View new posts | View your posts Gareee's Budget Packs: Halloween alternative build ideas

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My God, man! These are things of beauty!

Nicely done...I think they look great.

Gareee-

I go on the road for a couple of days and you finally do a post. The pack looks great and the lights are just awesome. Nice work!

Looks good man! I cant believe it looks that good! I cant wait to see it with you in uniform.

Y'know, I wouldn't even bother with the police light!

The lighting effects you have are cool enough. The color shift thing in the cyclo looks great!

Like everyone, I'm looking forward to seeing the throwers!

Don't leave it until two days before deadline, lol. Not to say that I did that last year, noooo....

The police light actually has a square mount above the ion arm base, and we're just putting velcro on that for two reasons..

One: so we can remove it for accuracy's sake, even though the rst of the packs are hit n mis on accuracy.

Two: So we can take them off the change out batteries. Since we put in fresh high quality batteries, and it only uses one led with a riotation motor, odds are it won;t need a repleacement set for 20-30 hours at least, but still you want to think ahead on something like that.

In retrospect, it probably would have been just as much work to make film accurate boxes for everything on the pack instead of using the electrical boxes, but I really like the sharp details they add, and the additional slots the lights shine through. If I had one post mortem regret on them, it would be I didn't use wood filler all the way around the top part of the sync generators, so you can see the seam line between the two layers of foam there.. but you have to know what to look for, and also know it shouldn't actually be there for it to really be an issue.

Weigh wise, I think the foam was an excellent decision.. easy to work with, and with the packs being just shy of 9 pounds, enough weight to feel like you are wearing something, but not enough to add hardly any back strain at all.. I can easily see us being able to do some light dancing in these...so long as people steer clear of our packs...

I say light em up man..you'll get a more dazzling display with the police lights, may be mount some pyrotechnics too j/k....more power to ya..

Well, full tilt into the guns today.. picked up parts at radio shack, looked over potential build possibilities, and made some potential gun grips. My only concern on them is the durability of the back grip, which you use to pull the gun from it's pack...



The carved foam handles...I did all four of them, in case they can be used on the guns for both packs.. if not, I might use them for the front handles, and make wooden back handles.




and their first coat of paint...

I wonder if there's anything you could coat them with to make them stronger...fiberglass? i dunno..they look great tho'

I few coats of house paint gives them a pretty durable plastic coat. I don;t think plastic dip would work on them though...

are we going to be finished by halloween? that clock is ticking man.....no pressure!

It was either Farm & Fleet or Lowe's today where I saw a spray version of Plasti-Coat.

Maybe that'd do the trick?

Thought about that, but I think it would eat up the acrylic paint on the foam, or the foam itself. Basically anything that is NOT water soluble eats foam.. LOL!

I put a second coat of house paint on the grips tonight, and also built the heat sinks, per KC's instructions.

I'll see if I can build the main gun boxes tomorrow.. the weather here was crap today.. rainy and 45 degrees.. NOT fun to be out doing foam work in at all.

Damned glad I built a roof over our deck back in August...

Beautiful looking grips.

Thanks, KC.. haven't seen ya around the last few days.

The heat sinks came out excellent, BTW, and the grips are on their 3rd coat of paint already.

Damn...guess I didn't forget to take my stupid pill! LOL

Totally forgot about the water soluble / foam issue.

I did check on it today anyway while I was at lowe's.. plastic dip does have a drying chemical in it, and it will eat foam. Only other thing I could to to make sturdier ones would be to make a mold of one, and cast them in resin myself. If I find the grips fail, I'll do that with one of the remainer grips, but they seem pretty sturdy with 5 coats of house paint on them right now.

I've also started cutting the parts for the gunboxes.. man, talk about a PITA.. there's like 20 parts to cut out for each damned thrower!

I've got about 10 pairs cut out now... I'm taking a short break before cutting the rest out. Then I'll need to sand them n such as well.

I figure probably smart to dry fit knobs, light caps n such first, spray paint them, put the hardware on, and then assemble the boxes.. that should make the assembly a bit easier.

Working outside is gonna suck bigtime today.. it's 33 degrees...

Might HAVE to wear my flightsuit.. LOL!

If you do, there must be pics!

LOL.... well, I HAVE worn one of my two venkman t shorts almost every GB work day.. onl;y other shirt I've worn is my GITD skeleton ribcage t shirt...

I think I'm going to have to abandon wooden gun boxes in favor of insulation foam ones. I really wanted to do wooden ones, but assembling the parts based on the plans available seem like a huge amount of work which I don;t really have the time for.

I'll try adding styrene sheets outside of it as plates so i can mount the buttons n such to it. Not sure how this plan will pan out, but it's the only decent solution I can think of at all.

