Smeghead's First Uniform, Gizmo Build, and Minor Matty Mods.

Equipment Uniforms
1

Well, I’ve been lurking here long enough. It’s about time I showed you all how my first ever attempt at a uniform is going… and also introduce you to my ugly face! :stuck_out_tongue:

All of this is obviously inspired by and based on the fine work of many members on this site.

I’ve been keeping a “to do” list on my iPad. Currently it looks like this:

(The wand, PKE, trap and goggles are all from Matty. I know they aren’t the most popular round here, but it’s a good way to get started)

I started off by adding a few extra details to my Matty trap. The first thing I did was replace the molded ribbon cable with a bit of spare stuff from my box of old PC bits. Then I wrapped some red electrical tape round the ends of the cable. Finally, I added a more accurate cover to the red power light. I used a small rubber O ring to help it sit flat without having to carve up the original lamp cover.

This photo shows all three of those mods.

I have also fitted the replacement battery door, in anticipacion of fitting it on to a holster, but more on that later.

The leg hose “magsafe” idea seems to be very popular at the moment, so I thought I’d give that a try. I found some nice strong magnets online, a disc to fit in the bottom of the connector, and a barrel one that is a nice snug fit inside the hose.

I found that it stretches the hose just enough to make it a tight fit. Too tight, in fact, as it was now held in far too tightly by friction alone.

A few minutes work with a non-branded rotory tool, and I had sanded the hose down around the magnet. It’s not pretty to look at, but once it’s inside the connector you can’t see it.

I got Nick-A-Tron’s Belt Gizmo kit a while back, and have been slowly aquiring bits and bobs to detail it with. I don’t have much to show so far, as I only finished the base coat of paint this evening.

Primer:

Main board coated with black:

Daughter board coated with brown:

Still got a long way to go on this. Obviously.

On to the flight suit and badges. I decided not to use my real name, but went for the nickname “SLAPHEAD”, which most of my friends have been calling me for years due to my rapidly receeding hairline.

I’ll admit that sewing is not my strong point. Thankfully my other half spends her whole life sewing badges on to things, so it only took her a few minutes to do what would have taken me hours. Cheers love! :stuck_out_tongue:

So far my belt looks like this:

From left to right; fob, gizmo holster, trap holster, Maglite holder, PKE holster, fob, fob. With the exception of the trap holster and Maglite holder, everything is from Franchesky.

Now regarding the trap holster, I still need to find a suitable V hook. I bought the back plate of the holster from MMM via eBay, before I realised just how tricky those hooks are to find. I could have ordered the full holster with clip from Franchesky when I got the Matty trap conversion kit, but I was reluctant to buy a second one when I already had one. Of course, I now have the fun of trying to find a hook that will fit two things made by two different people, with slightly different hole spacings. Any suggestions would be appreciated! :stuck_out_tongue:

Well anyway, that’s what I’ve done so far. Still a long was to go, of course. I’ll leave you with a couple of pics the missus took a few hours ago, of me modeling the outfit I’ve wanted since some time in the late 80’s.

With flash, looking stupid.

Without flash, looking even stupider.

More to come when it’s done! :smiley:

2

Looks great!

3

Cheers. :slight_smile:

A few more bits turned up today: The fob to attatch the leg hose to the belt, a new Maglite, and some more odds and ends for the gizmo.

Quick question about the leg hose, do people tend to trim it so it’s a simple loop from leg to belt, or keep it full length and coil it up somewhere? Obviously in the film it differes from one scene to the next. But just plugging it directly from the leg connector to the belt means it hangs down almost to my ankle!

4

Coiled for me. I loop it through a key ring and clip to a fob.

5

Quick update on my belt gizmo.

I started off by masking round the large chips with Tamiya tape.

Rather than attempt to paint white over black, I used Tippex correction fluid to cover them. it’s not the smoothest finish in the world, but as this part will be covered by the holster, i can live with it. I used a gold marker to pick out the legs.

As you can see, some of the black paint got lifted off by the masking tape, but this will all be covered soon anyway. Mental note made for next time.

I printed the board with my nice new colour laser printer, and cut it in to several sections to stick on.

Starting from the bottom up.

I used good old PVA glue to stick it down.

Once that was done, I added the labels for the smaller black chips.

As well as the back of the board, whch was much easier.

Finally, I trimmed the edges where paper was overhanging the board, and went round them with a black Sharpie. Then I picked out the contacts at the bottom of the board with a gold marker. The last thing I’ve done so far is add the labels to the large white chips.

Next thing to do is start drilling holes and mounting componants. I’m wondering if it might be a good idea to clear coat the whole thing first though?

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More gizmo progress.

I’ve been adding some resistors / transistors etc as greebles. Using a small twist drill, I found that five “pumps” went deep enough to provide a good anchor, without going all the way through. A dab of super glue in each hole holds the componants in place.

