Hey everybody! Sorry about the four-month silence, I've been on a great gig (still am), but with insurance (thanks a lot, unaffordable care act) and various RL $urpri$e$, both time and money have been short. Meaning paying for and showing up at Techshop have not been an option yet this year.
So I've been focusing on building kits at home (1/350 TOS E and Moebius Batman on the bench right now).
HOWEVER -- I accidentally stubbed my toe on some new (well, new to me) information and I couldn't wait to share it.
So, remember
this series of photos from Gerald Gurian's Star Trek Prop Authority site? In particular, I saw this one some time back and thought it might show that the side dial was not a milled rod, but instead a butterfly-cut strip of aluminum:
I was focused on that little black dot on the bottom of the center tab, which I read as a triangular opening, meaning this was a strip of aluminum flayed in two. Most people disagreed, and there was further discussion about whether it was a piece of dirt or some other detritus. Since it was very hard to tell due to the low resolution of the photo, I dropped the whole idea pending further information and really forgot all about it.
Until last night!
A few months ago, I tripped over
a thread on HobbyTalk about some of Bill George's Imgur links (yes,
that Bill George). The main topic was his K'Tinga photos, but
there was a list of other links, including what it turns out were
his phaser photos in much higher resolution.
Not gonna belabor this except to say that as of last night (when I finally got around to looking at them closely), I am now absolutely satisfied that it is indeed a split strip of aluminum and not a milled rod. Ten minutes in Photoshop later:
Enjoy!!
(Oh, one thing -- please don't go around using words like "conclusive proof," "definitive," "forensic," or "toe jam."
This is
my interpretation of a photo, and I find it very convincing, but I'm not a photo analyst. Just an obsessive-compulsive prop nerd.)
The good news (and another check in the Pro column) is that this makes it massively simpler to produce this piece. Yay!
Not sure when I'll get back to this project, but hopefully it'll be sooner rather than later. The models are keeping me sane, but I
really want my hero phaser. Dammit.