Hi Everyone,
I’m in the process of building my pack and I keep forgetting that I have to build a wand along with this (Ugh). I’m trying to piece together the best set of plans for a wand around here. So, What set do most of you use? Is there a nice construction thread or one thread I should look at more than others? What plans do he guys use who make resin gun bodies and such? Sorry to ask such an obvious question..
I’m pretty sure that venkman’s plans are the only really good thrower plans.. did you look at the plans linked? Venkman’s are the only really complete ones there.
I use Stefan’s with some slight tweaks. IMO, Stefan’s>Sean’s>Norm’s
Stephan’s doesn’t really have plans. just a few diagrams, right? Venkman has more “plans” for making the various parts.
Throwing Chicken does know which would be more film accurate.
Thanks guys. You know I looked at venkmans plans but I didn’t notice the part on the gun box that has the 1.25" ( i think) radius to it. The part right below the top knob. Is venkmans box strictly square?
i used the hprops templates for my first thrower. i was really happy with how it turned out, and plan on using them on my current build. you just have to remember to account for the thickness of your material when using the templates.
i did the same and it turned out beautiful. those templates actually account for 1/8" overlap which was convenient since i used 1/8" plexiglas. i cut them out and taped them to my material and then cut. also i constantly looked at the reference pics here and printed out the 1:1 stefan template. the more you study, the easier it is. good luck.
p.s. here is what mine turned in to.
I wouldn’t say that. Sean has actually held a real gun in his hands, as has Ken and I am sure many others, so they probably have a much better understanding of the measurements than I do. But that said, and someone correct me if I am wrong as all of this is getting pulled out of my rusty memory bank, Sean has stated on a few occasions (possibly even in his plans?) that his measurements are simply just approximates, and that his plans were designed to help people get started just like Norm’s plans once had. I’m fairly certain I have also heard Ken (and possibly Sean) say (after examining a real pack) that Stefan’s measurements are so close that there wasn’t really much new info that was worth adding to them, the biggest additions I can remember being a slight variation in size between the bottom 2 and top 2 rings on the cyclotron for the proton pack, and the round parts on the gun track are incorrectly represented on Stefan’s plans.
Overall, I think Stefan’s plans/measurements/diagram offer a more accurate depiction of what the guns look like, while Sean’s offer something a little more representative and basic for the new builder to tackle. They both certainty have their place. I personally prefer Stefan’s, not just because I feel it is more accurate from the start, but because I can modify them on my computer and print them out to paste onto the material I am working in.
Sweet, thanks everyone for the help. I didnt even know hprops had templates. Thats very helpful. Thanks again.
When I printed out the HProps templates, all of the measurements were about 1/16" plus off. Anyone else notice this, or is it just me?
Check your printer settings.. some printers cannot print full page, so they reduce to thier printable size.
We just ran into that with jt001’s trap templates… they were all in scale with each other but when measured, the templates did not match the actual measurments.
Needless to say, that throws everything off if you measure and cut something the listed size, instead of using the templates…
Yeah, I wouldn’t doubt that that’s the case. My printer is getting to be pretty ancient.
So I guess my question is this then-- are Venkman 71’s wand plans accurate enough to get by? I’ve stayed quite accurate with my pack, and I’d hate to stray for the gun build after all that work! Anybody got any pics of their Venkman 71 plans?
Odds are the plans are sound.. but the printed templates are not. maybe print them, and take them to a copy place.. enlarge them 105%, and that might do the trick. Once you get the % to replicate them full sized, then do that with the rest.
i said this in another thread, but i had the same trouble with printing scaled templates. the problem was my printer wanted to place an 1/8" border around each page, thus throwing the scale out the window.
to combat this, i printed the templates on 11 x 17 paper, with the printer set to ‘print at actual size’, or some such phrase. worked great for Not404Error’s stefan enlargements, as well as the hprops templates. hope this helps.
Good tip! Wish I’d read it before we started building our traps.. :boogieman:
Huh! Printed them out again-- this time on our iBook instead of our HP-- and they came out perfect! Didn’t even mess with any settings. Whelp, Apple ftw-- AGAIN!
yeah I building MMM kit for Sam right now and the material doesn’t seem to be resin but it cut really good. Even with a kit I use reference pics pulled from here and Stefan’s plans that came out 90% scale so I eyeball things to see where they go.
I just found out something that might be like, older than dirt news to all of you..
I am starting to put together the gun body and I was wondering how the trigger box is attached to the gun body…
Well, it isn’t.
Its welded to the side of the rear instrument bar!!..
Now that makes it so much easier for me 
I was bashing my head over this myself a couple days ago. I finally found a reference pic somewhere which led me to the right solution… and then I thought to look at stephan’s plans, which showed the same setup I discovered myself. Doh!
yeah, but isn’t there still a little pin near the top of the trigger box that connects to the body to steady it up? or have i just seen too many builds that use the pin connection method?
