'IT'S A (scratch) TRAP' - from beginning to end in one post

Equipment Ghost Traps
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SUBMITTED FOR YOUR APPROVAL: ONE (1) SCRATCH BUILT GHOST TRAP THREAD, FROM BEGINNING TO END ALL IN ONE POST.

Hey guys, I have been hard at work on my ghost trap since I completed my belt gizmo a few weeks back. A proper looking trap was the last piece of my uniform and gear I needed for completion. I was super inspired by user buster242’s awesome build thread, and by syckotheklown’s fantastic MDF board build thread in progress.

So thanks you guys for giving me the boost needed to attempt this, not to mention the reference pics.

BEFORE WE GET STARTED, A FEW WORDS FROM OUR SPONSOR: ROTARY TOOLS

I recieved a rotary tool from my wife for Father’s Day. This build would not have been possible without it. I may have been able to make a trap without one, but it would have taken twice as long, looked ten times worse, and caused me 100 times more frsutration.

I cannot stress this enough: if you are one who makes props, and you don’t already have a rotary tool, GET ONE! I wished I had this guy two years ago.

Ok, so on to the build!

I (roughly) used jt001’s plans that were posted up on his website as featured in his thread. Thank you for that freebie pal, it gave me the foundation for this build.

I do not own a jigsaw, but I was able to borrow one from another department at my work, and use my lunch break to cut them out. A little bit of wood glue left alone to dry overnight, and you have the first pieces.

I used a wooden dowel rod I had on hand for the grip. Some scrap wood serves as the handle and the supporting pieces. The rotary tool sanding wheel allowed me to get the proper half circle shape to for the grip to fit in. I secured it with wood glue and a screw. I used wood glue to secure all of the other pieces.

I also used a screw to attach the bottom portion of the handle to the base for extra support. I used the rotary tool cut off wheel to cut the screw flush with the base.

Next up was making the forward indicator and battery pack. I decided to go with regular old poster board. I cut out all of the components, and constructed them together with, my favorite, hot glue. The glue looks kind of rough here, but I sanded it and cleaned it up with my knife for the final build.

Now we are beginning to look like a trap!

I once again decided on poster board for the metal plating. Spray on two or three coats of metallic finish paint and it definitely looks the part. If you decide to go this route with plates for your own scratch trap, I advise making sure you paint the shiny glossy side of the board, not the papery dull side. The paper side just soaked up the paint it and looked bad.

I made my own ears and resistor. For the resistor, I found a plastic piece that was attached to a power cable in my ‘box o’ broken things for props TM’. I pried it off, used a metallic gold sharpie to color it, and hot glued in two wire connectors in the back.

For the ears, I used the same piece of wood that provided the handle and supports. Cuts from the same piece of wood also serve as ridges on the powercell of my pack. Not bad for some trash wood I found in a pile when my neighbors were remodeling.

I cut them to shape, and screwed in a couple of screws in each for decoration.

This next pic shows a lot of progress. At this point I had:

  • glued the outer shell to the cartridge

  • glued the door spacer on top of the cartridge

  • hot glued poster board to cover the front part of the cartridge

  • used wood putty to cover all edges and rough spots and sanded the whole trap thoroughly

  • cut holes in the front indicator and face plate, and the front wall of the cartridge so I could run some lights.

  • used my rotary tool to cut pieces for the indicator to shape. It was a piece of clear and blue plastic that was in an old screen display.

I simply superglued the blue plate and clear plates together, and then glued those behind the face plate. The whole piece will then fit right into the bigger hole I cut in the indicator.

At this point I had spray painted everything that needed to be flat black. No pics of that! After that I glued the face plate to the forward indicator.

This is how my vector plate turned out. After much thought and deliberation, I decided to hide the battery pack for the forward indicator light in plain site. This is the blue version of the battery powered light kit I used on my gizmo. To add the ridges to it, I found a piece of a cable management housing I was not using. I cut a piece out with my rotary tool and glued it on.

For the rivets on the metal plates, I spray painted a $2 pack of googly eyes from the craft store. They do the job magnificently.

For the flashing light that indicates a full trap, I used a $4 blinking LED light from Radio Shack that I used on my first trap build. I decided to leave the bottom of the trap battery pack open, so I could access the LED battery pack that I velcroed to the handle post. The red light cover and non functioning switch came once again from old broken things I have collected.

After this pic I glued the battery pack to the cartridge.

I covered the trap doors in reflective caution stripe tape I found at a hardware store a while back. Also shown is one of the metal plates complete with a knob, label, and ‘rivets’.

For the forward indicator lights, I ran the light kit through the back opening of the trap and out the front.

