View new posts | View your posts Julz's proton pack build

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Right I have finally gotten my arse into gear and started my pack. I was aiming for a xmas deadline but I have overshot that mark but at least I can see its well underway!

First of all let me say there are a hell of alot of talented sods on this site! I had originally intended to make a lot of these peaces myself and like everyone I got excited and started doing some research and buying materials... I started with my grip, having being inspired my Throwing chickens approach, I tried to follow his lead. After a few failed attempts I am fairly happy with the result, but am currently trying to prefect an orangy brown resin...

My research like many ...lead me to people like Flynn, Jason, Namebrand, TC, Nickatron, colin and umori. Having seen the props and parts that these guys make is really truly staggering. I pretty much made my mind up to throw in the towel and use their parts as it would be hard for me to match there talent for prop making, research and attention to detail! So to you you guys and anybody on gbfans that make props as good as these guys...my hat is off to you!

So with out any more delay I shall start off with the grip I made.

On to the mold box...This was actually quite exciting to work on...but also scary as the materials are not cheap :/
Have to give a big shout out to Colin aka multimedia mayhem...as I got the tutorial off of his site.

I forgot to say that I have been following 2 builds off of here which are truly amazing and very helpful and instructive. I won't go into as much detail as these guys did but by all means please check out their builds and see the awesomeness! you guys rock!

Filandrius's wand and pack

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20995&start=0
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20305&start=0

Libtechinit's pack

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16457&hilit=umoribawar

And a few casts I did today of the grip

I decided to go with Flynn for my shell, lights and sounds. Let me just say that Flynn is awesome. Really helpfull when it comes to any questions you might have and he is really quite to get back to you. The shell it self came very well packed and I was really trully amazed by his standard of workmanship. All the parts are very high quality resin and the shell is really strong. I'm really happy with his products and I can't wait to get the lights and sounds for this sucker!

The next thing I decided to tackle was the motherboard. I brought some aluminum sheet and traced round Flynn's shell then cut the whole thing out with a jigsaw....very very stressful times!

I still have a few things to do to polish it off and I plan to drill some speaker holes in it as well.
I used the fantastic tutorial by kind2311
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11972

Initially I brought one of TC's gun kits...Which Is seriously amazing work, but somewhere along the line I found out that a few people on here make aluminum gun bodies and I couldn't help myself...I decided if you are going to do this once you might as well go the whole hog! I plan to finish up TC kit as well and then i shall have 2...am I obsessed?

Umori's gun arrived in the post the other day and I am very happy with it. Umori aka Richard is extremely helpful and like flynn quick to return emails and answer any questions you might have. Also I think its worth mentioning he adds a lifetime warranty on his parts...any new measurements come to the surface and he is happy to make changes...pretty awesome!

So here are some pictures coupled with Jason's heatsink...which is frigan amazing!

Great work so far, i really like the gun grips you made

Looking forward to see more of your pack.

Thanks bigi71

I'm really happy with my grips..i'm really looking forward to seeing the whole thing finished as well.

rafj27...I'm finding it hard to stop watching that gif!

Those grips are nothing short of beautiful, you're going to fit in really well here.

I'm really digging the method you used to form the grips. Great job you're doing there!

Aww shush you guys :p

Thanks for the kind words sniff...

I really am happy with them but I cant take too much credit for the over all process as I borrowed that idea from Throwing chicken. I just added the profile cutout of the grips on the sides to help when it came to put sculpty clay and molding it into shape.

Next will be to paint them and weather them so the brown resin shows through...

I'm going to second this statement.

Ok just a few update.

I drilled some holes for the speaker and mounted it.

After watching Bigi71 build, I decided to try and add similar details where I could to try and make it a bit more accurate.
After cutting and installing the booster aluminum tube I noticed that the EDA was a tad too short and I needed to sand the disks off and remold the top to raise the top up higher so that it had an over hang over the booster tube.
Then I got my trusty dremel and sanded the extra curves on the crank generator. This was both really fun and scary. I really didn't want to destroy exoray's shell...but I took the plunge. it's almost finished now, I just need to sand some of the fins down a bit more...