(And this after 8 hours yesterday of cutting out all the wooden parts for both guns!)

When I get time, maybe I'll see if I can assemble the wooden parts I've made into more accurate gun blocks.

I'm from Tennessee and I was a little discouraged when I started a month ago with Norms plans to build a pack. then I saw your ideas and loved them, now I'm totally using ur ideas for building my pack. I like how you use the electric boxes cause that was my main problem building a pack. Thanks again for your post.

Yeah Norm's plans leave a little to be desired.. but they ARE a great resource and reference point.

Working with the insulation foam has been VERY easy, so long as you are careful with it before you put house paint on it. (the walmart H2O paint does work fine on foam, but it's coverage is kinda lightweight), and the whole point of using house paint it to create a durable skin on the foam.

I was looking at sean's plans for the gunbox, but there are like 12 parts o each box, they are very small, and not forgiving at all to not using 1/8" thick wood. Things are just too small to fudge much.

For out thrower tubes, we're using some lightup wands from walgreens.. they can flash low, or go very bright steady on. For the gunbox lights, we'll be trying to use a battery box from a regular light set (under the heat sink, which can hide the battery box hopefully), and possibly some flashing christmas "antler" lights I just picked up in the $1 section at target for $2.50.

Work accomplished today:

Testing and then abandoning the wooden gun box idea, picking up parts from Lowe's, building the foam gun boxes, making the handle openings on both gun boxes, testing fit, and seeing if things look like they might work.

gun progress is going well... the antler christa lights were not only a pain in the rump to get out of the antlers, but they used a dozen hot glue sticks in each. worst, the wores attached for the controls on them were barely on, and the whole circuit board was hot glued over, but NOT on the main battery wires connecting to them. As a result, one has no power cable at all any longer, and is busted.

I'm writing both sets off because they are so fragile, and instead our guns will just have steady on lights, and the controls to flash the thrower rods.

Also, the control boxes for the switches was huge, and heavy for the foam gun box, so I hacked off the actual control boxes (since they are just dummy switches anyway), and hot glued the insides in place,so the switched are locked at an angle.

I'll still use their nuts to attach them to a piece or sign styrene, so they look like they are mounted.

I took a wip pic last night, but I want to accomplish as much as possible today, so I'll post pics after I'm done working on things today.

can't wait to see the throwers.

Me too.. working here has been a pain the last few days.. highs of only 45 degrees outside, and me running in and out, because some things (like dremmeling foam) just have to be done outdoors.

Most of the pieces parts are together now, but I need to dremel out the foam for the lights. even unpainted they look better then I figured they would.

Wife's off tomorrow, and we hope to have them done sometime during the day.

Ok, here's some pic updates of our (hopefully) throwers..



Here's a rough layout of parts from last night. Some things had to be changed, or alterned because of difference between what we were doing, and norm's plans.





And the last two are more complete layouts.. the green light has to be moved over, and the gun tips still need to be built.. plus I also need to dremel out the channels for the led christmas lights in the foam still. You can see various openings made in the foam.. the rectangle is for the battery boxes (the heat sink will be glued to them, and both will come out at the same time for battery replacement.), the round openings are either for dowel ends for mountinf pvc pipes, or for the thrower rod, or back handle.

it looks awesome ... but fragile. are you just going to glue the hook to the thrower? and speaking of which, what are you planning to use as the hook?

Looks really good! I think they'll do nicely for Halloween.

Looks good! I can't wait to see them. I am also interested to know your attachment method. I used hotglue for most of mine, but parts are already needing more security. I have just broken down and put dabs of epoxy on joints and them painting the glue black when they dry. I hope to see these done this week! I am finally back on track with my thrower! A wire went loose and I could not figure out where to put it! Luckily I finally found the connection and I am back on track!

I'll attach a wooden bottom plat so I have something secure to attach the hook to.. ace has those flush mount wall hangers that can also work as thrower hooks.

The handle and thrower rod go into the foam an inch or so, and since there's not much weight at all, they are pretty secure even without glueing.

I'm using the best liquid nails walmart carries.. it takes half a day to dry, but dries solid, as opposed to the flexible cheaper versions. for adding knobs and such, I'm drilling holes, gluing dowel rods in, and then gluing the knobs onto those for stability.

And the MOST fun today? We already had our first snow, half my work is outside today, and snow is covering my tools, and work table out there.. so I need to blow it of and dry all my tools first. (sigh).

Love snow.. don't love snow on my tools.

Shorten the rear handle some, and it'll look pro. The gap between the grip and the gun body throws the overall look off.

The overall construction of the guns look good though! I'm looking forward to seeing them with a coat of paint!