Zoe Murrell
New Member
These jackets are really amazing
Indy on a budget
- Thread starter phillbarron
- Start date
phillbarron
Active Member
Shirt buttons.
They're tricky, aren't they?
This is one from the screen-used auction photos:
Which feels like it should be fairly easy to track down ... but it isn't. At least not for me, in the UK, paying a few pounds at most.
I've found some I think might be similar, but I can't tell without buying them and making that mistake more than a couple of times negates the point of buying a cheap shirt and convetring it ... apart from the fun of it.
So I went to a vintage shop which had a suitcase full of assorted buttons and charges 50p to fill a paper bag.
Different shapes and colours, hopefully somewhere in there are enough to make a full set of 13.
I took shots of them all to compare:
And realised I should really be taking them under the yellow dining room lights, not the bright white kitchen lights.
Case in point, this is the same button on the same shirt in different rooms:
The other thing I realised is I didn't make any record of which button was in which photo making the whole exercise pointless.
However, I think the above button is my front runner. For two reasons:
1) It changes colour nicely in different lighting, staying a few shades darker than the shirt, just like the screen used ones:
And 2) although it's the wrong shape, it has one significant advantage over the better shaped ones in my hoard: I actually have enough of them.
Having said that, they're a little big and I suspect the shape difference will niggle at me forever.
They're tricky, aren't they?
This is one from the screen-used auction photos:
Which feels like it should be fairly easy to track down ... but it isn't. At least not for me, in the UK, paying a few pounds at most.
I've found some I think might be similar, but I can't tell without buying them and making that mistake more than a couple of times negates the point of buying a cheap shirt and convetring it ... apart from the fun of it.
So I went to a vintage shop which had a suitcase full of assorted buttons and charges 50p to fill a paper bag.
Different shapes and colours, hopefully somewhere in there are enough to make a full set of 13.
I took shots of them all to compare:
And realised I should really be taking them under the yellow dining room lights, not the bright white kitchen lights.
Case in point, this is the same button on the same shirt in different rooms:
The other thing I realised is I didn't make any record of which button was in which photo making the whole exercise pointless.
However, I think the above button is my front runner. For two reasons:
1) It changes colour nicely in different lighting, staying a few shades darker than the shirt, just like the screen used ones:
And 2) although it's the wrong shape, it has one significant advantage over the better shaped ones in my hoard: I actually have enough of them.
Having said that, they're a little big and I suspect the shape difference will niggle at me forever.
ArtistTheGeek
Well-Known Member
This is all amazing
phillbarron
Active Member
Buttons, buttons, buttons. It's been all about buttons for weeks.
I had a go at dyeing some white buttons, experimenting with various amounts of dye and time, just to see if I could get near the colour:
Which I couldn't, not really. At least not with the colours i have. Tan Rit goes green. Brown Dylon goes blue.
Although, helpfully, in that photo the green looks similar to the button I liked ... in real life it's completely different.
I should probably explain I have no intention of buying new dyes and mixing and matching to get the correct colour, because that ends up being twice as expensive as the shirt and negates the point of buying a cheap one in the first place.
So in a last ditch attempt I bought two sets of buttons. This one:
Which seems like almost exactly the right shape, and when dyed, looks like this ...
Exactly the same.
Option two was these beauties:
Which aren't that brown. They're a light caramel colour.
Against the shirt, in various lights, compared to the screen-used button (top) they look like this:
Except not, because, once again, in real life they are a little lighter.
I had a go at dyeing one with Tan Rit. That gave it a slight olive tinge ...
Which also doesn't show up in photos. The bottom one is the greener of the two.
So the size is right, but the lip is the wrong shape, it's concave instead of flat and the colour in real life looks similar to the screen-used button in that specific photo.
At this point, I'd had enough of buttons and just sewed them on. I could drive myself mad trying to find the exact ones (even though I know they're US Army shirt buttons from the WW2 era - I just can't find any to buy without buying a £35 shirt!) and frankly i'm bored of the whole thing.
So this is where I've landed:
Or perhaps this:
... depending on the light. Neither of which match the real world appearance.
But that'll do. It's better than I started with and that will have to be good enough.
