#4971646
7/4/22 - The red lenses that came with the kit were too large to fit in the openings I'd routed into the Cyclotron, so I cut all four down with a coping saw.

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I glued in the trimmed lenses with epoxy.

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I then secured the water jug pieces over the lenses using some two-part epoxy putty I'd had sitting around for 15 years.

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I also had to trim down the blue lens, gluing it in with epoxy. I didn't try to diffuse the Power Cell lights.

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Last edited by WShawn on July 28th, 2022, 9:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
twmedford23 liked this
#4971648
7/6/22 - I used 3" HVAC foil tape to line my cardboard reflectors. I made a little template in illustrator to guide the cutting of pieces that would stick to the underlying platform. The little tabs would stick the cardboard tubes to the platform.

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TAP Plastic gave me some scrap for free, and I used a piece of ABS for the reflectors platform.

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twmedford23 liked this
#4971651
7/8/22 - I debated whether to mount the battery inside or outside. I decided on the former, which meant performing some surgery on the battery. I wanted to move the main power switch to the motherboard to act as a master kill switch. I also moved the red LED (and its resistor) that indicates when the power was on.

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I drilled a hole into the motherboard through which I secured the charging jack. I modified a spare corner bracket I had to hold in the jack. If I'd been more ambitious I would have purchased a jack that could be bolted to the motherboard and spliced the wiring from the battery to that.

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I didn't do the most awesome job of cutting a rectangular hole into the motherboard to accommodate the kill switch. The hole for the LED was more straightforward. A generous helping of epoxy putty secured the switch and LED pretty well

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I bolted on some spare metal corner braces to support the battery and used scrap acrylic and ABS plastic, bolts and nuts to secure the battery to the motherboard. I put a bit of packing foam between the battery and the motherboard to insulate it a bit from the metal.

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twmedford23 liked this
#4971652
Here's a test of the assembled electronics. Things are mostly working, though I goofed up one of the connections which resulted in the pack hum sound coming on after the thrower firing effect is triggered. I didn't want that sound effect running all of the time. I corrected the error later.

I don't know how to make the YouTube thumbnail and player appear here. The YouTube BBcode thing just appends "YouTube" to the beginning and end of the link for me.

https://youtu.be/b0U30IDvIRo[
#4971653
7/9/22 - Happy birthday to me. As I continued to deal with a cold I installed a dowel into the crank generator to attach the hose. Wes had partially cut into that hole. I used a pocket hole drill bit that allowed me to screw the dowel into the resin at the opposite end. I also added a dowel to secure the other end of the hose (not pictured).

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I decided it would be easier, and produce a cleaner, more-accurate look, to replace the whole plate the main hose plugs into with a block of wood. I used my Dremel to cut that plate out of the resin shell and fabricated a replacement with another piece of 3/4" scrap wood. I epoxied and clamped this to the motherboard.

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#4971654
7/10/22 - I spent around 3 hours bolting, screwing, and gluing all of the main parts onto the shell.

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I mixed some white and black acrylic paint to make a medium grey I could airbrush onto the crank knob. I prefer the grey knobs from GB1. I added the stickers the next day. I had to use spray adhesive to make the ones going onto the textured areas stick properly.

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Last edited by WShawn on July 28th, 2022, 10:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
#4971656
7/12/22 - On to the thrower/gun/wand. Wes had assembled the thrower with glue and given it a very thick coat of glossy black spray paint.

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Simply disassembling the parts as I had with the shell would be insufficient. I had to take it apart AND strip off the paint. I used acetone, an old aluminum roasting tray, fine steel wool, and a lot of scrubbing to get off the paint. This took over two hours, and it was gross work.

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#4971657
7/13/22 - The resin making up the main thrower box was WAY too thick around the vent openings, so I had to Dremel those down. I wasn't able to use the grinding jig I'd used for parts of the shell, and I didn't want to take the time to build my own, so I just carefully did it by hand, carefully checking the thickness over and over. I got the edges down to a somewhat consistent 3/32(ish) of an inch.

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I also had to thin out the resin around all of the switches and light openings.

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I primed the thrower with a grey Rustoleum primer I'd never used before.
#4971658
7/14/22 - I was very happy to see that the thrower box had been cast with wider areas on the inner corners. My happiness was compounded by the fact that the hardware store a block north of me had the perfect threaded inserts to screw into those areas.

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It was a fairly simple matter to drill 1/4" holes into those corners and then use an Allen wrench to screw the coarse outer threads of the insert into the resin. It went remarkably smoothly.

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I could then screw in my 8-32 socket cap bolts into super-strong metal inserts.

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#4971659
7/15/22 - Two days after priming the thrower with this Rustoleum primer it still hadn't really set up, and the few black pieces I'd painted still felt tacky, despite it being super-hot. So I opted to strip off the paint AGAIN and spent two hours shopping for new primer and black paint. I re-primed with a Krylon grey primer. I could immediately tell the Krylon primer was drying much faster.

