looking good so far–sounds like you are getting a lot of advice from folks, too. Never built one out of foamcore–made a few traps for my son and nephew.
Damn man, that looks incredible so far. The way you made the ribs is very impressive.
thats looking pretty damn good so far. Id have to say the most impressive part of it, is that you made a skeleton frame for it. Wouldnt have thought of that, and i havent seen any foam packs that have, either.
cant wait to see the end result on this one.
edit: also, i used foamboard as part of a 6 day rush job to make 2 packs in time for halloween, and ran into the problem of how to paint it without it eating the foam in its exposed places. I quickly found out that Epoxy resin works wonders, and it paints over beautifully, especially to imitate the welds around your gun and in other places, and it works great as fast-drying glue. Its about 10-15 bucks for a decent sized tube at any home depot and hardware store.
Thanks man!
Honestly I’ve been avoiding the gearbox the last two days but if I can get some Bass Wood tonight I’ll be good to go. Thanks for all the encouragement everyone, it keeps me going!
Personally I used primer before I put the black paint on the pack, covers up the foam and I didn’t have a problem with the foam being eaten by the paint.
Then again, I had hot glue/GOOP covering most of my seams before I applied the primer.
I paint mine with a enamel acrylic. Doesnt do a single thing to the foam.
used Krylon fustion on mine. worked fine
Alright, so I haven’t gotten very far because I’ve been avoiding the gearbox and hanging out in the chat room… (If you haven’t been in there, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to meet alot of very cool people. I’ve made ALOT of friends in just the last week- Most notably, an owner of a Deloreon time machine… But I digress. I’ll talk about the greatness of ‘GBFans chat’ elsewhere.)
The more pieces I make, the more I’ve come to decide that I should’ve bought that fancy knife afterall. As I’m trying to keep as few seams as possible, in order for the foamcore to fold I have to cut an angle into both adjoining sides. Admittedly, I’m getting pretty good at it now so… That’s $20 afterall- Better spent becoming a ‘Supporting Member’ of the site which has supplied me all the info I could ever want…
Here’s the devil I was speaking of… The Gearbox. I wanted some rounded edges on this thing so I left a sort of channel on the edges. Into that channel I put some Bondo…
I need to go over it again, I guess I didn’t put enough on there. There are still some low spots that keep me from achieving the effect I’m going for. Now I have never in my life even held a tub of Bondo. That being said, I thought at first it was pretty freakin’ cool. I slathered up the seams on my F’n beautiful ‘Synchronous Generator’ thinking I was going to smooth out those seams… Grrr. In hindsight, I should have just used wood filler. The generator looks awful now… I MIGHT be able to save it but I’m sure as hell not going to make a new one. So I’ve got some work ahead of me there…
Feeling a little down I decided to start some more of the pieces and began work on the ‘Power Cell’. Simple box right? What could trouble me here… Then I realized I’d have to cut that hole out! After all the care I’d taken to hide my seams…
Well what I did was use the two plastic layers on the foamcore to my advantage- I made four flaps/panels to fold in and hide my foam. Two long ones on the side fold down- Two short ones on top and bottom fold up. I stuck two layers of Foamcore scraps in the opening to hold them until they were dry and ended up with this:
Not perfect, but pretty spectacular I think. So that leaves me with still a bit to do but I’m in no rush. I want to do this right. Of note is the fact that I STILL haven’t found any basswood OR styrene and need to figure something out for my fins…
Looking good man. I did the same thing you did with your gearbox on the 2nd trap I’m making earlier. A lot harder to do with cardboard, haha. Works extremely well though.
Yea I did the same thing with the gearbox on my pack lol. Pretty easy to work with.
Why not just make the fins out of foamcore as well? Its the proper thickness, and looks like you’ve mastered working in foamcore now.
Oh, and about the inside of the power supply.. put some aluminum foil inside.. it reflects the light you put in there, and no one will be able to look inside, because it’ll be far too bright.
I used Fun Foam to make my fins. Pretty good stuff if you ask me.
Hey man, you’ve got a grat thing going on here with this foamcore pack. I’ve used a lot of differnt things for pack building, foamcore being one of my first attempts. Never have I had a foamcore pack look this good. I’m currently making a pack for a friend, might have to steal some of your methods.
Thanks man- I’m propbably making it harder than it really needs to be but I’m a perfectionist to some degree… I really appreciate everyone’s comments.
-And it turns out my local Hobby Lobby DID have basswood… Right next to the balsa. (I’m an idiot. Thanks goes to my brother who picked some up after he got off work near there.) I got alot of friends locally who are waiting to see if I can pull this off, then they may give it a try…
Did alot of Bondo sanding tonight… Hopefully I won’t have to do much of that for awhile.
I attached the Power Cell to the PPD block and added ribs for the curve where they meet. Mostly what I did is work on the gearbox. I bondo’d and sanded the sides to get a rounded edge and added the piece in the center to support the tube. The flap hanging there will eventually angle up to the tube.
Now that I’ve found some basswood, I’ll begin the fins tommorrow. Oh, and I made the box that the gun/wand hooks onto. (Bondo’d and sanded that too.)
Im ganna make you a crown when you are finished.
or
…now fill those boxes up! Don’t want all your hard work to cave-in after bumping into a wall or something.
Been busy workin’ on this baby… Added the stencil sheet ‘skin’ to the ribs here and did my first fins.
Almost done with the nightmare that is: The Gearbox. Just need to round off the fins where the side meets with the top…
This was actually pretty fun to do- Made me feel like a real carpenter. Done with nothing more than a handsaw and some sand paper…
My Gunmount. I’ll probably put a real block of wood inside this baby here and secure it to the motherboard since I’m planning on a resin gun/wand.
The future resting place of my Ion Arm… Need to start that. I’m gonna try making one from a a block of wood and a pop can so it’ll be lighter but if I can’t do as good a job as Throwing Chicken ( My First [real] Proton Pack - Proton Packs - GBFans.com ), I’ll just buy one and figure some kinda support out. How heavy is that great stuff foam when it dries Mike D?
And here’s where I stand as of July 15th…
Ordered a cyclotron from JT94 because I just don’t think I’d do as good a job on one… The way I see it is if someone’s going to actually offer to make a quality product for his/her fellow ghostheads, why not take advantage of it…?
Looks amazing man. I can’t wait to see it finished.
Wow,looking great.