Props N at
New Member
Hey everyone! This one's gonna be a pretty short post, but I thought some of you might like to see the results!
So I finally got around to doing a repaint of my Pip-Boy, and, more importantly, replacing the lame card they give you that acts as the screen!
While I love the idea of being able to put a phone in the Pip-Boy and loading the app, in practice its not the best. When the app is running it looks nice, but you can’t use your phone, and it kills battery pretty fast. Plus, its mostly a display piece, so it sits on a shelf, and I'm not gonna leave a running phone in there! They give you a printed card to put in the opening when there’s no phone in it, but it just looks silly.
So I decided to make my own! I didn’t want to shove a flat piece of acrylic in there, because the Pip-Boy is supposed to have a CRT screen, so there’s a curve to it. I made a vacuum buck out of MDF and smoothed it with a layer of urethane. Then I sanded it down just a hair under the size of the opening to allow of thickness of the plastic.
The shop I work at doesn’t have a vacuum former, but the part was small enough that I was able to build a vacuum box and heat the acrylic it the shop’s toaster oven. (Not the one we eat out of!)
After it was formed, I back painted it with some black, and cut it to size. I do want to be able to remove the screen, just in case I ever want to put my phone it for some reason, so I used some double stick foam tape to secure it in place. The corner of the screen, between the lip and the short side wall, has just a little more roundness than I would like, so the lip doesn't sit perfectly flat against the screen's frame, but the foam tape easily filled the gap! I could've got it sharper by drilling more small holes in the corner, and doing another pull, but this screen looked so nice otherwise, it seemed like a waste.
While the model was always very nice, especially considering the price, the finish was terrible. The thing always looked like a hunk of molded plastic.
Instead of doing a full repaint, I disassembled the Pip-Boy, and sprayed it with a satin clear coat to change the sheen. Then, I reassembled it and aged it down with a few different washes. Finally, I added some rust spots with some acrylic paint. Admittedly, the rust could be a bit nicer, but from any sort of distance it looks pretty good.
I'm not gonna do a ton of pictures of the paint process, because I'm far from the first to do this, but I did figure you guys would like to see how I tackled the screen.
That’s it for now! If anyone is interested in getting a screen for the own Pip-boy, I may do a short run of these. Feel free to PM me about it!
So I finally got around to doing a repaint of my Pip-Boy, and, more importantly, replacing the lame card they give you that acts as the screen!
While I love the idea of being able to put a phone in the Pip-Boy and loading the app, in practice its not the best. When the app is running it looks nice, but you can’t use your phone, and it kills battery pretty fast. Plus, its mostly a display piece, so it sits on a shelf, and I'm not gonna leave a running phone in there! They give you a printed card to put in the opening when there’s no phone in it, but it just looks silly.
So I decided to make my own! I didn’t want to shove a flat piece of acrylic in there, because the Pip-Boy is supposed to have a CRT screen, so there’s a curve to it. I made a vacuum buck out of MDF and smoothed it with a layer of urethane. Then I sanded it down just a hair under the size of the opening to allow of thickness of the plastic.
The shop I work at doesn’t have a vacuum former, but the part was small enough that I was able to build a vacuum box and heat the acrylic it the shop’s toaster oven. (Not the one we eat out of!)
After it was formed, I back painted it with some black, and cut it to size. I do want to be able to remove the screen, just in case I ever want to put my phone it for some reason, so I used some double stick foam tape to secure it in place. The corner of the screen, between the lip and the short side wall, has just a little more roundness than I would like, so the lip doesn't sit perfectly flat against the screen's frame, but the foam tape easily filled the gap! I could've got it sharper by drilling more small holes in the corner, and doing another pull, but this screen looked so nice otherwise, it seemed like a waste.
While the model was always very nice, especially considering the price, the finish was terrible. The thing always looked like a hunk of molded plastic.
Instead of doing a full repaint, I disassembled the Pip-Boy, and sprayed it with a satin clear coat to change the sheen. Then, I reassembled it and aged it down with a few different washes. Finally, I added some rust spots with some acrylic paint. Admittedly, the rust could be a bit nicer, but from any sort of distance it looks pretty good.
I'm not gonna do a ton of pictures of the paint process, because I'm far from the first to do this, but I did figure you guys would like to see how I tackled the screen.
That’s it for now! If anyone is interested in getting a screen for the own Pip-boy, I may do a short run of these. Feel free to PM me about it!
Last edited by a moderator:
