Greetings brothers-in-arms,
I've been working on my custom Merc/Bounty Hunter again. I already have a thread going for my armor build but I decided to start a new one for the jetpack since there's a section for it on the forums. Hopefully this can be helpful to some of you guys. I actually got quite a bit done before I realized I wasn't taking pics so the first snaps have quiet a bit of progress already.
Here's some photos of the basic build: Lots of random pieces of different things. I used a clear plastic square shaped organizing box as the base. To connect all of these pieces, I used my trusty dremel and drill bits, lots of rivets and sometimes bolts with nuts. Some of the plastic lightweight pieces were superglued when surfaces allowed for a firm hold. Some of the random pieces on my build are:
An empty Tang bottle, a supplement bottle, a metal pipe from a standing oscillating fan, a couple of PVC pipe connectors, two crossover boxes for car audio, some clear garden house hose, the connectors that griptight the hose (not sure what they're called), an external HDD case, a chrome hairdryer barrel, some monitor wallmounting bases, little oil analysis bottles, a playdo cup, a paint can cap, an arm device from inside a multi-cd changer, lots of greeblies (buttons) are made from the plastic insets out of a crayola art kit. They were meant to hold different water color paints and things like that. I took the trays out, cut the pieces I wanted and flipped them upside down. (if you do this, I recommend filling them with apoxy or some other solid material so that they can't be crushed by bumping into something.)
Here you can see all of those plastic insets from things like a crayola art set.
Here you can see the Tang bottle well, and the black arm with the three green lights is the piece from inside a multi disc changer (custom dremeled to attach with a special fit to the HDD external case.
So next step: I mixed up some two part epoxy. In the next pics, you can see that I took a plastic egg from one of those surprise toy machines, filled it with epoxy and pushed it down as a missile topper. Also I've masked off the hoses in preparation of paint. I used Bondo spot and glazing putty all the way around the piece of wood that I cut to be the backplate(door) to the jetpack. You'll see it as a red ring around the base in these pics. The purpose of doing that was to hide the fact that it was wood. The top and bottom of the piece already had a vinyl layer over it. Now you can't tell it's wood at all.
I filled in the top of the Tang bottle with epoxy.
I drilled some holes in the oil analysis bottles and put some silver inlets in the holes (those things you have in the holes of your belt sometimes)
I ringed epoxy all the way around these rocket launchers on the sides in a manner that makes them look like a welding seam
With the chrome exhaust and clear pieces of the audio crossovers detached and the hoses masked, I took the jetpack outside for some black paint.
Paint and clear-coat applied, back in the garage and assembled the pieces, removed the masking tape.
Sorry some of those were blurry. My phone didn't like that particular lighting.
And that's all for today. Tomorrow will take it further. And I haven't shown you guys the straps and back-plate yet.
