[fearless-freak]

there is a Tested video on youtube that shows Adam Savage's custom built toolboxes

[Batfly]

Didn't do much. I spent a large amount of the day on this forum looking up screws sizes and quantities.


Those results lol.


Made the beam line and filler tube. Will sand these tomorrow. Cut a new, non chipped vac house spacer.

That's it.

Tomorrow should be more productive. I don't deserve to post money shots this post. Lol

[Venkman's Swagger]

Haha progress is progress dude. Now get back to work....... (Did I motivate you then? I didn't did I? *facepalm*) [emoji2]

[Morfeusoneiros]

Just saw this build. Subscribed. Impressive work so far, you'll make a great pack

[Batfly]

Lol VS. You did help

Morf, thanks and hi.

Today was a lot of circles and sanding!



Cut out and sanded clean a lid for the vac tube spacer. Cut a section of 1" pvc for the tube and glued them together.



The pvc for the spacer is about 1/16" to 1/8" wide, but I like that both sides touch. Screen used ones seem to have the left side flush and the right with a small gap from the edge.


Space at top looks about right to me.




Cut out circles and cleaned some of the excess with the exacto blade.


Laminated the four circles together and clamped them. Overkill? Who cares lol. I put glue on the outside to fill in any underhangs. Smaller circles don't like to snap clean for me. This'll be fun to sand tomorrow, ugh.


Decided to do the radiused angled spacer under the HGA.


Knifed, laminated, clamped, glue-smothered like the circles before. Also made the raised part. When I order some apoxie sculpt I'll fill in the gap and scrape in the angled radius.


Made the little cyclotron angled plate box thingy that the injector lines go into. Sanded the angled piece and left it long since I over sanded a measured one before it. Oops. Will sand it even on the top and bottom.


Drilled two 1/4" holes with a step bit and still press in the left side before gluing. Still love these bits!


Braced it a little inside with some scraps.


Cleaned up the beamline and filler tube. Doesn't one of these have a slight radiused top edge? I think that's what I see in reference pics. Always thought it weird the GBFans shop resin beamlines and fillers have welds. Wouldn't mind being proven wrong or confirmed on this.

That was all for today. Now it's time for...


Ma ma ma MONEY SHOTS!

[Venkman's Swagger]

This thread should seriously have a NSFW warning on it!! Amazing

[Morfeusoneiros]

Hi back...
...and I love the money shots [THUMBS UP SIGN]

[Batfly]

On this episode of Batfly's Scratch/First Pack Build All 0.125", I do a lot of sanding with a tiny bit of gluing.


I started with this little guy.


Sanded the front angled face first till it became flush with the top. If I sanded just the top and bottom off it'd be too long due to the angle and thickness of the face piece. I don't know how to explain it but I'm right. Even my calipers agree.[emoji14]


Sanded away the bottom/front nub.


Quickly cleaned up both sides. Ooooo




And then glued it on to the synchronous generator plate.


Started this booger! Glue sucks to sand. Lol


2 hours and 20 minutes later I have a nice clean clippard riser. Ah crap! I just realised I was going to cut, clean up, and glue on (I could have just said make) it's little step circle thing. Oh well.


Sanded... (I'm even sick of the word itself!) Super vigorously rubbed with ouch-ouch scratchy demon paper the steps of the inner HGA spacer. The littler dude was a breeze. Forgot to take before shots.


Glued and clamped them together in another bought of overkill.

That's it. 4.5 hours spent today. I think I'll shoot for the bumper next. Woo, that'll be a great challenge. Both looking forward to it and trepidatious about it lol. Stared at the plans and several builds for many hours.

Stay tuned!

[PssdffJay]

It's probably too late now, but I think you should invest in a little orbital sander.

That before and after looks fantastic! Like 2 completely different pieces.

[TENIME_art]

You are a g**d***ed magician.

Also, "ouch-ouch scratchy demon paper" made me LOL.

[OCP_Model-001]

Love styrene builds, this is great work

[Batfly]

Jay, yeah, thinking the same lol.

Tenime, thank yet again It's going to be fun to continue trying to avoid the word of the activity I'm having the least fun with.

[Batfly]

OCP_Model-001, thanks! Is your username a Robocop reference? I used to have an ED-209 toy. Wish I still had it

[Morfeusoneiros]

After fighting with my shell today, your tread was just what I needed to end this day with a happy feeling towards building a pack

Looks great and I'm Impressed by your skills with the styrene. Keep up the good work!

[Batfly]

Meant to post this last night but finished for the day a little after 11pm. I ended up eating and going to bed.

Feels like I didn't get much done. This bumper dude is one intricate bastard design wise.


Measured and plotted out a side "rail". I was going to cut it out and use the remainder to plot out the other side, but it snapped along the right bottom edge while removing the rail. Took me 2 hours to stare at the plans, look at reference, scratch my head over my approach of attack, and plot it out.


Here's the first one. Thought about tracing it for the second one, but it was too rough around the edges. 40 mins to score and snap out.


Both cut out. Second one went much quicker without the prep planning and dimensional figuring. Only an hour and a half lol.


