Adding Bits and Pieces

Most of the rest of the GB uniform is now on its way. Compared to the proton pack, the rest of the suit is simplicity itself, as most of the items are off-the-rack military surplus! A few of the more obscure bits were provided by GBFans, and I'm going to raid hantamouse's hoard of electronics bits for the "belt gizmo." I also need to hit Home Despot for belt clips and a tape gun holster (to hold the gizmo).

Going with the proton pack from the game opens up some flexibility for me -- instead of being a "retro recreation" suit, this will be a more contemporary thing. Surely as ghostbusting has evolved over the past thirty years, the equipment will have done so as well. So I'm not real worried about making an exact reproduction of the belt gizmo, so much as something that works as a modern analogue. I used to have a bunch of old, dead video cards -- I might use one of those as the base.

The last piece that will then need to fall into place are the goggles; I don't plan to have a PKE meter or trap as part of the ensemble (although I might add a PKE meter later if the opportunity presents itself). Like the proton pack, I'll probably get goggles from eBay, as my own crafty chops are probably not up to the task. The belt gizmo, I can probably do myself.

-TG

Well That Was Fast!

I thought the belt gizmo was going to be a terrible nuisance, but it's actually come together very fast, thanks to hantamouse's collection of electronic geegaws collected over the past 30 years. The hardest part is going to be figuring out how to dye the holster black. O.o

I ended up using the readout panel of an old dead laser printer instead of the nixie tubes, which worked well with the "more contemporary trip to Radio Shack" motif of the rest of the costume. The body of the gizmo was made from the circuit board and part of the frame of an old dead hard drive; the daughter board is a failed circuit from hantamouse's do-it-yourself-programmable-Christmas-tree-lights project. Both have had suitable gluing of extraneous bits on to make them look more techie, even though the stuff being glued on is actually lower tech than the actual board it's being glued to.

Some of the paint is still drying and the final assembly has yet to be done, but I'll take some pics and post 'em when it's done.

-The Gneech

PS: Any of you costumers have advice on how to dye a leather hardware holster black? Currently it's basically "unwashed tan."