To make a long story short, I decided to redo the shell completely. I tried several upgrades but still wasn’t satisfied with the resin shell. It continued to bother me that it was from a blacklisted seller and I kept finding inaccuracies.
I wanted to mention a few learning experiences (before I started over). I cut out the original cast-in resin N-filter and replaced it with an aluminum one from GBFans. This was so I could add the awesome Fincher e-cig venting kit.
Instead of repainting the entire shell again, I only did specific areas. Before doing this, I worked on improving the power cell window and cyclotron ring holes. I made depth gauges to help.
Although my shell texture wasn’t that good to begin with (spray texture), I lost all texture on the cyclotron. I followed Chris Bosh’s tutorial to retexture and was amazed by how well it worked. Bosh’s tip about soaking the Homax in hot water made a huge difference for me. For my new shell, I will definitely use his tutorial again.
After repainting, I had a new problem. I had cut off my original N-filter and was, unfortunately, all out of dry transfers. GBFans didn’t have any for sale at this point and I couldn’t find anything that looked nearly as good.
After doing some googling, I realized it wasn’t that difficult to get these made. I wanted it to look similar to the GBFans transfer on my thrower. In Adobe Illustrator, I made a few variations (stroke weight, detail, size) and had some sheets printed up in two shades of red. I also included my logo and a little warning label for the MB (so I’d remember not to leave my pack on while charging).
The top middle dry transfer is mine. The other two are GBFans.
The last thing I did before giving up was make an L bracket for the injector tubes. Yet another cool detail I had no idea about. In trying to figure out placement, I found more shell inaccuracies that I hadn’t caught before.
And here is the overhauled resin shell before I moved on. Considering how it looked before, it had come a long way. But at this point, I was hooked and had gotten too close to this project.
Don’t worry—the resin shell wasn’t abandoned.
I then considered several shells as a replacement. Some aspects of the idealized shells appealed to my own design sensibilities. However, I also loved the authenticity that comes from the odd quirks and imperfections of the real packs.
My first choice was too ambitious. I was going to get a GBFans shell but had the opportunity to get a variant of the notorious Venky shell. The connection to a real pack seemed very cool (Definitive History and Lineage of the Stunt Pack Shell, Bowelrock Shell Production Tied ?, etc.). There were also some big problems that I naively thought I could fix. More than anything else, I wanted to fix the valley and reduce the egg shape of the cyclotron. My plan included cutting the shell apart!
I needed accurate measurements. I spent a long time going over builds and staring at the reference pictures. I referred to these three builds the most: Updating Stefan’s Plans with New GBFans Plans, GBFans Pack Plans, and the Chris Bosh build. The information discovered by these prop builders and others has been invaluable. If anything on my pack turns out right, I owe it to this community.
I compared the accurate measurements to the Venky variant shell using a digital caliper. As the list of fixes grew, I got overwhelmed. I also found measurements that didn’t match other Venky shells, which was baffling—some areas were smaller than the Venky—which was already smaller.
I might do something with this in the future, but decided this shell wouldn’t work for me. **Later on in my build, this shell has been helpful as another reference.*
So I switched to the GBFans shell. In addition to better accuracy, the quality and durability of the shell is excellent. Not that I would have tried doing something this reckless, but I bet I could sit on it and it would hold up just fine.
Although this was many steps backwards, it felt right. From junk to resin to fiberglass, I was now building a hero pack.