I have learnt one other little nugget of truth though ... turns out I hate sewing on shirt buttons.
I had a go at dyeing some white buttons, experimenting with various amounts of dye and time, just to see if I could get near the colour:
Which I couldn't, not really. At least not with the colours i have. Tan Rit goes green. Brown Dylon goes blue.
Although, helpfully, in that photo the green looks similar to the button I liked ... in real life it's completely different.
I should probably explain I have no intention of buying new dyes and mixing and matching to get the correct colour, because that ends up being twice as expensive as the shirt and negates the point of buying a cheap one in the first place.
So in a last ditch attempt I bought two sets of buttons. This one:
Which seems like almost exactly the right shape, and when dyed, looks like this ...
Exactly the same.
Option two was these beauties:
Which aren't that brown. They're a light caramel colour.
Against the shirt, in various lights, compared to the screen-used button (top) they look like this:
Except not, because, once again, in real life they are a little lighter.
I had a go at dyeing one with Tan Rit. That gave it a slight olive tinge ...
Which also doesn't show up in photos. The bottom one is the greener of the two.
So the size is right, but the lip is the wrong shape, it's concave instead of flat and the colour in real life looks similar to the screen-used button in that specific photo.
At this point, I'd had enough of buttons and just sewed them on. I could drive myself mad trying to find the exact ones (even though I know they're US Army shirt buttons from the WW2 era - I just can't find any to buy without buying a £35 shirt!) and frankly i'm bored of the whole thing.
So this is where I've landed:
Or perhaps this:
... depending on the light. Neither of which match the real world appearance.
But that'll do. It's better than I started with and that will have to be good enough.
I have learnt one other little nugget of truth though ... turns out I hate sewing on shirt buttons.
phillbarron
Active Member
Gloves!
Dirtied a little and with added Nazi/arm gunshot wound blood:
And in the jacket pocket, where the lighting makes them look much, much worse!
Dirtied a little and with added Nazi/arm gunshot wound blood:
And in the jacket pocket, where the lighting makes them look much, much worse!
I've been trying to find accurate 4 hole Raiders shirt buttons for YEARS! You'd be shocked how difficult it is to find an accurate style that's readily available.
4 holes, English Rim, Tan/ Grayish/ Olivish. 1/2" diameter. Machine washable and Dryer friendly. Seriously these are the most difficult details to find when trying to make Raiders replica clothing. I feel your pain!
These were some of the ones I sourced:
4 holes, English Rim, Tan/ Grayish/ Olivish. 1/2" diameter. Machine washable and Dryer friendly. Seriously these are the most difficult details to find when trying to make Raiders replica clothing. I feel your pain!
These were some of the ones I sourced:
phillbarron
Active Member
Great buttons!
Annoyingly these ones are perfect for my shirt colour:
e4516 WW 2 US Army Shirt OD Olive Drab button set of 12 B3D64 | eBay
Original WW 2 US Army Shirt button, set of 12. Back section B, Rack 2, Shelf D, drawer 18.
www.ebay.co.uk
But to get them to the UK would be five times the cost of the shirt.
I loved the full scale adhd/ocd train ride you took me on through this build. First we follow the best at cheapest game and reach the point at which the but-not-close-enough bug kicks in and then we follow that with learn new skills to create what isn't commercially available at the quality I now want. We tempt fate, put on the suit, dazzle everyone (and it really did because it's a d@mn nice build) but suddenly get caught in the raging inferno that is SCREEN ACCURATE BUTTONS. And now I just feel like another day in group at the RPF sharing the passion for perfection at any cost..... no screw that, as cheap as possible but still perfect... er than .... aaaaaaahhhhhh the lighting is wrong!!!! Oh and there was more than one shirt used in one scene over months of reshoots and..... I love it, it is awesome and you will of course make it er, awesome er.
phillbarron
Active Member
"the raging inferno that is SCREEN ACCURATE BUTTONS"
This has had me chuckling all day. It's made me want better(er) buttons.
phillbarron
Active Member
It has crossed my mind ...Great work on a budget...Only thing left to do is go outside and roll around in the mud, get it good and weathered....!!....
Ya know....
