Keep your receipts for everything, and anticipate about 30 trips to Lowe’s, home depot, ace, ect.
You can always return unused parts if you over buy, but nothing worst then 11pm, working on something, and being short on materials.
I’m STILL occasionally picking up a stray part or two almost a year later.
I’ve got 2 months for this, so no need to overbuy for me. If I don’t have the part, I’ll write it down and get it next time. I’ve already made two packs, both foamboard, which I rushed on both. This time I want to take my time, get it right, and make its sturdy so it will last forever (or at least longer than a foam pack). So I have a lot of parts I can cannibalize off my old pack(s), which will speed up the process.
Look for my work in progress thread soon when I get this off the ground. I plan on getting my first round of supplies this weekend. I’m off of work until Thursday, so I’ll try to get some work done and pics posted.
the ribbing, on mine i did with basswood. I found strips at michaels and joann’s that were the recommended 1/4" thick by 1/2" wide that i had to cut to size. I think i got like 4 or 5 strips and had enough for my powercell, crank box, and gun mount.
Ribbing is actually supposed to be 1/8" thick
i used norm’s plans, and it specified 1/4"… now that i think of it, it looks a little thick compared to some of the reference pics, but i think i grew used to seeing many liberties with measurements from the fan-made packs.
oh well, i knew it wasnt going to be the masterpiece that these resin packs are, but thats fine-- it’s my first build.
Speaking of ribbing on the gearbox, it seems like the closely packed ribs along the bottom of the gearbox may be only 1/16" thick. At least, I had to sand mine down quite a bit to get an end result which looked like what I was seeing in the reference photos. The features of those seemed much softer than the other ribs on the gearbox.
in most of the reference pics, it almost looks like it’s a solid piece with grooves sanded into it to make it look like individual fins.
i took one of the strips i used for the fins and dremelled grooves in them, thought it turned out okay