Red Dwarf Space Phone

I've long been a fan of Red Dwarf, so I was really excited for Dave's reboot.
This 'Space Phone' features heavily in the season premiere 'Trojan' as Lister spends the majority of the episode on hold with customer services.

This is really just another repaint job, it's nice to add to my prop collection without loosing months of my life.
The good folks over at the RPF identified both the phone model and the 'magnetic pickup tool' that the original prop was made from, all that remained was to glue the two together and give the whole thing a coat of the iconic hull colour of the Red Dwarf.

Stripped off the original colour and machined a hole in the top

I secured the 'aerial' with a lump of epoxy putty

To match the screen prop several of the mic/speaker holes are filled

A coat of 'Hull Red' and a JMC logo to finish

Stargate Kull Disruptor - Power Cell

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

In the original prop this part holds an electronics board, that flashes lights when plugged in to the body. I spent a fair bit of time drawing up schematics in Eagle, intending to have some PCBs fabricated. However I came a bit unstuck trying to sort out the layout and ran out of time. I still want to output some PCBs from Eagle, maybe next time I'll try an easier circuit.

Power Cell

The tie-dye tanic power cell, as I'm calling it, is probably the trickiest part of this build. I think the original was milled out of brass, which makes replicating it, both the quality and finish, very difficult.

Regardless I ploughed ahead with cutting out plasticard.

After a lot of cutting, layering, filling and sanding I was left with these two. 
Not milled brass, but not bad either.

I've always wanted to try cold casting (adding metal powders to resin to achieve a realistic metal look). This isn't an ideal project for it. Cold casting is best done in larger open moulds on ornate looking pieces where you will get a good contrast when you polish it up.

This piece is small, in a two part mould and has lots of flat surfaces.

However I think they look pretty good.

There was a lot of experimenting to get these results. How much black pigment and brass powder to add can be tricky to balance. Then once the piece has cured I rubbed the pieces down with white spirit (this dissolves the surface of the resin allowing the brass powder to show through. Lastly I give them a final buffing with steel wool.

The paint job on these is odd, it looks like pink with splatters of brass showing through.

To try to replicate the look, firstly I splattered the pieces with liquid mask (a tinted latex paint that easily rubs off when dry)

After that dried I sprayed some translucent pink on them, then peeled off the liquid mask.

I'm sure it's not exactly how the original was made but I think it emulates the effect quite nicely.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Stargate Kull Disruptor - Intro

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Another prop build, this time from Stargate SG-1.

This project arose from theRPF's annual secret santa gift exchange.
Upon finding out that my recipient also liked Stargate I started researching some props, obviously there are a lot of Zat's and other Jaffa costume pieces. But I wanted something that hadn't been done to death and that would be relatively simple. 

That's when I stumbled upon the Kull Disruptor.

Stargate SG-1 8x06 'Avatar'

It's a neat little attachment that clips onto the teams' weapons. Developed by the SGC to take down Anubis' Kull Warriors, it features heavily in the episode 'Avatar' (8x06) but pops up elsewhere too.

It's nice and small, recognisable from Stargate, (even if you don't know exactly what it is) and I reckoned it should be simple enough :s .

Scratch Build

Firstly I set about drawing up some good schematics to work from.

Then I just printed out some templates and began to cut pieces out of plasticard, with a scalpel.

These are all cut from 1mm plastic, fairly easy, if a bit tedious.
These plastic pieces fit together to form a cross section of the piece. 
It was filled with Bondo to give it mass and then the shape was rounded out with various files and sanding sticks.

The final step was carving the lines into it with a Dremel.

Unfortunately I seem to have forgotten to take pictures during most of the build up of this piece. However you can still see the remnants of the plasticard in there.

The back part is flat to accommodate the power cell and magazine.

The building of which will be in the next post.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3