7/16/22 - The Krylon primer had dried and stuck very well to the resin, so I proceeded to paint the black parts with a Behr Satin spray paint. My new-ish can of Rustoleum black satin had petered out with 15% of the paint left. I don't think I'll be buying Rustoleum products any more.

I started drilling and tapping the sub-boxes, using scrap sheet plastic for their covers.

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#4971660
7/17/22 - The kit is missing the wider piece of pipe attached to the front of the thrower box. Looking through my boxes of junk I came across an old ABS tailpipe from one of our sinks. The diameter wasn't perfect, but it was close enough.

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I had to augment the thickness of the main metal handle so the plumbing part would fit tightly. I just wrapped it with masking tape.

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With the handle parts worked out I epoxied it to the main box. I carefully measured the various heights to support the tip to ensure the handle would be perfectly perpendicular to the thrower box.

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Last edited by WShawn on December 25th, 2022, 2:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
#4971661
I used some TV coax cable clips to organize the six cables that have to feed through the hose to the thrower.

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I drilled a hole through the side of the wooden hose opening block (and the hose). I could then push a steel rod through those holes to secure the hose in the block.

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#4971663
I glued the rear handle to the thrower box, again carefully supporting it so it would be properly aligned with the box.

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I used a little angle finder tool to help align the trigger box with the perpendicular part while gluing them with epoxy (and then bolting it). I'd tapped in 6-32 threaded rod into the perpendicular part so I could attach the green tube.

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I installed the switches into the trigger box. Throughout this build I used a blue thread lock on all bolt/nut connections (and in the tapped resin parts).

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I bolted the trigger box assembly to the main box, running the wires through holes I'd drilled. I barely gave myself big enough holes to get those wires through. I'd also augmented the metal handle tubes with modified corner braces, bolting those to the tubes after epoxying them to the resin box

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Last edited by WShawn on December 25th, 2022, 2:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
#4971666
The kit came with resin versions of the three hat lights. I didn't want to make Wes invest in proper, transparent light covers, so I endeavored to make these resin versions work. By drilling down into the resin I was able to fit LEDs up into them, and the thinner resin allowed a decent amount of light through. I thought the orange painted onto one of the hats would block the light too much, so I removed that paint.

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The kit is missing the two lights next to the vent opening, so I had to fabricate approximations. For the big one I used double-sided tape to stick a metal washer onto a piece of translucent acrylic I got free from TAP Plastics. I could then use my Dremel cutting and sanding tools to create a round part the correct size. I glued that to a part I cut off of a coax cable wall jack, and I'd hot glue the LED into that. Close enough.

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#4971667
7/18/22 - The LED for the vent light that came with the electronics kit was a single, diffused 5mm LED. I wanted to mount that in a white box to help bounce around its light. Again going through my boxes of junk I found an old headset I'd used back when I worked at KGUN-TV in Tucson in the early 90s. I cut open the cover, painted the inside white, and glued in the LED.

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The bar graph LEDs with the kit were a bit of a kludge. The developer simply stuck the rectangular LEDs into a ribbon cable connector. The first problem was that, with all 15 slots filled with LEDs, it was too long for the opening on the thrower. It was a simple matter to just pull out the top two LEDs. That didn't affect the visual appearance. I would also have to chop off that end of the connector so it would fit into the box.

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I had to fabricate the second, smaller light next to the vent. I cut off a chunk of a clear plastic BIC ballpoint pen, glued that to a piece of clear plastic, then sanded that down into a round-ish shape. I would then hot glue an LED up into the opening. Again, close enough. After working on this for 28 days I was getting impatient to finish the build.

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For no apparent reason the kit doesn't have the bezel around the bar graph LEDs molded into the thrower box, so this was yet another piece I had to fabricate from scratch. I carefully cut it from a piece of sheet plastic.

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I had to epoxy a piece of plastic to the ribbon connector side before gluing that into the main box.

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The bar graph LED assembly was the last thing I had to glue into the main box. You can see the vent box glued into the top.

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I didn't want to rely on just epoxy to fasten most of the parts, so on parts like this thrower tip I added a short length of threaded rod to add mechanical strength to that connection.

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Last edited by WShawn on July 29th, 2022, 12:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
#4971669
7/19/22 - After some research (mainly cribbing off of Gohstarp's build) I masked the acrylic thrower tube and sprayed multiple coats of Krylon Clear Matte to frost the appropriate sections of the tube.

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Wes had glued a piece of PVC pipe or something into the back end of the back handle. This constricted the hose too much, so I used a Dremel cutting tool to cut it open, then pulled it out with pliers, all while avoiding damage to the wiring.