I bunched the cables and lights up and secured them with some tape.

I hot glued the lights to the opening in the cartridge.

And secured the rest of the wiring to the back of the cartridge with more hot glue.

I then hot glued the forward indicator and the ears on to the cartridge.

I was at a loss on what to use for the rods for a long while. For my first attempt, I spray painted pieces of a clothes hanger cut to size. Even though I sanded the hanger pieces to help the paint adhere, it still did not work. The paint just kinda bubbled up and flaked off really easily.

I then had a brain storm to use hot glue sticks! It worked awesomely. I cut them to size, and gave them three coats of red paint and let them dry for 24 hours. They turned out vibrant and smooth.

Also shown is the leather for the trap holster. I had a pouch from my old LARPing days that I cut up and dyed black.

And speaking of holsters, here is the finished product. I added silver googley eyes for the rivets, and a V hook acquired from broken equipment.

I again used googly eyes to connect the rods to the metal plates. A touch of superglue on both ends worked wonders since the glue sticks were so light.

With the addition of the rods, my trap was complete. Here is the final trap! MONEY SHOTS:

That is to say, those are the pre-weathering money shots. I took my trusted silver sharpie and went to town. In some spots, I wrote on my finger tip and smudged it on the trap.

And here is a pre-weathering video of the how the lights work:

And with that, the build is complete. I am very happy with how my trap turned out.

I decided not to bother with a trap pedal/cable, or wheels on the bottom. The main reason being I wanted this to be something cool to hang from my belt, not slide across the room.

And since the Ghostbusting equipment of today surely would have some wireless action (as evident by the video game), I justified my lack of pedal and cable. Though I will be showing that off in a reply to this thread sometime in the next few days.

So stay tuned!

Thank you very much for looking! I hope you guys enjoyed my pics and video. If anyone has any questions just ask!

2

That looks great! Well done!

3

Nice job on a semi-custom scratchbuild!

4

Thanks bros!

5

Great job! How long did that take to build? It’s light, inexpensive and does the job greatly.

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Thanks portugueseGB!

It took me about three weeks to make it. I would say maybe 12 hours total work.

If I had to guess, it maybe weighs about three or four pounds.

7

So a little update for you dudes tonight.

I quickly found that the superglue/googly eye solution for attaching the red rods to the side of the trap does not work. It felt like a strong bond last night, but a quick brush with my finger as I was cleaning up last night made it pop right off.

So I came up with another method. I started by drilling small holes all the way through the outer shell.

In these holes, I inserted small cut off bits from a plastic coat hanger to act as support for the rod. I colored them with a black sharpie.

I simply put a dab of hot glue on the end of the piece, and placed it in the hole and held it secure until the glue dried. When I added the other three bits, I made sure they were roughly the same height off of the metal plate.

I then took my hot glue gun, and heated up the section of my glue stick rod so that it began to melt and create a small hole in the glue stick. I did that for each connection, and quickly placed the gluestick rod on the connectors. Again, holding it in place unti lthe glue dried and it was secure.

It worked like a charm! The red rods aren’t going anywhere! Well they would go somewhere if you FORCE them or drop the thing, but otherwise it is a pretty strong bond and connection.

I also finalized another thing for this build that I had hinted at previously.

A back story: when I first started my uniform and gear, I was PKEless. I decided to borrow a PKE-like video made by another user ,edit it slightly, and format it so it would play vertically on an iphone. I carried around the iphone in a modified case, with it playing that video to represent my PKE meter.

I’ve wanted to keep the iphone/case/fancy looking display as a part of my gear, even though I now have a Matty PKE. I mean, having a radar looking read out and other flashing meters play on a video screen that is attached to my pack strap just looks cool (I think).

Which brings us to today.

**(WARNING: CHILDLIKE IMAGINATION AKA NERD THOUGHTS AHEAD) **

I decided in my GB world, my ghost trap is current with today’s technology, and can be activated wirelessly via bluetooth and a special ghostbusting app. Hence no pedal or cable in my build, and the visibly larger vector plate (aka LED light battery pack) that acts as a receiver for the signal to activate the trap.

Got a ghost in your capture stream and a trap layed out? Simply tap the button on the iphone that is attached to your pack strap, and it opens/closes! The ‘app’ also gives Proton Pack status read outs and PKE information.

END NERDY MAKE BELIEVE SECTION THAT I PUT ENTIRELY WAY TOO MUCH THOUGHT INTO

I made several edits to the video I made a while back, by rearranging some assets, and adding a special shimmery ‘ACTIVATE TRAP’ button that is styled after the movie logo.

So here is a quick video I made showing my Ghost Trap Wireless Remote and Proton Pack Diagnostic Unit™ in a Ghostbusterized case complete with fuses and atenni.

