[Christof]

Ohai guys! If you've looked at my uniform thread you might be aware I've also been accumulating parts for my first pack build. I've got my eye on making this a GB2 style, as-close-to-hero build as I can do. So far we've got a rather gorgeous shell and motherboard from GBFans:

It got here Friday and has been sitting on my table all weekend, with the also great looking resin cast parts kit from Crix

Still undrilled, untapped, and unpainted. That won't do, not at all.

I don't have a lot of experience working with spray paint, but after drilling and tapping my parts I gave em a couple coats of primer. Overkill? Probably, but I'm being careful over here.
Now for some flat black, cause METAL! (Widdly widdly waaaaaaah!)

Over the course of this last weekend I've done ALL the reading, and I'm sure I'm still missing plenty, but I have figured out MOST of my drill sizes, so I prepped up my booster frame once I was confident in the size I needed. Then gave it the same loving flat black

And after it had dried, I cut a handy little paper template and lined things up on my booster tube and drilled it out while I was at it.
I also made some paper templates for drilling my shell attachment points using my now prepped parts

I thought about it over dinner, and realized I had the perfect tool to help me paint my booster tube
I present to you the Painter's Arrow MK.1

Since I'm waiting on paint to dry (Why am I so excited watching paint dry?) I figured I should start smoothing my shell a bit, ideally I'd like to give it a hammered texture as I've seen on a few other packs.

I grabbed this fine grain sanding sponge at a local hardware store when I got my part kit from Crix, and although I didn't have to do much on those parts it's coming in invaluable on the shell. Bonus: That's my uniform flashlight providing some nice directional hands-free lighting! Fashionable AND functional!
So that's as far as I am right now! Currently awaiting my brass elbows and hose barbs, and need to order all of my tubes as well as the ALICE pack frame. Tomorrow's plan is to get some stock for Aluminum brackets and start preparing my mounts for the shell and injector tubes. Also in the mail is some black epoxy putty, between that and a silver paint sharpee I'll be touching up my weld lines as well as reinforcing my parts and filling some spaces. I'm just way too excited to get started so I'm prepping all my pieces while I await moar parts.

Bonus Fake Edit Update!: In the course of typing this up I was poking around Dad's workshop, and spotted a handy 2" pipe bracket. I realized it would take almost no work to make it into a support bracket for my Injector tubes

Just hammer it flat, mark out where you need to trim it down to, and tahdah!

[Venkman's Swagger]

Looking like a fantastic start dude. Love that you're doing a GB2 build

[Christof]

Thanks! Your Stantz pack actually was a big inspiration for me. At first I was just of a mind to build "A proton pack", but as I did more research and saw all the details I decided I wanted my own personal Ghostbusting-hero Dr. Stantz's pack. Still have a million questions, and buttloads of buying, building, and researching to do but I was way too excited to get started. And also start picking brains, cause I am super intimated by the idea of drilling this shell.

[Venkman's Swagger]

That's really humbling to know so thank you very much. I am glad my build could inspire you. Intimidating feelings are all part of the journey but as long as you drill slow and in reverse you will be fine. Step Bit drill bits also reduce chipping etc so may be worth grabbing if you haven't already

[Christof]

Oh, thank YOU sir, you did most of the hard work already
I had seen mention of using a step bit, and going slow, but nothing about going in reverse, that's good to know. I have a step bit, but I think it might be too large and probably not as sharp as I'd like, so I might end up having to get a new one anyway.

[Venkman's Swagger]

Awesome!! Looking forward to further updates

[OCP_Model-001]

Looks like a great start. It's also a good thing to give the resin parts a good wash and light buff with a fine scouring pad like 3m scotch brite (or similar), to dull the shine and give the paint a good key to stick to, and remember light even coats for spraying will give the best finish

[Christof]

Thanks OCP! I finally got the knack of it while working on the booster tube. Also my new little project going on here is seeing if I can make proper mounting brackets out of those pipe brackets I have laying around.

There's the one I cut for my Injector tubes before I wet to work filing on it. I'm slightly concerned the material isn't thick enough to hold the shell and all it's attachments but my Dad, a 40+ year Plumber, insists four of these would hold MY weight. Also I need to figure out a solid hammering block with a 90 degree edge to it I can use to flatten them against (God, why don't I own an anvil already?!)

[Christof]

Bah! Material thickness! They aren't thick enough to take a thread, at least not enough of one to provide a proper attachment.
I realized halfway through hammering them out that I would need to figure out an internal attachment method, and to be honest, the idea of adding more points of failure bothers me, SO back to the drawing board.

On the plus side, I have extra Injector Tube brackets?