Plotted out the top. This was the most logical way I could see doing this using styrene with the least amount of seems on the most visible post of the bastard, I mean bumper. Exactly 1 hour to do this.


22 minutes to score and snap.


Cat-tongue-papyrus rubbed in the curves and cleaned up the edges. Also cut and rounded out the left (or front?) side with a little round file. 20 minutes of this.


Clamped the two sides together and abrasives-particles-glued-to-pressed-tree-pulped the sides to even up the rails. 39 minutes of this torture.


That's it for today. Seems like not much for 6.75 hours. Lots of brain stuff spent on this one.

Stay tuned for today's progress

[OCP_Model-001]

Batfly, yes it's the serial code on the side of robocops helmet. One of my favourite films, I have 1/6 scale vinyl kit on my shelf at home, that's my avatar photo

[Batfly]

Batfly, yes it's the serial code on the side of robocops helmet. One of my favourite films, I have 1/6 scale vinyl kit on my shelf at home, that's my avatar photo

Very cool! For some reason your avatar doesn't show in the tap-a-talk app. I did however just go in the full site to view it.

ERROR: PRIME DIRECTIVE

[Batfly]

Alright, update time during lunch. Yeah, we eat all meals late usually.

Feeling like I made up for how I felt about yesterday's progress, and I'm not even finished yet for today. Lol.


I started by using the elbow/forearm/hand destroyer scratchy block on one of the side rails.


Comparison of a bare rail and the one I silica'd. (Ha, just noticed I took a pic of the angled edge of one to the round edge of the other. Doh! )

Next I scored a line 0.438" from the inside edge with the calipers. I went over that with a pencil to have a guide to line up the center band to.


I measured out a 1.25" wide strip and then just got the length needed by rolling the rail on its outside edge and marked a little past where it came to rest. Kinda like figuring out how much wrapping paper to cut.

After scoring and snapping the center bands into existence, I simply bent them over and over until they stayed the shape that lined up with the mark I made on the rail. I do have a heat gun, but didn't need it, or I'm stubborn, or lazy, or both. Building a porton pack from scratch; only for the lazy!


Glued the bands on lining them up to the line carefully. Wasn't too difficult at all.


Cut the little flat and angled dude and abrasived down the side that matches up to the top center plate. Glued him on. Yes, this piece has a gender.


Glued the top center plate on. Had to use my jeweler files to widen a side of the left/front (right in this pic) indent thing. That was a pain. Easy, but a pain. Like eating Sloppy Joes. Shoved extra glue in the seems to later coarsely coerce them to be seamless once the glue dries.


Ran a bead of glue around the inside edge cause I like wasting glue trees, or for reinforcement.


I shark-skin-elbow-greased the second rail to curvy spec, made it's band alignment mark, and glued it on.


Ran another indigenous adhesive resource wasting bead of glue on the inside.



Then I roughed up all the protruding edges till they met on common ground and played nice (right section of top plate (left in this photo) where it meets the macho angled piece, both bottom angled spots where the center band protruded a little).

That's where I'm at now. Next I'll be plotting out the 10 (ug, TEN! ) wing pieces to glue/laminate to the bottom of the top center plate. Yay fun! Liking how it's turning out so far!

Oh, it seems doing everything to Stephan's plans' specs makes the back of the bumper sit very close to the top of the cyclotron when the bumper arms sit flush with the bottom of the synchronous generator. I never saw this issue come up on the forums or in the changes to Stephan's plans thread. I do know there's supposed to be a quarter to half inch gap and spacer there. Hmmm, do I care? Opinions? Happened to anyone else?

Stay tuned ghostheads!

[Venkman's Swagger]

Looks immense yet again man. Insanely talented. I would say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" regarding the bumper spacer.

[Batfly]

Remember what I said I'd do next? The 10 bumper wing things? I lied! lol. Really though, I meant to do them, but I kept thinking about the underside of the bumper. The original plan was to fill it with epoxy sculpt and scrub the ever living crap out of it with gritty grain sheets on a flat block. I came up with three main reason why I don't want to do that anymore.

1. I really didn't want to have to use that much epoxy for weight, cost, and elbow grease conservation.

2. I noticed the side rails lean inward for some reason. So I wanted to brace them (thanks Alan for the pics as an example!) to straighten them out.

3. I just haven't ordered any epoxy sculpt yet. Lol


At high noon, I started taking depth measurements with the calipers and subtracted 0.125". I made a scrap piece the width of the upper band (1.25") and cut out about 12 braces. I chopped corners off the bottoms so the strengthening glue seems inside didn't interfere.

I had to scour down some in the thinner parts but wasn't too difficult. Everything got dry fitted and a piece of scrap styrene was used to make sure the band would peek a little over the rail edge, never under. This will make blending easier after glue dries.


Jump to 5 friggin pm and all the brace ribbing was glued in. Take an hour out for lunch in there somewhere.


I scored and snapped out a 21" x 1.25" length of styrene. I got the length by taking a sheet of paper and ran it along the underside while walking my fingers on the ribbing going along to keep it in place. I noted where the paper ended and ran the same sheet again starting there. I noted where it ended, measured beginning of paper to the noted spot, and added 11" for the first paper run. Added another half inch for oops factor. The injector tubes were used to bend the band.


