I Ain't 'Fraid of No Project: Proton Pack Build Part 1

I like to attend nerdy Comic Con type events. I walk around and buy over-priced merchandise and try to find great independent artwork to hang up in my house. As much as I enjoy these types of events, I have never dressed up as some sort of pop culture character and blended in with the other costume crafting geeks. I decided for next year's Comic Con I will join the ranks of those with too much time on their hands and become something I have wanted to be ever since I was five years old: A Ghostbuster.

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Ghostbusters is one of my all-time favorite movies. I know the entire movie front to back. It's one of those movies where everything came together to make something fresh and original. I've seen it countless times including on the big screen.

In order to be a Ghostbuster you really need one essential piece of equipment: the proton pack. I've scoured the internet and to buy one of these unlicensed nuclear accelerators requires a load of bread to capitalize. Instead of shelling out 800-2000 hard earned dollars on ebay, I have decided to build my own. I've done a ton of research and decided to make a quasi-screen accurate version. It won't be perfect, but it will definitely be passable.

After a lot of pouring over diagrams and YouTube videos, I've developed my own plan to put together my pack. A lot of the base technique I lifted from a series of videos by prop maker Thomas Galvin.

Using A combination of measurements from Mr. Galvin and a couple of other sources, I designed a template for the "motherboard" of the Proton Pack. This shape gets cut out of 3/4 inch plywood and two pieces of 1/8 inch luan.

Unfortunately, I don't have much of a workshop. In fact, I borrowed the jigsaw I used from a co-worker in order to make my cuts. I also had to put together a ghetto compass for drawing the curves in the templates by clamping a Sharpie and a nail to a metal ruler. It worked surprisingly well.

Another technique lifted from Mr. Galvin was the removal of the bulk of the 3/4 inch plywood sheet by cutting it into a frame rather than a solid sheet. This really drops the weight down while keeping the overall board integrity intact.

The three pieces of wood then get glued together. I used Titebond II, electric boogaloo. The trick to gluing wood together is using clamps. As you can see in the photo below, I ran out of conventional clamps and had to resort to some "off-schedule" tools.

So far, this project seems to be going well. I feel it will be far more rewarding to put this prop together rather than chumping out and purchasing a pre-made Pack. Stay tuned for more progress as it develops.