[OCP_Model-001]

Surely you only need clearance holes on the injector bracket? I threaded the holes on the injectors themselves, and the one on the shell is bolted straight through and secured with a nut on the inside., or am I confusing this with some other part..

[Christof]

Not at all! I just had an initial idea that I might use the same method to make the mounting brackets for my shell as well, but I realized part way through I would have to mess around with stuff to make it work.

[Christof]

Time for some updating!
I've been pretty busy with a new girlfriend and being back to work after nearly a month long break, but I got the bug today looking over Naptime's pack build thread, and just had to get back to work on my shell.

Safety first, folks!
And the tools of the trade

With my previous experience drilling out attachment points I started by drilling out pilot holes for all my 1/4" holes, using an 1/8" drill bit and going slowly I got right through without any chipping or cracking.


After that is was just a matter of lining up carefully and using my step bit to open things up to 1/4" where appropriate.


And of course, because this wouldn't be a first timer pack build without some mistakes;
After drilling out the attachment point for my Injector tubes, I discovered my template wasn't lined up correctly. You can see, I started to take the step bit to the upper hole when I realized it:

Thankfully, I already have some epoxy putty on hand for exactly this sort of reason.

Crazy useful for patching chips and mistakes, not so great for making fake weld lines. Oh well, I have an artist friend who suggested Sculpy Primo that I plan to get my hands on and do some experimentation with.

And patched up! Now to let this cure while I work on a more accurate, solid template. I took a piece of scrap aluminum, made a new paper template with an exacto knife, and used that to cut out a new template piece, then laid my Injector Tubes on top, marked off the excess material, and went back at it with a pair of metal shears and carefully trimmed it down to fit as closely as I could. Next is to take a punch and cut out the holes I'll be drilling through. This should also have the added benefit of helping keep my drill bit straight while I work.

Et voila!
I'm going to give the epoxy putty an extra day or so to cure, just to make sure it's hardened all the way through, then take another shot at these particular mounting points. In the meantime I'm hunting down the final detail pieces for my Ion Arm which I'll also need to make a template for. The other advantage to making these handy metal templates is that I can use them on future builds using similar parts. Why is this especially useful? Well, since I started this project several friends have started expressing interest in building their own packs! At least one is waiting on me to finish my build first, letting me make all the mistakes and learn from them first.

[Naptime]

Yay! Mutual inspiration! Love the work you're doing on your pack. Especially your plan of attack in terms of getting all the holes pre-drilled. I've been all over the place with my build, just putting parts on depending on how much work I feel like doing at any given moment. I've got a bunch of updates to add to my build thread, but I still haven't been able to figure out how to post pictures using my laptop, so I've been using tapatalk on my iphone. Great for posting pictures, crappy for typing out text! Thanks to you, I've just remembered I have milliput I can use on my shell as well (had a slight mishap with the dremel and the crank generator) so THANK YOU!

[Christof]

Thanks Naptime! I was going kind of crazy trying to tackle everything at once so I took a step back, let the week or so of romantical-type activities relax me, and started focusing on my pack build one part at a time instead. I'm still finishing up with drilling all my attachment points and whatnot out of the shell, I need to finish drilling out my Legris straight connector points, which is turning out to be pretty difficult, none of my bits can get in there straight on, the best I can get is angled to one side or another. And the part I've been dreading is drilling the holes out of my N-Filter. Oooooh crap, I don't even know what size holes I'll be drilling, to be perfectly honest, let alone how I'll tackled it without damaging my shell.

[Christof]

Ok fine, I'll write an actual update.
Progress has continued a little slower but steadily this hole last week, as I drilled more holes. (See what I did there? Eeeh?)
First, some more parts started coming in: My ALICE frame with LC-2 styled straps

...And an extra box of screws

Then with a little help from Demon Vice Commander, and likesjellydonuts (Thanks again guys!) I finally got to work drilling out the holes on my N-Filter. Eventually I'll be getting my hands on some fine wire mesh, painting it white, and shaping it to fit inside my N-Filter, I have my reasons for this slight departure, so just bare with me here.

Next was finishing the holes for my Legris straights, which turned out to be a bit of a pain in the ass as I fumbled around step bitting to 3/8", then opened it up just a tiny bit more with an actual 3/8" bit, gigantor I know, but with most of the material removed already it was more a matter of being careful with the beast of a corded drill I have access to, which brings me to my next hurdle...

Guess who neglected to be extra careful with their heavy drill?
<--- This guy.
Thankfully I already have the milliput on hand and ready to go, so I went ahead and patched the damage and let it be for now. In the meantime I have my mounting brackets coming from the ever-prompt EJGunth87, so hopefully by this time next week I will have my shell mounted to mobo, and mobo mounted to backpack frame.

