As work on the Proton Pack is presently on hold as I wait for Exoray to release his resin Bumpers, I've spent the last few weeks concentrating on another item of Ghostbusting equipment I've wanted, and recently had a renewed interest following the UK Ghostbusters' return to the Movieum (which'll be posted here, shortly).
My interest was renewed after Mark from our group leant me, and then gave me his old set of Ecto Goggles to use. Getting to wear them was awesome, and has strengthened my own determination to get my set done.
The lineage of these resin frames are that they're cast from a real PVS-5 frame which I bought from GBUK Elite member, Andy Grey. They were then moulded and cast by Xenepp, shortly before he decided to try cheat several members out of the money they'd paid for them for which was one of the things he was eventually banned for.
Fortunately I did get the original frame back, as well as three of the resin ones he'd promised… but sadly none of the Goggle Knobs were produced. In addition to this, I never received the mould he promised he'd send. I'd already concluded that he probably wouldn't send it, so I wasn't exactly surprised when it never turned up.
The first stage was the clean up. The way Joel had cast them, there was a thick lip of resin flashing sticking out around the edge of the frame which would be up against the wearer's face. There was also a layer of flashing where the wearer's nose would go, which had to be removed.
This was done by using a Dremel to cut away the flashing close to the frame, and then sand it down using an appropriate sanding bit. As you can see there's still a raised bit where the flashing was left on the frame. I'm not too concerned about this left-over material as it's flat enough should I decide to wear it on my face without padding, and should I decide to use padding, it'll be covered up.
In addition to the “face edge”, the flashing was also trimmed in the hole where the battery cover will eventually reside, as well as the holes on the sides where the side knobs will go.
Once cleaned up, I set my sight on the lenses. I already had a length of 36mm piping and a length of 41mm piping which I'd used for my Filler Plugs on my Proton Pack and knew that the 36mm piping fitting beautifully in the 42mm piping, so I set out to the DIY stores to find a length of piping smaller than 36mm for the end of the longer lense, and for something larger than 42mm for the bases of both lenses.
The smaller piece of piping was found in the form of a 32mm Trap-Inlet Heigh Adjuster, produced by Marley and sold by B&Q.
The larger piece of piping was a 40mm Solvent Weld Pipe Connector, sold by Wickes. The nice thing about the Pipe Connector is it has a small rib on the inside half-way down which the 36mm piece rests on nicely. With the bits gathered together, I was able to prepare a prototype:
The prototype developed quickly into the final product, and the appropriate lengths of piping were cut. For the measurements I used Busybuildr's lense plans. By his own admition they're eyeballed, and one of the measurements is wrong, but in the absense of anything more specific, they're as good as any.
To make them lighter, the piping sections don't share the same base, as seen by the lense on the right:
Once the lenses were cut, I placed them in what would serve as the lense base, to see how much material would have to be cut from it.
I then approached the subject of the thumbscrews. I had no idea how easily it would be to find some machined bits of metal that I could buy for the thumbscrews, so I settled on something I knew would work: The adjusters of a wind up alarm clock. I knew I had at least one clock I could cannibalize, and I could surely find another in one of the charity shops in town.
Well, after two towns and 13 charity shops, I finally managed to find one wind-up alarm clock I could knick these parts from. With them collected, I worked out what positions I wanted them to be placed in, and then drilled holes in the piping that corresponded to the differing sizes of the thumbscrews. I also drilled, and cut a small block of wood to go at the front of the silver section of the longer Goggle lense.
Satisfied with the placement of the thumbscrews and the arrangement of the lengths of pipe, I proceeded to hotglue them into place.
Which was then followed up by a course of priming.
Which was then completed with painting. The photo below is a splice of two, the one with no flash which better shows the black segments, and the one with flash which better shows the silver segment. The silver segment is the Audi silver I'd used on the Clippard Valve on my Proton Gun, the black is Gloss black from Halford's.
By the time the painting and priming was finished, the Silver segment was thick enough that it could've held in the black base of the longer lense without glue, but in the pursuit of durability, this portion will be glued. The glue, once dry, will be painted black.
Once I was satisfied with the finished paint job, I proceeded to glue the thumbscrews into the holes and the block on the silver lense.
Once again, this glue will be painted.
The next stage after that was the faceplate, which was cut from a sheet of Plywood. The holes were cut using my Dad's DIY Drill press and the edges cut with the Jigsaw. Still a relative newbie with the jig I enlisted my Dad's services, which is just as well as it kept veering to the left.
Once the faceplate was cut from the plywood, the top corners were sanded so it would fit into the frame. The middle section of the plate was also filed down because of the way the frame is shaped on the inside. After that, two strips of MDF from the old Proton Pack Center plate were cut to fill the gaps at the sides of the front of the frame, in front of the Faceplate, as seen in the photo above.
That concludes the first part of the Ecto Goggle build. There sadly won't be any work tomorrow as I'll be at a friend's wedding, but there should hopefully be some work on Sunday.