I dry fitted and got the bends in before gluing it on. Use the overkill clamps along the way as it was being rather squirrelly at first. The exacto blade handle and a little clamp provided great attitude adjustment for stubborn curve sections. Dry fitting and bending took a whole hour by itself.


Got it glued on. Basically took an end clamp off, literally dribbled glue onto braces and the side while peeling the band back. I put the clamp back on, took the rest of the clamps off, and continued dribbling glue, applying down the band, and returning clamps. I also ran glue along the seems for better, seamless clean up. Gluing only took 10 minutes total.


Badda bing!


Badda boom!


Looking good so far!

Never got the wings done but I'm happy with today's progress. Tuesday is their day!

Happy Easter to those who celebrate it! Don't be offended, but I call it O.G. Zombie day.

[Venkman's Swagger]

Daaaaaamn!!

[Alan Hawkins]

Niiiiiice!

[Hammer]

That's a good looking bumper!

[Batfly]

Thanks everyone! Just had a dumb idea: remake movies with pack parts. Disney's Bambi, instead of Thumper, you'd have, "and that's why they call me Bumper! " what?

[Morfeusoneiros]

That there's some fine looking bumper, sir!

[Batfly]

That there's some fine looking bumper, sir!

That's what she said! heh heh heh

[Batfly]

Here's yesterday's progress. Started at noon. Went to tackle the wings for the bumper.


Measured the length of the top plate wings already on the bumper. Then drew out the dimensions.


Plotted out and scored on some scrap styrene. This took 2 friggin hours!


Scored relief for the small bends. Don't even know why I scored the smaller curves as they were just cut off at 45° angles to be rounded off later after gluing.


10 pieces all snapped out.


One side glued and clamped. I liberally sloped glue on the sides to prevent seems when abrasively matching them to the top plate.


Glued the other sides on.


Going to need a lot of clean up.


Especially for the underside, but should come out nice.


Finished the wings sooner than I thought so I decided to make the little step circle for the clippard circle that I keep forgetting about.


It snapped out with a couple underhangs so I added glue to take down later. This didn't take long at all so...


I rounded the top of the filler tube as I see (to me) in reference photos. I did so also to the beamline tube, but to a lesser extent. Don't know the accuracy but it's what my eyeballs see reference wise and how I think my idealized pack should be.

4.5 hours yesterday total. Not bad.

Who wants money shots?


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.

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Here ya go!





Man I'm getting so excited that I'm closer and closer to removing excess internal styrene between pieces and adhering them together. Need to order some epoxie sculpt very soon!

Thanks for hanging out!

[Morfeusoneiros]

Really enjoying this build and LOVING those money shots

[Venkman's Swagger]

HUBBA HUBBA!! Gets better and better man

[Batfly]

Small update. Just been plugging away at things here and there after work.


Thursday I started the repeated mass micro scraping of the bumper wings. Didn't go too crazy. Was tired. Still a lot more to do!

I ordered an LC-1 Alice frame with LC-2 straps online. Got red and clear light covers, an orange hat light cap, frosted acrylic wand tube, legris banjos, yellow hose and tan leg connector from GBfans on Friday (yesterday).

Today at work I found and ordered Dale resistors RH-50 and PH-25 online along with a gray resin crank knob.

I'm looking for white hat lights. It looks like throwingchicken has replicas, and they come with another orange one so I'd have the choice of which color to use on the top next to the vent. He also has resin thrower knobs. I kinda want to do aluminium knobs though. Hmmm.



Got hooked up with these beauties for only the cost of shipping! They arrived earlier this week and look gorgeous. They are real Clippard valves, but not 701s or 331s. A metallic label swap, if I wanted to, would take care of that. I might not even do anything. Otherwise they are the same on the outside. Thanks to you know who you are who put me in touch with who sent these whom I am thanking as well, very grateful and appreciative!

Keep forgetting to order epoxie sculpt. Oops.

Today I wanted to do something but not score and cut anything or wear my elbow out rub scratching.


I decided to make dimensions from HProps' thrower plans. This was fun and a challenge. Did you know highly OCD people love numbers? Well, this one does.


Also cut out and tested my geometry math on a piece of cardboard. It worked! I figured the circumference of the left main thrower bend from the radius of the suggested diameter. Divided that circumference by four to get the length of material needed for the bend. Dropped down the top dimension of the left side by the radius to mark the start of the bend. I then subtracted the radius from the bend length and top vent piece, took the difference of the bend length, and added it too the subtracted top vent subtracted number. Added that to the original side piece height to get the entirety of the side/top vent combo I'll be bending as one piece. Hope that made sense. Lol


Then I measured out all cutouts needed and their positions on the vent top. Made sure all dimensions were copacetic. I tried to see if they either made sensible imperial fractions or metric integers. Seems like they did a but of both.

This was 3 hours of number crunching. Whew.


That's it! I have off Monday. We'll see if I either continue working on the bumper, make some still needed pack parts (booster plug, cyclotron cable clamp plates, drill holes) or start on the thrower.