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So I thought my glue stick method was genius, and did the trick well. Especially considering the goal in making this trap was to use solely what I had on hand, and to not make any trips to Home Depot.

My almost two year old son had different plans.

In one foul swoop, he grabbed my glue stick rods and tore them off like nothing. I foolishly left the trap within his reach for five seconds.

image

So I had to make replacements.

I decided to try glue sticks again. This time I went a different route, and used screws instead of the plastic bits, to connect them to the trap. I used my dremel to make a guide hole in the glue sticks, put some screws in halfway, and then cut the head off with my Leatherman.

I ditched this effort, after seeing how having the screws in the glue sticks warped them. They were no longer straight,and were bent on the ends. So that was an evenings worth of work wasted. Oh well.

So I bit the bullet, and went to Home Depot and bought a dollar 1/2 inch dowel rod. I sanded them down well, and sanded the ends to have a subtle taper.

I again drilled guide holes in the rods, put in screws halfway, and then cut off the head. That way I had connectors on the rod that were secured, and not just glued on.

I also redid the bigger metal plate on the side wall. Previous attempts to attach the rods left it looking kind of crappy. Superglue always manages to leave white marks everywhere. I wanted it to look cleaner.

So after four coats of red spray paint (I wanted them to be really glossy and smooth), I attached them to the trap. I used wood glue to secure the screws in the holes on the side wall. I used a kids medicine syringe to squirt the glue cleanly right inside the hole. Insert rods, hold in place for a minute, let dry overnight. These things are CEMENTED in. They are not going ANYWHERE! The results are very clean and neat looking as well. In the pics, the rods look kind of pink to me, but in real life, they are bright glossy deep red.

Another update I made, was adding a strap to my holster. This was simply to keep the trap from dangling too much when walking around with it on my belt.

I attached the straps with some screws, and little metal brackets I found that I bent in to shape. Again, the Box o’ ■■■■™ in my garage came to the rescue.

I hot glued some velcro to the ends of straps, so I wouldn’t have to worried about putting the strap over the top, rather just connect the straps around it.

So my trap is now OFFICIALLY done! That is, unless my son decides to break something. But I am going to try my damndest to prevent that!

I have considered adding wheels. But since I am not going to have a pedal, I guess I’m going for more of a video game trap. One of these days I may find some toy car at the dollar store that will have perfect wheels, but I am not going out of my way right now to do that.

Hope you guys enjoyed the updates and progress, and learned something from my trial and errors in this build.

9

I feel your pain brother. I left my belt gizmo on my desk where my 3 year old could reach it. He then left it where my 1.5 year old could get it. Fatherhood at its finest!

10

This build is amazing sir. Reading through it there is a lot of " why didn’t I think of that" great job man

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Hey thanks sycko! That means a lot because your build thread was my inspiration, and frankly, what I used as reference pics to build mine!

Out of curiosity, what things made you think ‘why didn’t I think of that’?

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Oh dude, it was many things. From the battery operated Christmas lights, to the red glue sticks. Even though they cane off from tampering, it was pretty ingenious. Your build is actually making me second guess my mdf stunt trap build and going the route you did. 2 questions. Does the trap open at all? And how long would you guess it took from start to finish

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The trap took several weeks time. Having to wait until the kid went to bed before I could spend 30 minutes or so each night cutting something here, gluing something there, etc. I didn’t work on it every night though, some things had to dry overnight and such.

It was probably 10-15 hours total work. Of course the majority of that being me just holding my work in progress in my hands, and blueprinting in my mind which steps I was going to take next. When it came to how I was going to add both light kits, I must have examined and test fitted various ways of adding the lights for two hours.

And no, the doors do not open. The goal was to have an awesome thing to hang on my belt. As I stated earlier I don’t have wheels yet either, and I don’t know if I will ever add them.

I’ve shown a few people in real life my trap (my face beaming with pride and excitement to share my accomplishment and new toy), and the first words out of every persons mouth are ‘does it open?’ :-?

So perhaps in a few years I will make another trap complete with pedal and opening doors and such.

What would you change about your current build? I don’t think ours are much different?

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Either way brother it looks amazing. Mine is a stunt trap. No lights or fancy work. Just a plain ole stunt trap. BUT your build did help me fix something on mine that has been bugging me. So tonight I chopped the box in the back and shortened it by an inch and a half. Looks MUCH better. So thank you for inadvertently help me see my error. But as I said, if the doors open or not brother yoyr trap is amazing. Not many attempt a scrath built trap like you or I. Beats paying out the ass for a kit. But also like you, later on I will be building a working trap with lights and smoke.