being ignorant of something can suck!!
When I first starting building my pack I decided that styrene would be the best material to work with so I set off to find a plastics company and buy me some styrene, woo hoo. Well, when I started I had no idea what styrene or sintra was. I get to the store and I ask the owner guy, who besides the really nice, friendly, and helpful mexican man in the back, was the only guy there. Anyways, I specifically ask for STYRENE and he takes me to the back where all their stock was and showed me some stuff and pulled out this NOT WHITE colored sheet of plastic saying it’s “high impact styrene.” I’m like, COOL, that sounds even BETTER than “normal” styrene. So I excitedly bought it. WELL, the first time I tried to “score and snap” it, it didn’t work AT ALL, it didn’t snap, it BENT!!! I thought dang, this really is hard to do! I started becoming more and more familiar with the materials through online forums and hobby shop shopping and noticed that the stuff I have is NOT the stuff at the hobby shop under “styrene.” I google “sintra”, which just about everybody says NOT to use, and guess what, the guy sold me a huge sheet of SINTRA…straight up sintra! AHH, by then I had build pretty much the entire upper portion of the pack so I wasn’t going to throw it away and start over. Anyways, the stuff isn’t THAT bad to work with, it dents fairly easily but it’s pretty strong stuff, and the fact that it’s porous in nature makes it glue easier actually.
I’m happy with it but it still kind of sucks doesn’t it? I noticed one thing actually that made me feel a lliiittle bit better, and I may of course be wrong, but in Playskools neutrona wand barell extension mechanism photos, the close up shots seem to show his wand being made out of sintra. The material seems more porous than styrene would be. So maybe he used sintra at some point? Anyways, once I finish the pack i’ll show you guys and you can tell me what you think. I could just glass it, sintra can at least hold up to a molding process I think! Later guys, and wish me luck!
-Thiago
