Also, regarding the backyard foundry idea...
You want to be extremely careful when working with hot metals... ESPECIALLY AL which has a melting point up around a THOUSAND degrees or so.

You dribble a little resin on your shoe during a pour and you may have ruined a shoe. You dribble one-thousand degree hot AL on your foot and you're in a world of pain! And the fact it sticks and doesn't run off easily, well, you draw your own conclusions.

I get nervous using low temp metals, and those only melt at like 350-450 degrees!

Rook

Visit Rook's Castle, I dare you! What's a matter McFly? Chicken?

No kiddin', Rook!
Jesse
"Happiness is a warm smartgun."

Well, mostly done anyways I only had 2 days to build the eyestalk assembly, so it's not quite right. And the camera's one of our generic helmet cameras. To do it right I still have to scratchbuild a new camera body. But in the meantime, this'll do

[img]http://www.vision-forge-graphics.com/jesse/props/bapropparty11152003/images/0058_c.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.vision-forge-graphics.com/jesse/props/bapropparty11152003/images/0059_c.jpg[/img]

[img]http://www.vision-forge-graphics.com/jesse/props/bapropparty11152003/images/0060_c.jpg[/img]

Here's my rather small table at our Bay Area Prop Party that was held today. The SG vest was on a seperate table
[img]http://www.vision-forge-graphics.com/jesse/props/bapropparty11152003/images/0027_c.jpg[/img]

And how could I NOT post a pic of our own Goffcorp in my DS Pilot helmet
[img]http://www.vision-forge-graphics.com/jesse/props/bapropparty11152003/images/0061_c.jpg[/img]

The whole collection of pics that I took at the party can be seen here:
Bay Area Prop Party - Nov 2003

Jesse
"Happiness is a warm smartgun."Edited by: [url=http://pub217.ezboard.com/bthealienslegacy.showUserPublicProfile?gid=jessedegraff>Jesse DeGraff[/url] at: 11/15/03 11:18 pm

Cool pics!
...and nice work on the Smartgun-stuff

Cheers,
Stefan

Done anything on your parts lately, Stefan?

Jesse
"Happiness is a warm smartgun."

nice...



Can't wait for you to start making all the SG gear en masse.

-Alex
"The M41-A. When you absolutely, positively have to kill every mofo in the room. Accept no substitutes."

Thanks The vest looks kinda' nekkid without the breastplate, but my original one pulled from Sean's is in Canada right now I was rushing the headset so much (not bad for building it in 2 days, eh?) that I didn't have time to finish tweaking the master to pull a new one.

Jesse
"Happiness is a warm smartgun."

SSSWWWEEEETTT!!!!! VERY talented man !!! great work Jesse
It´s really a bit of fresh air to see somebody did things around the M-56!!!!!! ( no offense to the rest!!!!! )

Dany.

ADIOS MUCHACHOS and SEMPER PROCINGO.

JOIN THE MARINES!!!
Visit exotic places, meet nice people..
AND NUKE´M ALL...

" YEAH, sure, with those things runnin´round? don´t count with me man!!!!

Jesse,
I haven't done any work on the SG parts as I want to complete my PR first. However, I've found some interesting pictures of the MK3 bones and upgraded my model accordingly. Didn't had the time upgrade the drawing though I'll let you know as soon as it's done.

Cheers,
Stefan

Jesse,

What color is the resin cast in? And is the chest plate going to be made out of sheet metal or styrene? And if it's styrene... what color of styrene? This is all looking amazing, dude! The steadicam rig alone, has still got my unwaivering interest. Not to mention all the other parts

I know it's still a fairly long way off... Do you think there's any possibility of modifying the SG to be airsoft?

Keep 'dem updates comin'!!!

-Alex


"The M41-A. When you absolutely, positively have to kill every mofo in the room. Accept no substitutes."

Thanks Alex

The resin is (or will be) dyed black and poured into silvered molds. The current headset, while not painted with Humbrol 170 Bess Brown, was shot with an Earth Brown from a company that makes Camo paint. It seems to have similar photographic cameleon qualities, 'cause it's got a more olive cast than is in the pics. When I can track down some 170, I'll do a camparison and post the results.

