Last year my girlfriend and myself (with the help of her skillful father) put together a pretty crafty pack using an alice pack, some carved out foam board, and with the help of most of you just some random household items. The parts that are connected with wires are actually light components. I wasn’t able to produce a neutrona wand, but I’m looking into ways to simulate Brady’s plans with the silly string gun.
So if you guys as the professionals could take a look at my pack, and suggest some things that I could do for improvement? Please keep in mind, this is a budget pack but at the same time I can afford some of the more simple items.
The pack was constructed in Pittsburgh where my girlfriend was living at the time. I couldn’t fly back to California with it in my luggage due to obvious reasons.
I received the pack a day before Halloween and I was really excited to wear it, until I opened up the box and some of the pieces had come off on its way here. We had used the pop corn stuff as packaging, and the pack was barely holding up the day of Halloween. The bolt that goes in the middle of the cyclotron had fallen off while I was walking in a crowd. I’d like to avoid that this year. This is a picture I just took of it (you can see my uniform rolled up to the left).
Just rebuild what you have, maybe add some cheap halloween lights, and add a gun of some sort (The nerf Vulcan makeover comes to mind.) Use Gorilla glue instea dof hot glue to make it last longer.
Or build a new more accurate pack.
What you have is fine for halloween, but its never going to get close to an actual pack without major rebuilding.
And if you are going to go that those extreme efforts, then a complete rebuild to something closer makes more sense. My packs are fairly close propertion wise to original packs, but again have enough inaccuracies to not really make it worthwhile trying to make them more accurate. I’m planning on building two new packs to replace ours, using foam core, insulation faom and wood.
Another possibility.. fix that pack up for her, and make a new more accurate pack for yourself..
Seconded - to get it more accurate will be major work (especially the Cyclotron, which is what sticks out most for me really - in a proportions sense anyhow).
It’s obviously completely the wrong size for the frame too.
I’d actually get one of Irricanian’s aluminum mobo’s for your base when you rebuild. Then you’ll have a solid base to get the shape right - and they are only $40 or so.
The real pain in the ass for ANY pack is the Cyclotron - it’s an odd shape that is hard to find a found part for (pie tin/cake pan my ass!) which is why it sucks up a lot of time being hand made in most packs.
If you don’t want to do a full rebuild then just patch it up and be happy on halloween, you’ll have already put more effort than most into their costume. However if you want to rebuild it but want it fast and cheap - and don’t care about being really accurate - go with foam core or MDF (if you have the space and tools to work mdf). I’ve seen some rather impressive foam core board packs that while not super strong or accurate are still really nice looking for a speed build.
I just saw someone do an excellent cyclotron using cheap insulation foam.
If you are just doing a casual more accurate pack, I’d just make the mb from plywood or MDF, but make it last since you might not have seriously accurate parts.
If you are only buying ONE acurate item for the new pack, I’d say an alice frame would be THE choice. It makes wearing a pack SO much more comfortable then other options, and you can always reuse it on a film accurate pack down the road.