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I had to disconnect the wiring inside the shell and trim that down after establishing the length of wiring I needed based on the length of the hose.

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#4971670
7/20/22 - Here's the thrower, almost complete. I didn't go to the time, trouble, or expense of finding every exact little connection, opting for approximations. I used brass nuts to evoke the connectors going to the green tube and simple flat brass washers on the front handle.

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The Heavy Props kit came with two (blue and yellow) small, 3mm LEDs to light the gun tip. To mount those in the clear acrylic tube I fabricated a little circle from sheet plastic. I'd use an inch or so of 4-40 threaded long to attach that to a piece of dowel that would be held by friction within the tube.

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With everything wired to the terminals on the thrower PCB I was ready to button up the thrower.

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I drilled and tapped a threaded hole into the aluminum handle tube to mount a socket cap bolt to secure the hose. I used some cardboard inside the hose to help hold its shape and tape around the outside to help snug it into the aluminum handle.

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I could have trimmed the wiring inside the shell a bit more after attaching the hose on both ends but didn't want to take the time. As a professional 3D animator you learn not to put time and energy into things that won't be seen. Especially if you're way over budget.

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#4971671
7/21/22 - I used the epoxy putty technique to create the various welds. I tried to use a little tool I'd fabricated to make the little circles, but I couldn't fit it into the crevices, so I just used a paper clip. I think they're beefier than they should be, but they're not horrible.

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I stippled on washes of grey and rust acrylic paint to add some subtle weathering to the pack and tubes.

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I went back over some of the weathering with the Krylon Clear Satin I'd used earlier to add back a bit more glossiness.
#4971673
7/23/22 - And we're done!

How it started:

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How it's going (130 hours of labor later):


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Just as I was about to finish I realized I'd mounted the Alice frame too high onto the motherboard, so I had to take that all apart, drill new holes, and move the frame down 1 1/4". This would raise the pack that much higher on the wearer.

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I dry brushed a bit of silver enamel paint along the edges of the thrower body to fake some minor scraping.

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Here's my 1984 scratch-built pack with this finished kit. I think my 38-year-old build holds up pretty well (especially to civilians). I definitely want to consolidate my ancient and separate lighting systems into a single modern one driven by a microprocessor and add a speaker and sound effects.

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Here's a video showing the lights and sound.

https://youtu.be/Fm_UeGXC1FEs
ccv66, Prime 1986, CitizenBuster and 1 others liked this
#4973177
Allghostsmatter wrote: September 30th, 2022, 7:14 pm i need some help. I was gifted a benofkent shell but it has none of the holes in it pre drilled. I need to know where to drill all the holes and what cuts to make in order to attach all the pieces and stuff. Can you please help me??
Sorry for the late reply; I didn't get a notice that someone had posted a question here.

Except for a few templates I got from the BoK Facebook group I just sort of eyeballed where things had to be drilled based on the scores of reference photos out there. This thread you're posting on shows all of the techniques I used to put this one together. It's not that big a deal if a few bolts are a few millimeters off. Good luck!
Allghostsmatter liked this
#4974977
Great job on the BOK build. I'm about to start one too for a fellow buster. I can see that you ran into some of the issues I've noticed about BOK kits.

Excellent use of the insert screws on the gun box, exactly what I was planning to do too as resin can strip over time. I'm a big believer in screws over glue as well.

One thing I've noticed in all the BOK pre-painted or finished wands is that they often do look liked they have been "caked" with paint. Yours came out so clean! I definitely plan to strip all the paint off the kit I'm working on as it came pre-painted by the original owner too.

Great job!
WShawn liked this
#4975742
csullivan1980 wrote: December 8th, 2022, 2:40 pm Great job on the BOK build. I'm about to start one too for a fellow buster. I can see that you ran into some of the issues I've noticed about BOK kits.

Excellent use of the insert screws on the gun box, exactly what I was planning to do too as resin can strip over time. I'm a big believer in screws over glue as well.

One thing I've noticed in all the BOK pre-painted or finished wands is that they often do look liked they have been "caked" with paint. Yours came out so clean! I definitely plan to strip all the paint off the kit I'm working on as it came pre-painted by the original owner too.

Great job!
Thanks for reading my build thread. I don't remember where I first heard about those threaded inserts, but they worked perfectly. Even better, the little hardware store a block north of me had them in stock. They got quite a lot of business from me over the course of this build.

For all of the other resin parts I tapped I just tapped into the resin itself. That was mainly to provide extra strength on top of glue. With to gun box that plate has to be removable, thus the need for more secure connections.

Regarding the wand, AFAIK the person for whom I was building this had tried to paint it himself, but globbed the paint on WAY too thick, thus the acetone/steel wool strip job. That was gross and a drag and I never want to do that again.

Hope your BoK build goes well!

Shawn

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