The breastplates are pulled from black styrene, which is conveniant since they appear to be black in the film after a lot of looking these last couple of days. My existing breastplate, with the Gaelic on it, is actually inaccurate since it's OD

As for airsoft-ing the MG42, I think it's possible. There's a/s '42s already out there that are made of demilled real steel that have AK mech boxes in them. My '42 will be a vac-form ABS shell, so it should be pretty easy to add a/s guts. The hardest part would just be making sure you align the barrel & mechbox I found a tutorial online for the Shoei MG42 on making a killer hi-cap drum from the belt carrier, which will work just fine on the planned ABS vac'd carrier.

Jesse
"Happiness is a warm smartgun."

Then what you do Jesse is mount one of those inexpensive cameras on the gun, and slave the video to a small display in the eye piece, that way you could have "active tracking."

Of course, if you get MIN, that would be a bad idea.

Rook

Visit Rook's Castle, I dare you! What's a matter McFly? Chicken?

Well, 'cause I'm such a geek I eventually really do want to make the eyepiece actively slaved to a video camera mounted where the tracking sensor is between the struts


You lost me there..."MIN"?

Jesse
"Happiness is a warm smartgun."

Hey Jesse-

Are you planning on casting any of these parts for a possible kit? I'm sure you could charge plenty of cash for such a kit, maybe even enough to break even after a dozen or so. Personally, even though I'm not as much of a fan of the Smart Gun as the pulse Rifle, I'd be willing to dish out some serious cash for a resin smart gun and steady cam arm.

Just a thought...

Private reply sent.

BTW, sorry for the pic freeze...My bank hasn't sent me my new debit card, and EVERYTHING is linked off of it. Paypal acct, eBay acct, website hosting, domain name, EVERYTHING. I'm VERY pi$$ed off at my bank right now...

Jesse
"Happiness is a warm smartgun."

Sorry Jesse, MIN aka "Doom Sickness" or Motion Induced Nausea.

Rook

Visit Rook's Castle, I dare you! What's a matter McFly? Chicken?

Sorry Jesse, "MIN" aka "Doom Sickness" or Motion Induced Nausea.

Rook

Visit Rook's Castle, I dare you! What's a matter McFly? Chicken?

Thought I'd bump this before it fell of the end of the board...

Any progress, Jesse/BugStomper?

-Alex

"The M41-A. When you absolutely, positively have to kill every mofo in the room. Accept no substitutes."

Eek! Was it that far back??? Yikes...

Anyways, I've got three more parts waiting to go under the rubber before I can show you a "Is it live, or is it Memorex?" coparison between an orignal HM560 headset and a completely replicated one The molds have been coming out super clean, and the Smooth-On TASK 9 resin I'm using for the delicate parts has been working like a champ on the first casts out of the molds. A little black dye and you can't tell the difference between the originals and the cast parts

With any flippin' luck I'll get the re-tweaked breastplate master finished this weekend so I can finally send Osmotic his vest I'm back under a deadline for the project though (a fan film we're hoping to start shooting in May), so this project *should* start skipping right along again [img]http://www.vision-forge-graphics.com/smilies/images/fun_84.gif[/img]

Moving SOOO sucks....[img]http://www.vision-forge-graphics.com/smilies/images/bricks1.gif[/img]

But when the project's finally done, it'll be time to
[img]http://www.vision-forge-graphics.com/smilies/images/club.gif[/img]

Jesse
"Happiness is a warm smartgun."

How is the Smooth-On TASK 9 resin in terms of price, durability, bubbling? Are you pressure casting?

It has some nice looking specs on the Smooth-On site.

-Alex


"The M41-A. When you absolutely, positively have to kill every mofo in the room. Accept no substitutes."

It's pricier than your average run-of-the-mill resin. TASK 9 is ~$90 / gallon, whereas normal resin average around $60 / gallon. However, it's strength more than makes up for the differnece in price when I'm casting delicate parts. I think my cast flash swivel parts may be stronger than the originals! As for bubbling, the mixed viscosity ain't too bad, so it's not a major problem if you're not pressure casting. I *AM* pressure casting, as well as de-gassing the resin before mixing (after shaking up the containers), so I'm not having any problems there

Jesse


"Happiness is a warm smartgun."