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nick-a-tron wrote:No apology needed Matt! I agree, Tim's here blows mine and alot of others right out the water!

I secretly count myself in the group of people Tim is blowing away with this build.

nick-a-tron wrote:No apology needed Matt! I agree, Tim's here blows mine and alot of others right out the water!

you could have just posted this:



great job Hooker

Amazing work as usual Tim. I am looking foreward to seeing it finished. This is done with all simple, cheap tools that almost anyone can afford. Just proves you dont have to have a bunch of money in tools to pull off a great pack.

Are you a GOD? This is amazing man. How much does it weigh so far?

If you don't mind me asking, what method do you use to cut your curves? Do you use the bend-and-snap method or do you take extra time and cut through the sheet fully?

WeeMadHamish wrote:If you don't mind me asking, what method do you use to cut your curves? Do you use the bend-and-snap method or do you take extra time and cut through the sheet fully?

There is no doubt that cutting circles and curves can be a pain to get a clean snap. When I was cutting out all the discs to stack on the spacer I ended up having to re-do some for that very reason. I myself am still doing the bend and snap method since I don't have the patience to saw through the entire material. I find it helps if you make relief cuts so you aren't trying to snap around an entire bend. An example would be the draw a crosshair in the middle of a circle to the outside. That way you will be snapping 1/4's of left over material rather than trying to pop out the circle at once. I made a lot of these cuts outward along the curved portion of the spacer and it worked out well.

Other than that all i can tell you is to take your time and work the bend but sometimes you get a bad break no matter what you do.


and to Burkit, Nick, Jim, and others... I am very happy with how my pack is coming along so far so I thank you for your compliments. "Best pack ever" is quite a stretch since I hold such high regards to many packs before me but I to appreciate the kind words.

I should have another update Sunday when I get back in town.

You, sir, are an artist. Keep up the good work! Can't wait to see this finished.

Okay, I didn't get much done on the pack due to work and other things but I did manage to take some time to work on one small piece.

Since the point of this build was to make a pack using only basic tools I am skipping the pvc and going scratch on a few areas (for now). Here is the tube portion of the gear box that I still needed to add.


I started out by cuting out some ends which were the 1.25" tube diameter less the thickness of the styrene it would be wrapped in to give it the final 1.25" diameter once finished. I basically made some ends and ran ribs between the two pieces to give some stregnth and surface area to bond the plastic it would be wrapped in.






I then took some thinner styrene and wrapped the ribbing to get something like this.....






.......and installed





Hope to have more to share soon.

Crazy man....!

If you don't mind a small suggestion on your HGA since you're wanting to show making them with random hardware store parts, you can pick up a PVC ShopVac coupling at Home Depot or Lowes that's 2.5" long, by 2.5" in diameter. Perfect match to Stefan's plans. And it's already black, so, should it get scratched, no one will be the wiser.

Amazing looking pack. It should look absolutely gorgeous once it's finished. Might I enquire as to why you opted to make a tube for the the gearbox, as opposed to using PVC? Just curious. Seems more trouble than it'd be worth, you know?

Great work on the styrene tubing Tim. That's some dedicated work!

christphern wrote: Might I enquire as to why you opted to make a tube for the the gearbox, as opposed to using PVC? Just curious. Seems more trouble than it'd be worth, you know?

Well I will admit that I had pvc in hand ready to throw on the miter saw yesterday but my goal for this particular build was to use only the basics (hobby knife, ruler, file, etc..). A few things on this build have taken a lot more time than I would like since I am doing it all scratch without the aid of tools but I wanted to see what kind of results I could get.

When I get to things like the HGA and booster I will need to make an exception to the "knife only" theme since it would be unrealistic to go a styrene scratch route on those pieces. I will say that NOT using my shop full of tools out of convenience is more difficult than the build itself.

Thanks for the compliments.

I think you building with nothing but "basic" tools is great! Many people think that you have to have fancy tools to build, and with styrene it's simply not true. This build is awesome anyway, more awesome since you're not using all the tools that would make your life easier!

Tim, this is a very beautiful build! My first pack was a mostly styrene scratch build, so I admire the time you're taking to get it perfect. Keep up the great work!