[Christof]

Work is cray. Holidays are dumb. Let's build something awesome!

Parts! A set of SMC 4mm elbows, and a set of Mr_Stay_Puft's gorgeous replica 2nd generation Elbows
As well as sundry other bits and pieces.


And one of KCGhostbuster's slick resin bumpers!


I also got my hands on one of EJGunth's mounting bracket sets, and went to town with those and the ALICE frame I have





Around this time my next package of parts came in from GBFans, my Ribbon cable, cable clamp, Adel clamp, and a Metal bellows/shock knob.

...And some new tools.

So it was back to work on the shell. I wanted to finish out all the holes I could, starting with mounting my booster tube and the hose port. Took the step bit all the way through, then took a file and carefully opened the hole up so it was more an elongated half-moon, with a little elbow grease I was able to make a hole just perfectly sized for the splitless loom to pass through without damage and still be held in place by pressure alone.

I might still go back and open it up another 1/8" or so and cut up some rubber tubing to make a sealed gasket for a cleaner look, but for now it's perfect.

I also started lining things up to mount the bumper!

As well as drilling and tapping the ribbon cable clamp directly to the shell.


Next up! The Booster tube!

I admit, I was a little stumped as to how I wanted to do this at first. Then I remembered that Picasso quote about artists and stealing, looked at how Naptime did it, and adapted it to my build!

So finally, this is where we're at! I'm not perfectly happy with how the bumper is mounted, so that's going to get fixed. And I'm once again at a point of really needing to order more parts before I do more building.

Happy Holidays, everybody!

[Christof]

Yaaaaay! Christmas Vacation!

Being off work the last couple weeks gave me more than enough time to get around to doing this:

So I took a good long look at my mounting holes, figured out where I went wrong and went back and drilled some new ones, bringing the whole bumper more into proper alignment. When I had that done I realized I could start going ahead with the finishing work on my bumper.

For now I'm still hunting down the correct Fillister screw in a lot smaller than 3000, and my shock knob is held by a temporary 1/4-20 placeholder:



Once more I'm at a bit of an impasse until more parts start coming in, but I have a plan in mind, and you'll all just have to wait and see.

[Ecto716]

I'm keeping this handy for when I go to build my own pack. Looks awesome, can't wait to see the thrower!

[Christof]

Funny you should mention that, actually, I am in fact waiting specifically on my gun body and associated parts to come in to start writing my next update.

[Christof]

It's hard to believe it's been three months since I've made any significant progress. I've slowly but surely been sourcing, order, and waiting on more parts, and this weekend, things have finally started to trickle in. At the moment, my pack stands more or less like so:

The first thing to come in was my real Dale PH-25, a lucky acquisition on Ebay.

I had some trouble actually tapping my resin Ion Arm to take the resistor's threads, the damned Vermont American tap bit I bought to do the job quite literally wore away it's teeth trying to cut thread into the resin. Yes, you read that right, Crix's resin is tougher than Vermont American's steel. I feel like that's a pretty big endorsement for his parts, and also a bit of an indictment of the tap. Anyway! So I ended up with a hole that would force fit the resistor well enough, but I didn't really want the resistor permanently attached to the Ion arm...

Instead I took the O-Ring that came with my resistor, and with some precision gorilla gluing, mounted the O-Ring to the Ion Arm. I made a point to stop and index the O-Ring's position so that when the Resistor is screwed in it seats in the correct alignment. I'm not perfectly happy with how the glue has ended up looking, but I still have to drill and tap for my End-cap when it arrives, so I expect to do more paint coats, and with any luck that will hide the worst of the glue.

Now, I'm left with this:


I've been poking around trying to figure how I wanted to get my hands on the Fillister head screw for my shock knob, and finally had a chance to pop into my local Fastenal store. Whoo-boy. Not productive at all, and after five minutes of standing around I found out I could get a Fillister screw through them but it would cost $10 for shipping. Ugh. Still, I need one, so I just went back home and got on the Fastenal website to order them myself. Less than a minute later I had everything going, and find out why exactly I'd be paying $10 shipping on three screws. UPS. Of course. My true nemesis. I've always had bad luck with UPS as a Delivery method and this time around is proving no better. Yesterday morning, the expected day of delivery I awoke to this lovely message:


WUT?! WHHHHYYYY?!

*Twitch*


So much hatred.

The good news is, GBFans ships through USPS, and got here perfectly on time without a problem.