Take a mold of the correct shape and size of button, buy resin and tint and make your own buttons.
Cuz that won't be crazy expensive and time consuming
Luv your build, thanks for taking us on your journey.
Take a mold of the correct shape and size of button, buy resin and tint and make your own buttons.
Cuz that won't be crazy expensive and time consuming
Luv your build, thanks for taking us on your journey.
Oh my yes, the 50 dollar bottles of wasted resin learning that you can't get enough heat in such a small object to get the catalyzer to kick in or that you should not mix so much at once..... on and on. Yep, this is one of the steps to crazyville that were not yet seen in this build.Ya know....
Take a mold of the correct shape and size of button, buy resin and tint and make your own buttons.
Cuz that won't be crazy expensive and time consuming
Luv your build, thanks for taking us on your journey.
Make it good enough and you can be the next maker on the rpf with a new listing starting with "checking interest level in.... for a possible one time run". I did all of my custom buttons for Will Turner POTC because I was never happy with available ones. Now even the buttons are a special bit to me on my costume.
phillbarron
Active Member
Resin moulding is one of the top two skills in my list of things to learn (the other being welding).
Moulding buttons hadn't even occurred to me.
Moulding buttons hadn't even occurred to me.
phillbarron
Active Member
Fired up by this post I realised my parents are visiting my brother in California. I can get them to bring buttons home to France with them and then pick them up when I visit in the summer!
That makes the buttons I was salivating over much more affordable ... so I afforded them.
Obviously I won't know for certain until I have them in my hand, but hopefully the photos are fairly representative of the actual colour. If they are, then I think they're pretty much perfect:
Buttons!
AJLoCascio
Sr Member
Insanely impressed over your jacket!!!!! Incredible job!
phillbarron
Active Member
So the buttons arrived and I can say with 100% certainty that these are absolutely, completely and in all ways the exact same buttons from the Raiders shirt ... except for being the wrong colour.
They're just too dark.
Here they are against the shirt under white and yellow light:
So that's no good then. I could paint them, I suppose. Unless anyone knows a way of lightening buttons? Can buttons be bleached?
Just to add insult to injury, this Last Crusade shirt has just come up for auction:
Which, with its wide, sewn on "pleats" which lie straight over the pocket is much closer to my first attempt. The version I unpicked because I wasn't happy.
Even more ironically, these are the buttons on it:
Same shirt, same button under yellow and white lights. Which, to my eye, are exactly the bloody same as the buttons I found in a vintage clothing shop for 50p:
Which means I had "original" Indiana Jones buttons in my possession all along!
I think I'm definitely giving up now.
They're just too dark.
Here they are against the shirt under white and yellow light:
So that's no good then. I could paint them, I suppose. Unless anyone knows a way of lightening buttons? Can buttons be bleached?
Just to add insult to injury, this Last Crusade shirt has just come up for auction:
Which, with its wide, sewn on "pleats" which lie straight over the pocket is much closer to my first attempt. The version I unpicked because I wasn't happy.
Even more ironically, these are the buttons on it:
Same shirt, same button under yellow and white lights. Which, to my eye, are exactly the bloody same as the buttons I found in a vintage clothing shop for 50p:
Which means I had "original" Indiana Jones buttons in my possession all along!
I think I'm definitely giving up now.
If I could send a hug, you got it. This button story feels deeply familiar. Was there two possible styles used in the film? Likely, but maybe no. Do your new buttons look the same color as when they were advertised? I don't think so, if I am comparing the right two sets. If you go by the newly auctioned shirt (authenticity of the auction item??) will that mean you do, in fact, have the right ones anyway in a previous stash?
phillbarron
Active Member
No, the new buttons look a completely different colour to the advertised ones ... but given the length of time it took for me to pick them up and the word way colours look on a phone ... I can't really be bothered to send them back.
Looking at screen shots from The Last Crusade, including ones on the auction website, Indy's shirt has similar English Rim buttons to the first two films:
Which suggests that shirt they're auctioning as "Harrison Ford's Last Crusade shirt" may not be screen used.
Or at least the buttons weren't.
I haven't gone through every scene, but then he has a jacket and tie on for most of the film so you can't really see them.
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