I decided to make my filler tubes and ppd out of aluminum pipe. I cut some wood inserts and epoxied them into place. Then filled the rest up with epoxy putty...amazing stuff.

Then I cut some solid aluminum tube for the booster plug, and cut the backing plate with a jigsaw...following bigi71 awesome method.







Then I took a shot at weathering the shockmount like Filandrius did.



That's it for now...on the home straight now though. Just a bit more sanding adding the injector tubes and blah blah :p

I applaud your dedication to accuracy and scratchbuilding skills.

The weathering on the shock mount looks fanatastic and this is becoming one of my favourite pack threads. Youre doing an absolutely great job

Aww shush you guys :p

Hey honestly that is really neat to here that feedback coming from both of you guys...You both have done some amazing builds and have such great advice , and Björn... one of the reasons i'm modding my shell is because your your thread!
Sigh...I really wish I hadn't seen Matt's and your thread, Then I wouldn't be having to do so much work :p

Your doing a fantastic job Julz, from what you got so far it's looking to be yet another great pack.

I love the fact that you fixed the crank/gen and added the curves, I did the same to my Alkaline shell and I know how much courage it takes to take a plunge like that

I aslo love the grips you made up !! Keep it coming bro

Thanks Cris and Stantz ! It's really nice to get some positive feedback... makes it all worth while ( well having a proton pack in the end will make it all worth while but it's nice to have all your hard efforts get recognized, by budding prop builders

Ps I sooo know what your talking about in terms of pack alterations Stantz... there is always this huge fear that you are going to screw it up :/

Very nice!, digging the aluminum thrower!

Thanks man...

you can thank RJ aka Umori for the aluminum thrower :p

http://www.vendio.com/stores/DimensionalFabrications/

haha...yea....awesome work!

hoookee

Updates... Id love to say I have alot more to show, putting in all these extra detail into the shell is chewing up alot of time. Now that I am getting close to finishing the changes now its time to sand everything...and that feels like all I have been doing for the last 3 weeks...

so as i decided to screw in the filler tubes from behind the shell I decided to reinforce the one closest to the injector tubes. as there wasn't alot of room to add a screw as it would end up being higher than the shell and id have issues having my shell sit flush on the motherboard. So i dremeled into the shell and epoxied a piece of 3mm aluminum . I then covered this up with epoxy putty, I plan to drill into this as well as countersinking the hole for the screw in the epoxy putty so the screw should sit flush.



you can also see that I have sanded off the injector plate ( 2 hours on sanding!) and reinforced the interior of the powercell for my new metal injector plate.



also I rebuilt and smoothed the curve under the powercell



Then I added in a few more curves that I picked up from Bigi71's shell and reference pics...annnnnnd alot more sanding...sigh!



and my last update is i sanded a few disks with a dremel to get a slightly concave look. Then added some small rivets ... I picked up this detail from a comment made by alkaline on the photo's taken by Vincenzo330 and kind2311.
No who know if this is really accurate. But with a little bit of filler, sanding and paint...i think it could look quite similar to the pics...


Oh also in the last pic you can see how i rebuilt/raised up the ppd part of the Eda. Hopefully I will be painting next weekend....touch wood!

Looking really nice! Will you fill in the hole in the EDA disc pop rivets?

Why thank you nick.

Always nice to get nice comments from talented prop builders such as yourself

I am going to semi cover them up... i might fill them but sand into them a bit here and there, some of the ref pictures you can kind of make out what looks like a rivet. so id like to maintain some of that detail. A sharp bit of the rivet here and there and maybe more of the rivet hole on one of them...That's the theory at any rate :p

who knows how it will turn out :p

You are doing a mighty fine job cleaning that shell up to make it how you want it.