E-11 T-Tracks question

[Timmythekid]

Not sure if this has been addressed before, but it was something I hadn't run into myself. I was browsing through "Strange Shapes" website, and in the description of the unsed universe look for Star Wars and Alien came across this quote -

"Roger Christian had previously worked on Star Wars, piecing sets together from old WWII aircraft, a technique he brought to Alien. On Star Wars, Roger's junkyard aesthetic extended beyond building corridors: 'I said [to Lucas], "Look, I've always hated science fiction guns. They're like these plastic things that go 'boop'. They're not real." So ... I got a Sterling submachine gun, I got some car weather stripping from around car windscreens, and I stuck them on [the guns] with superglue. We did it ourselves for three days and we created all the guns. We got a Walther for Han Solo, and the joy is they could fire on set."

Now, I know the windshield-wiper theory is dead and burried, but has anyone heard this one, as opposed to the draw sliders? He's obviously misremembering the base for the Solo gun, but any thoughts?

 

[Psammead]

Isn't weather stripping rubber whereas t-track has been proven to be hard plastic?

 

[Timmythekid]

I don't know; when someone says it was "hard", just how hard is "hard"? Is that a comparison to what was presumed at the time to be windshield wiper blades? In comparison to that kind of rubber, I'm pretty sure the gasket is harder. Also. what may have happened to the rubber (if it was) over the past 30 years? Anyways, I just thought it was interesting as a quote from the guy who claims (I don't know the prop guys names as well as most people here, I'm sure, so not sure what his involvment was) to have a)been the motivating force behind the final look of the prop, and the guy who actually found the greeblie's and then stuck 'em on, and not a theory I'd heard before. Looking at the cross-section profile which a member here is producing, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that a drawer-track would be so tapered and round at the top, and I thought this might be worth looking at, but then again, I'm not an industrial designer.

 

[GINO]

It's definitely not weather stripping or wiper blads. Definitely not rubber of any kind.
It definitely is cabinet t-track (which happens to be black plastic).

You can tell from a couple of distinct features.
1. The curved channel on the bottom to allow for adhesive.
2. The nail holes on either side of the spine for tacking down which occur every 10 or so inches.
All the props for the OT used the exact same style of black plastic t-track.

I'm sure this guy is remembering incorrectly, or recollecting something that was ultimately abandoned by the time the actual props ended up on screen.


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