Hey guys,
What does everyone here do about the wires from the orange led and switch from Exoray's light kit? I have a gun ear that matches Sean's dimensions, but I can't seem to fit the wires in it at all. Does anyone have better dimensions for it that will allow me to hollow out the ear and run both wires into the barrel? Or do you guys just have the 2 wires exposed a bit and drill up through the bottom of the barrel?
If you look at the reference photos on this site for the screen used guns, you can see the wire is routed out of the bottom of the gun and under the front grip… Then a little bit of black electrical tape was used to hide it under the ear… With my kit you can use a heatgun or even a lighter to soften up the heat shrink so it can be bent at 90 degrees and hidden a little better but just like the real guns it will stick out the bottom of the ear…
And if the “sloppy” screen used wiring look is an issue my kit will function perfectly fine without wiring up that switch and light…
Here you can see the wires coming out of the bottom of the gun and being tucked under the grip…
http://www.gbfans.com/images/equipment/reference/1/19.jpg
And here you can see the wraps of electrical tape covering the exposed bottom of the light/switch/wire on the ear…
this has probably been covered here before but what the heck does the red button on the gun ear even supposed to do? I just do not recall seeing this button at any point being used or that orange cap lighting up.
The orange cap did light up, there are several screen shots showing it lit up I don’t have any handy right now but they are out there…
Also it’s my understanding and belief that the red button on the ear was hooked to a flash bulb in the barrel of the gun (again look at the reference photos and you can actually see the flash bulb in there, and the wires going through the nycoils and red tube) The actors pressed the red button causing the barrel to flash so there was a clear visible marker that post production could use as a starting point to insert the special effects… My light kit emulates this effect by causing the barrel lights to rapidly pulse a few times when that button is pressed…
As always there were hero gun(s) with all the bells and whistles and stunt or background guns… As evident on this photo that shows the light and switch not hooked up at all on this gun…
http://www.gbfans.com/images/equipment/reference/3/22.jpg
And here is one showing the bulb in the barrel, not the best photo but it’s pretty obvious…
sigh I guess im going to have to watch this crappy movie again 
yeah I was of the impression that the black momentary switch on the trigger box activated that flash bulb.
So the wires to the gun ears didn’t run through the pipe, That’s actually alot better for me because I’m gonna try and implement an extendable barrel for my gun using the pop rivet idea suggested by RickH in his post. Was worrying that I would be unable to do this whilst having the light running through the tube. Now that seems like it’s gonna be possible.
And it could have, but I don’t believe so… It might have also been different on certain guns, they obviously were not all identical, the moving bargraph appears to only be in one gun with the rest being static lights so there was obviously differences in builds… But, when I designed my kit I went more for a “how would a real gun work” rather then remaining 100% screen accurate… Although I still tried to make it adaptable to being screen accurate if you chose to go that route, that is the reason all my lights and switches are plugs so you can move them around and configure the gun however you want…
From the reference photos it appears not, they run on the outside of the gun under the grip…
I’ll probably use the same method wouldn’t really want them running under the grip though because I’ll be planning on epoxying the grip on so wouldn’t want that to be stuck in there. Might just run it along the bottom of the gun and use the electrical tape to stick it in.
Once I’ve got my lights and the gun ears etc I’ll be able to determine what’s the best way to go about doing this. Atleast I have a few concept idea’s in my head.
I really appreciate all the suggestions and the reference photos. Not sure which way I wanna hook 'em up, but at least I have a few ideas when I get to that point. Thanks all!
I believe the ear I made on my gun is a bit smaller than the one in Sean’s plans, but I was able to get all the wires stuffed inside of it somehow. I wouldn’t want to try to do it again, however it is possible and takes a lot of time… and a few F-Bombs. 