I quickly realised that the .pdf of the circuit board has holes that don’t match up with the picture I was using as reference. I had a choice: either drill holes in the right place and ignore the printing, or add things where it would match with the board. I opted for the second one, figuring that most of it will be covered by the leather of the holster anyway.

Before adding the glue, I dabbed the hole with a silver marker to hide the edge of the paper. Hopefully it will look like solder.

By the end of last night, it looked like this:

A close up shot reveals the many imperfections, not least where the super glue did that annoying white stain thing that super glue likes to do. :roll:

Tonight’s work started with adding some greebles to the bits of the board that stick out the top.

Next, I drilled aproximately 102 tiny holes for the nixie and error box wires, while my missus shook her head in disbelief.

The final task for the night was the thermal fuse (at least I think that’s what it is?) at the bottom right of the board. I cut 5 lengths of wire, and sandwitched them between two pieces of black craft foam with PVA glue. When that had dried, I sealed the edges with super glue, stuck the label on with PVA, and went round the edge with a black Sharpie.

And that’s about it for now. Next task is the nixies. Might have to wait a couple of days as I’m working all weekend. Still not decided what to do for the error box yet, but I’m sure I’ll find something.

7

Hey man, everything posted looks great! Keep up the good work. I can’t wait to see the finished gizmo and uniform.

Check out my gizmo thread posted in my sig. If you want lights in your gizmo like mine, I’ll give them to you for free.

And you know, looking at that list you posted made me realize how many damn components there are to a correct uniform and gear.

8

Cheers mate. I did think about adding lights, but in the end I decided that the real thing didn’t have them, so that’s a good enough reason to save some effort. :stuck_out_tongue:

I know what you mean about the list though. And that’s without going in to the details of the pack parts!

9

Managed to get a bit more gizmoing done tonight by making a start on the nixie tubes.

Rather than find the real thing, I decided to go for the “pens” method. I bought a pack of cheap, crappy ball points from Poundland, and stripped out the ink. I estimated the length by eye, marked them, and used a razor saw in an X-Acto handle to cut through them.

One episode of American Dad later, I had 8 tubes cut and sanded. There’s some slight variation in length, but I should be able to fudge that when I insert them in to the holder that came with the kit.

Before going mad printing inserts for them, I tried one out, next to a screengrab on my iPad to compare it to the real thing. The colour is a much better match to the eye, but the 7 segment display needs to be a bit bigger.

That’s something I’ll worry about tomorrow. The last thing I did tonight was cut 40 lengths of wire, and strip 80 ends.

To be continued…

10

More gizmo goodness for you.

I didn’t get to do as much as I planned today due to an unexpectedly heavy hangover, but it was worth it. :wink:

Tonight’s work started with gluing 80 bits of wire in to 80 holes…

Then bending them roughly in to shape.

While I was doing that, the missus knocked up some print offs to go inside the nixie tubes. A simple seven segment display (aka, “the number 8”) and a decimal point. Again, I went round the edges with a black sharpie.

I used PVA to stick them to the inside of the pens, then the pens in to the holder that came with the kit.

The hardest part was feeding all the wires at once into the tubes. It took a while, and quite a lot of swearing while fiddling about with tweezers. Then I mixed up some epoxy and glued the holder on to the shelf.

The wires aren’t glued in to the tubes, but they are stiff enough to stay where they are.

Close up of the nixies. I think they turned out OK.

The next thing to do is decide how to make the error box, then I just need to add the capacitors, and I can start on the daughter board.

11

That Gizmo is shaping up nicely. Nice work there.

12

The printed “number 8’s” that you added to your Nixie tubes turned out awesome. Same with the Nixie wiring. Well done!

13

Thanks. :slight_smile:

Well today I’ve been busy. I started off by digging out my old Humbrol model paints to add a splash of colour to the daughter board.

The tins haven’t been opened for quite a few years (it’s a long time since I last built an Airfix kit), so the paint needed quite a lot of stiring before it was usable.

While I had the paint out, I thought I’d see if I could get rid of the white stains from the super glue. Tamyia X19 “smoke” is a great paint that I used to use for weathering. I tried it out on top of the white stains…

I think it’s better than it was. After all, if anyone is close enough to actually see the mess, then they will pretty much have their head in front of my crotch…

Time to make an error box. I thought about various ways to do it, including sacrificing some precious Lego, but in the end I decided to stack several layers of foam.

I knocked up a simple “E” with arrow in MS Paint, and printed off a few size options.

Stuck that on to the box, and cut out a frame to go on top of it.

I then clad the whole box in bits of paper cut out of the extra black I printed (how did I ever cope before I got this laser printer?), cleaned up the edges with a black sharpie, and stuck 6 bits of wire in to a hole that I carved in to the foam earlier.

