners are too tight to fit my drill. After giving it some thought my buddy was kind enough to lend me a drill bit extension and that easily addressed the holes in the tight corner.
Also drilled the holes in the handle, here you can see the ejection push pins in place but missing the springs.
I am brainstorming electronics, you can see I placed a panel mount DC barrel jack between the ejector pins, this may end up being the charge point with the chasis and cartridge “talking” to each other through the D sub connector. Last step for now was drilling holes in the sides and cartridge and a wash in soapy water and put outside to dry.
So I haven’t gotten around to doing more building, but my I did receive my front knobs from GBHQ parts depot which are a great looking match to the ballroom trap! They may not be exact, but likely as close as I will be able to get. Shown below are the knobs compared to the screen grab.
This may be old news, or it may be incorrect, so please someone chime in either way if needed- studying the pictures of the screen grabs and dailies, a friend and I believe the ballroom trap and the one shown in the dailies are the same prop. Note the ballroom trap differs from the other hero traps in a few ways. Here is a comparison of the ballroom screen grab and a daily shot, one can see that the door servo connection is present on both props (but not present on other hero traps), and the front knobs appear to be very similar. I think I can also make out button head bolts - or the absence of regular socket head bolts in the daily.
If this theory holds, we now have a reference for the side of the ballroom trap that is not actually visible in the ballroom scene (like rod color etc). Along with the distinct front knobs the ballroom trap has buttonhead head bolts on the front plate where other hero traps have the standard bolts on the front plate. I am doing some research here and there with the wonderful resources available from the reference library. Forgive me if this is all old news, but I have had fun making these “discoveries” - if this is incorrect please comment accordingly. That’s all I have for now, but hopefully more will be coming soon.
I finally made some progress on this build. I had picked up a can of primer a few weeks ago and I finally got the major pieces primed and ready for painting. Just letting it fully cure for now. The next step will be to hit it with metallic silver and seal that up before going over it with black. I would like it to have a similar aesthetic to my 84 Spengler build.
This project has been dormant for a while, but I have been doing some painting here and there in the background. I have most of the pieces painted in silver, and then the idea is to seal the silver with clear coat. Here I got the carriage painted and sealed with gloss clear coat.
Over the last several days I have painted it flat black, working in light coats and gently rubbing each layer down with steel wool and rags and repeating as needed. It is quite remarkable how flat black will almost get a shine using this technique. The idea is to give this an aged look but not beat to shit weathered. Here are some pics of the carriage as it stands:
It is difficult to photograph this finish as it changes with the light, but it looks remarkably like metal, here are a few more shots