An extra length of 1/8th" split loom, the lenses for my cyclotron and power cell lights, replica Legris straights (Sorry Crix, your molds are awesome! But my paintjob just doesn't hold up when there are other actual brass features on my pack), and a Clippard R-331.
Hurray! Finally, more parts to work with. Let's start on the Clippard. Normally I would go into exhaustive detail as to my method here, but in all honesty it isn't that complex. Drill out space for the center peg of the Clippard, line things up carefully, mark where the 10-32's will seat and drill and tap. On a GBFans shell the material here is easily thick enough and the only trouble is keeping things straight.

If you've been following along so far a theme should be starting to emerge. One of my mounting holes was off! On the plus side: This time it's just the one side and I already have Milliput, on the down side I'll have to wait til tomorrow for the putty to harden and try again.

Once that's done I only have two more pieces to mount directly to my shell, the Crank knob and the V-Hook mounting block. The Crank Knob has proven to be an elusive beast, and at first I thought I had found a Military Surplus store in Israel that had one on Ebay, but it turned out to be a bit of a glitch. For now I've gone ahead and ordered a resin crank knob from the GBFans shop. The V-Hook block, along with the rest of the V-Hook, and my thrower as well as it's primary components are all coming from the inestimable CPU64. Since day 1 I've been admiring, and perhaps even lusting, after one of his throwers for my build and I'm very happy to say mine will be in the mail soon.

[Christof]

*AHEM!*



YAHTZEE!

[Christof]

So, bits and pieces bits and pieces.
First up is the GBFans Crank Knob replica, which is great, a good molding with lots of detail.

And, we have my complete gun body and V-hook block, all made by CPU64, I've basically gone on and on about how much I admire his work, so I won't go on about it, but I'm very happy.


Still in the mail is my Ion Arm end cap, but that's the final piece outside Electronics as far as the pack itself goes.

So let's get to work then, shall we?
The easy part was preparing that resin Crank Knob, not much in the way of cleanup, just figure out how exactly I want to assemble it and mount it. Now, because it's only $10 I'm planning on still upgrading to a real crank knob when I can get my hands on one, but for now this'll do. I'm explaining this as a bit of background regarding my thought process here, I simply drilled and tapped the base, then used a pair of washers to help it spin smoothly and tightened the mounting bolt just so. It's not a perfect spin but it'll do:


Now, that was last weekend. As of today, my order from CPU64 came in, with the V-hook block on hand I could finally drill the very last holes in my shells.


Aaaand finally, I mounted something right the first time, it's like I'm learning how to do this or something:


With that done, my shell is finally ready to get primered, textured, and painted. Hooray!

[Christof]

Paint, Paint, Paint-paint, Paint, Paint, Paint-Paint, PAINT IT UUUUUUP
Sorry.
Hey guys, I've been on vacation this last week and with nowhere to go and nothin' to do I've been getting things done. I mentioned last time I had finished assembly on my actual Pack, which meant it was time for painting.

The obvious place to start is with the primer.
After a bunch of reading and some independent research, I decided I would use the Hammered-texture paint method to texture my shell. I'm rather pleased with the end result:

I also stealthily installed my light lenses using epoxy, it's pretty simple honestly you line things up carefully inside the shell and epoxy carefully around the edges, voila. A note for fellow builders using the GBFans shell, I personally had a bit of trouble with the interior surface not just being uneven but also not having quite the right clearance to let the lens sit anywhere near to flat, which meant some Dremel tool fun. My hands were a bit fll during that whole process so I didn't capture any pictures.
I also went ahead and did the painting on my thrower body and grips since I had my paint out and the weather was nice enough for it.


So now we have everything painted, lenses installed... Let's assemble her!


I still have work to do on my thrower, and of course Electronics down the line, but once more, waiting on more parts. Truly, it has become the mantra for my build: More parts.

[Ecto716]

That's become the mantra for all builds... *Chants* NEED MORE PARTS, NEED MORE PARTS, NEED MORE PARTS!
But its looking awesome so far!

[Christof]

PARTS, PARTS, PARTS-PARTS! PARTS ARE HEEEEEERE!


Alright, now that's out of my system, short of electronics all mah parts are finally in. Everything this time around has come from GBFans, So a big shoutout to AJ and all the suppliers who provide the great bits and pieces you can grab right on this website. Alright, that said, on with the show!

So I haven't had much to say during this whole Gun phase of my build, mostly because all the work has been done for me already. As you may recall, I bought my gunbody basically finished from CPU64, so really all the holes and tapping has been done for me already. Theoretically, anyway. I've already discovered while installing my Top knob, the threads for parts from GBFans doesn't seem to jive perfectly with CPU64's threads, so in several cases I'm having to/will have to go in and re-drill out the mounting point to let the screw pass through, and/or re-tap it with a slightly larger thread. Whose is more accurate, I honestly couldn't say, but considering all these "disagreements" seem to be in places that aren't seen anyway I'm not stressing it.