Then it was a simple case of mounting the finished error box and adding the disc capacitors.

The main board is now pretty much finished. There’s a few places that need a touch up with either a marker or some Tamyia Smoke. Then it’s just the coiled wire connecting the daughter board to add.

To be continued…

14

This is looking excellent! Great job so far!

15

I’ve been a busy Buster today.

I started out by drilling holes in the daughter board for some random componants…

I got this far…

… then went further…

Meanwhile, I attatched the shaver cable that connects the two boards to the main one with a bit of a bent coathanger.

The back of it stuck out by a mile, because the wire was too thick to bend sharply, so I covered it in hot glue…

Boy that’s ugly. :cry: So I coloured the glue in with my trusty silver marker. Now it looks like an ugly blob of solder!

Back at the daughter board, I superglued in the shaver cable, and a bit of red phone cable.

On the back, I added some hot glue to hold them on. I also attatched the clip from a cheap tape measure, with a tiny bolt that goes all the way through (you can see the nut on the last picture).

I then covered the back in gaffer tape to stop it catching on the belt.

At this point the gizmo was pretty much finished. The next task was to fit it in to the holster. But how to hold it there? Velcro would be one option, but I had a feeling that the stick of velcro would be stronger than the stick of the PVA holding the paper to the back of the gizmo.

Then it struck me… MAGNETS! I had loads of rare earth disc magnets left over from the leg hose, so I superglued 4 on to the back of the gizmo.

Then inserted the gizmo in to the holster, applied super glue to the back, and let the magnets snap in to place where they wanted to be.

It holds like a charm! I’m not claiming to be the first person to attatch a gizmo to it’s holster using magnets, buuuuuut I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned anywhere round here yet. So huzzah for yet another use for magnets! :smiley:

Naturally, the only thing left to do was try it on. Please forgive the lack of flightsuit. It’s far too hot to go putting that on for the sake of one photo.

I think it’s safe to say this photo proves I need to loose a few stone.

16

Looks great! Great use of magnets! Well done!

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Thanks. :smiley:

My to do list now looks like this:

Still a looooooooooong way to go.

18

Today I decided to tackle some of the more obvious errors on my Matty wand.

I’m starting to put together a wish list of pack parts, and I think I’m going to go for one of Freaky Geeky’s pre-built metal throwers eventually. But for now, this will do me.

I have a very old tin of gold paint amongst my model paints. Very old. I think I borrowed it from my grandad at some point in the 90’s, and never gave it back.

Now forget the fact that Woolworths went bust several years ago, they added the S to the end of the shop’s name somewhere in the mid 80’s! The price sticker on the bottom of the tin says 89p. This stuff is so old it has no safety warnings on it. It doesn’t say what chemicals are in it anywhere, so you know it must be bad for you. But damn it, it’s one of the best metalic paints I’ve ever used! It’s more brass than gold, which for this job is perfect.

Here’s a before shot of the banjo fittings on the tip:

And after:

The hose barbs for the green tube at the back got the same treatment. Before:

And after:

I also added the missing “SLO-BLO” label.

I’m thinking of using some red rub on numbers to add the 1, 2, 3 to the power knob, if I can find some. There’s also the question of what to do with the hat light that is just a lump of black molded plastic. I suppose painting it is the simplist option. Any suggestions welcome.

Next thing I’m thinking of doing is repainting the Matty goggles.

19

I finally got round to repainting my Matty goggles. Taking inspiration from lsoldao7’s topic, I thought I’d try out this “Plastidip” stuff.

I’m not sure if it’s just me not being used to it, but the finish could be better. There are a couple of places where it started to peel off as I was putting things back together. I managed to repair the worst of it by simply gluing the coating down. I suppose this could be hidden with a bit of weathering, but for now I shall leave it as is until I decide.

I added some of the stickers that came with it.

And drilled a hole in the battery cap, rather than use that daft tube thing.

I’ve also managed to get an MT500 from eBay.

I got a pair of Magnum boots. I know they aren’t accurate, but I used to wear them all the time when I was in the Air Cadets, so I know they are nice and comfortable. Besides, I need a new pair of boots, so may as well get something I can wear for generic use. Here they are with my new ALICE pack frame from the GBFans shop:

The only things I am still waiting for are the V hook for my trap, and the radio holster. Once they turn up, I shall don the whole outfit once again for more photos. Then it’s just the pack left to build. That part will have to wait a while, unfortunately.

20

Well, I finally have everything put together (except the pack, of course). Time for a few photos!

I’ve rearanged the doodads on my belt a bit,

Time to pose like a true geek!

Had to be done…

(As a side note, I’ve been a smoker for 16 years, and had plenty of cigs get stuck to my lip. But the one time I want one to stick there, it won’t! I’m glad it wasn’t lit as it kept falling off. :stuck_out_tongue: )