I admit it, I cheated and used a table saw to cut the PVC from my gearbox tube.

I am defintely watching this thread for build tips. Killer stuff.

With any build there are times when you need to take a few steps back. In this case it was the crank gen. After staring at some ref pics for comparison I decided a few changes were needed. The main face of the crank gen, based off of Stefan's plans, comes out to be slighty larger than I wanted when compared to the reference pics.

It has been discussed in the past and currently that the crank gen is not only tapered on the top of the back but also on the cyclo end. I decided to break apart what I had done to cut in a taper on the bottom side as well. This allows the base to stay where it was at since it matched up with the other pieces and shortened the face of the crank gen to better match the reference pics. After doing the modification and staring at the reference pics for a few more hours I also agree with the idea of a bottom side taper.


The painfull task of breaking it apart...





I forgot to snap pics while I was cutting the taper and such so the next few pics will skip to assembly and show some more added details.


Using these reference pics I tried to better match the profile around the tube area. Around the tube and on the corners there is a variaion in the roundovers and some different angles leading into the tube




After taking much time to do some heavy rounding on my corners I took the time to try and replicate certain details that wanted. Being this pack is part accuracy and part idealistic cosmetics I tried to find a middle ground to replicate certain features and keeping it clean.



You can see some of the angle and curves near the tube area...




I laid a decal on for reference to the real shots. I still have a bit more tweaking to do but so far so good...





With the addition of the taper on the crank gen I needed to make a few changes to the gun mount. After a lot of studying and some discussion with Namebrand I ended up taking that apart as well. I will further get into those changes (with pics) in the next day or two.

Kudos to you for having the guts to break apart what you had already built in the name of accuracy. I think however it was well worth it as it looks even more amazing now. "oh that'll do" is the worst kind of mindset during any build.

Yeah, I've been trying to get those same curves as you. It's been bugging the hell out of me as it seems like the crank gen on the PH Minnesota pack doesn't have the same curves as the PH: NY pack as if they were different crank gens if that makes any sense.

Looks like shit. It's not even black.

Dan AKA wrote:Looks like shit. It's not even black.

Damnit Dan..I almost fell out of my chair!!


Derek

This thread makes me wanna start building my stuff again right now

*must finish college first*

Tim...

This whole damn thread is incredible.

That is absolutely THE best gearbox I have ever seen, and I don't mean that just as a friend. Your eye for detail is absolutely staggering.

I have to go; I think I may have wet myself...

Great job on that gear box Timbo. The detail this pack is getting is awesome! Keep going man.

Amazing gearbox Tim. Perfect buddy, i could only imagine how incredible the finished product is going to be.







Chris

Since my last post I have been back and forth on my pack. I spent countless hours perfecting my gear box, re-doing the gun mount to correct some issues in Stefans plans, and cosmetic filling. Once I finish sanding all of those pieces I will update you on the progress.

In between working on those pieces I made up the little corner section of the pack and took some pics to show my process. This is a fairly straight forward piece but for anyone that has not yet built a pack it may offer some ideas.


I started out by cutting two plates that match the bottom platforms specs. From there I set my compass to 1/2" to mark a cutting edge on the 2nd piece.




I then ran the compass down the edge to mark my 1/2" line.




I built up my bottom and top plates with supports to bring them to their correct hieghts and stacked them to check fit





From this point you need to fill in the open area to make the angle. For this I chose to use Apoxie Sculpt. For those who are unfamiliar with Apoxie Sculpt it is a 2-part modeling putty (compound) that you can sculpt, fill, smooth, etc.. just about anything. Wet your fingers and you are ready to go.

Here I filled in the open area and used a wet flat scrap of styrene as a flat edge and ran it across the upper and lower edge to form the angle...





From there a quick test fit to make any adjustments before it cured and I was set...




More updates later in the week.

Holy mackerel. This is getting better and better. Beautiful!

That Corner Plate is absolutely beautiful.

Dan AKA wrote:Looks like shit. It's not even black.

(Pack prefer to be called Color Challenged.)

Looks fantastic Tim, I use something similar called Magic Sculpt it's a 2 part epoxy as well, gives you about a hour working time and being able to use water to sculpt and smooth just makes the stuff a must for things like this. Great work buddy.





Chris