I have been reading this site for awhile and I love that there are so many people as passionate about this franchise as I am. I am currently working on my first proton pack and building it out of basswood. I am having trouble finding a few things..
I managed to get my hands on a raychem crank knob, as well as all of the dale resistors for the ion arm, which I heard are tough pieces to find. I am struggling trying to find pieces to use for the booster tube and the HGA. Any suggestions on where I can find wooden cylinders or PVC of the size specified. I am using Stefan’s plans for accurate measurements, and Venkman71’s plans for good suggestions and tips on materials, but his plans do not mention the booster or HGA at all..
First of all welcome here. Three or so years ago I was like you, preparing to start my proton pack build. Now I already have one that is 75% complete! So stay on target, as long as it is fun.
As for your questions, I couldn’t find a correctly sized pvc tube for the booster but I found I had in the house a cilindrical poster container made of thick cardboard in the correct dimensions and decided to use it until I found something more suitable. It’s still there.
For the HGA I had the same problem and decided to use a correctly sized plastic container from the supermarket (one with strawberry flavoured powder for milk). (Yup, I was walking the supermarket aisles with a meter in my hand) I glued styrene to the bottom of the container (which was recessed) and sanded the corners to make it seem it had always been there, reinforced the container walls by inserting and glueing two more similar containers inside and inserting a circle of wood of the same diameter at about midway between bottom and top. To this piece of wood I screwed the 4 metal screws that are seen from the outside and 3 more long ones on the inside that I used to screw the whole thing to the side wall of the crank generator. It came out ok,even if it sounds a little complicated. One important lesson I learned - mark and drill the spots to insert the 4 metal screws on the styrene before glueing it to the container or it will most likely not come out symetrical.
Thanks for the help and welcome from you. I will also take the advice of the above poster as well. Those are all great ideas.
I am finished the gearbox, eda box, gun block and powercell, minus all of the details. The spacer seems like a tough part to scratch build, but I’m having fun doing it!