First up we had my Banjo replicas, Acrylic tube, and trigger tip. Again, a close inspection may reveal that I actually had to drill the hole out and epoxy the banjo onto the gun ear.

Not much to say here, honestly, The Banjo replicas, Trigger tip, and acrylic all came from GBFans, so it was just a matter of piecing things together. I DID have to go to town on the inside of the trigger tip ring with some sandpaper, but that's pretty par for the course.

In the end, I attached everything I could just right now without having to modify the gun body, both to see her all assembled but also to get an idea of what work I'll need. As you can see what I'm left with are my Front and side knobs, plus the Heatsink. So not too bad, actually, all things considered. The Heatsink will be a bit of a thought experiment, it's already drilled and tapped for attachment, but there's nothing there on the gun body. I'm somewhat inclined to just epoxy it on and call it a day, but that feels like a side-step, so I'll put it off for now and focus on the Front and big Side knobs.

And it's starting to look like an actual thing!

[Christof]

Part 12b: In Which Stickers are Still an Effective Motivator
Now where did I leave off?
First I needed to do a little modification to my gun body, so apart it comes and out comes the drill. Nothing fancy here, just making a couple holes bigger.



With my knobs all mounted up I went ahead and painted up my side discs while considering my approach with the heat sink. I've had some concern already adding too many extra prongs of metal hanging off the interior of the gun body to interfere with electronics. Since I'm still waiting on my wand light kit, I can't say definitively whether this is sound thinking or not, but I chose the epoxy method. Using an exacto I cut/scraped away any excess. Then while it was drying I made a trip to a local r/c hobby shop and grabbed some extra short 4-40 cap heads, voila. Heat sink is affixed, and it still looks correct.


With all of that taken care of, it was label time. Man, there's something about a bunch of stickers that really makes this thing look official and stuff.




The other temporary install I did here was my acrylic tube. Taking a little inspiration from a friend (Thanks Dan!), I imitated my pressure fit holding the loom hose to the thrower pipe. Using some blue tape for it's slightly slimmer material, I wrapped and tested layers of it around a short length of pipe until it offered a nice, snug fit without being stuck in there and there we go!

[Venkman's Swagger]

Nice progress man. Really coming along nicely

[Christof]

Thanks VS! I'm pretty stoked to be at this point, there's something really exhilarating about those labels being on. I look over and there's a freakin' proton pack on my project table all of a sudden.

[Venkman's Swagger]

You're welcome man. I remember that feeling all too well. Enjoy it!!

[Christof]

Part 13a- Electrical Hazards and You!
Been a little while, fellas! So I've finally acquired most of my electronics, and have started mounting things up.

I've noticed that everyone has their own methods of mounting boards, with the more experienced builders often choosing to build some kind of standoff or platform. Because the GBFans Pack lights circuit board is built the way it is, you effectively have to mount it in such a way to give yourself access to both sides of the board. With that in mind, I built a simple bracket piece to mount my board to using a piece of scrap aluminum.
As you can see in the picture, I took the bolt holding my booster tube to the shell and used a wingnut to make a simple clamp with a piece of bar stock. Now I can pretty easily go back, mess with it, realign, etc. And I have the benefit of being able to easily disassemble for any future repairs or replacement

Then I took some cheap LED Tea Candle lights from Walmart, disassembled them for their housings and used those to make reflectors for my Cyclotron lights. Temporarily mounted as I still want to go back and realign the LED bulbs in the reflectors with a bit of hot glue.

Oh... Oh my. You guys, I've built a freakin' Proton Pack! *Ahem* Sorry, anyway, so there's the basic pack lights all mounted up. Now because I'm using the sound card and still need my speakers, there's actually still a little work to do, but using these handy stand offs and some sheet metal I've been able to build mounting brackets of all sorts.
Including one for the Wand Lights board. It's pretty cramped in there with the wiring from all the little parts, but it worked a charm and once everything IS connected, it just slips right into the gun body. I actually need to go back and flip my bar graph around still, much like the reflectors behind the cyclotron lens, but for now, just mounting everything up I'm pleased.
So I mentioned that I am using the sound card and just need my speakers, right? Well, for my wand lights to function at all with my current setup I had to mount that sound card. Another piece of scrap aluminum, and one square later and I'm left with this:

Aligned and cut to fit perfectly onto one of the bolts that holds my Ion Arm, rather like a washer.

So finally, with all that bracketing and mounting done, I've got this!