I’m posting here the progress of my proton pack project. I’m building it from scratch following Paranorman’s plans and Stefan’s measurements, both available here (both deserve a huge “thank you”!).
I’m not the builder type but it is taking shape. In fact, building something with my own hands feels oddly good.
Here is the spacer being built:
The top with an opening for putting the lights and eventually a sound amplifier.
Fast forward to present situation - some of gadgets put together with tape for some test fitting.
I’m presently working on the crank generator. I show here how I study the pieces before I pick up the wood. I need to do this in order to visualize the pieces in my mind and feel I know better what I am doing.
Next step: draw the crank gen on wood and saw the pieces!
Thanks for looking and I welcome all comments! (If it wasn’t for this GB community I wouldn’t have started this. Being, probably, the only proton pack in the whole country when its finished I don’t even know what I’ll be doing with it:) )
It has been a long time since I last updated my proton pack project.
Since the previous posts I changed a few things, mainly I moved from wood to cardfoam, inspired by many impressive examples available here at GBfans. And it is also so much easier to work with.
Here’s an update on my project. Almost all the parts are already built.
I don’t like my cyclotron - as you can see it doesn’t look good as I had to improvise with parts that didn’t meet the plan’s specs. Also the n-filter, by a silly mistake, came out too short. I’ll order these parts in resin later, but they’ll have to do for now.
Just now the pack has received a first coat of black paint and tomorrow I’ll give it a second coat.
With everything black it is looking… well, the right expression would be WAY TOO COOL!! (as my 11 year old inner child, jumping up and down in pure excitment, would put it!). More updates later.
I had the black paint spray in my hand and was aiming at the pack when I noticed: “it has no EDA disks!”.
The pack is all painted in black and I’ve just installed the booster frame. Pics coming as soon as I can convince my camera to work. Now I’m wondering how to make the black mate paint look less black and more “aged graish black”.
Lewis, I’m already thinking it would be nice to start building a new pack, with what I’ve learned from this project I’m sure a second one would come out much better. I’m sure it would too for you, if you’re not satisfied. I’m not either. Specially the filler job I did. I used liquid nail, terrible terrible choice for me… That thing is impossible to sand smooth…
Looks great man!! Just one advice for you, do not, and I DO mean DO NOT throw those study drawings away when you are finished! I almost threw away the blueprints for our packs, but something went against it. Now I am glad that I have those crumpled, dirty prints filled with markings and coffee spills in my archives.. I love the idea of taking them next to the finished pack, and say, ‘with these, I made this…’
Managed to take some pictures of the pack after I painted it black (it still needs another coat). It now looks as if its a whole piece instead of parts glued together. I don’t get tired of staring at it.
I’m actually surprised with myself that this came from my own hands - I used to say that I wasn’t the builder type. Granted - it is a foamcore pack - it’s as easy to work with as paper - it may not be as involved as so many impressive and inspiring scratch built projects available here - either in wood and metal. Still, this project has been going on for 3 years already (with many pauses inbetween) but the interested hasn’t waned. That’s the simple power of dreams, a childhood dream, in this case.
These two pics show some of my mistakes in this build: surface imperfections created by the hardened liquid nail - I couldn’t sand that stuff smooth… I tried finding bondo here but I had no luck.
… and in this case I used too little liquid nail (I did sand the block but it wasn’t enough), making the wood grain glaringly obvious (the space between the bridge and the crank generator is because I didn’t screw the cranck gen to the motherboard for the pic):
Next steps: apply last layer of black paint. Finish the HGA and build the ion arm. Then start detailing.
I’ve already attached the pack to the alice frame - I had to feel the pack on my shoulders, and boy is it light!
Thanks a lot for all who took the time to comment here.
Since my last post I scratch built an ion arm sensor and HGA and installed most of the details. It is perhaps 70% finished - still no bumper, lenses, clippard valve and no thrower and no ageing done.
Now way I’ll be throwing them away! It’s half the work done if I want to build a new one, too.