Your Indiana Jones Displays - Lets see 'em
- Thread starter Dave Ward
- Start date
Lightning
Master Member
This is the best shot we have in the movie. You can clearly see the knurled section between the head and switch. That's part of the focus mechanism.
The odd way the black section reflects the light appears to me to clearly show that it is still ridged.
VonMagnum
Sr Member
Yeah, that focus ring is definitely the most obvious key difference (I could possibly write the light reflection off as whatever in the cave it's reflecting, but yeah, that focus ring is definitely a giveaway that matches the Tiger-Head / United Pacific model). I suppose I could have a go at painting one. Actually, I used a trick with my ribbon speakers and metal and used a permanent marker instead of paint. It's easier to wipe off when it sets and you don't have to taper off as you can more or less do it by hand. Maybe I'll give that a try with one and see what happens. I can always paint over it if it doesn't work and I can use the ABC one as an actual usable flashlight in the home theater instead of the mini-LED one I'm using now.
VonMagnum
Sr Member
That's why I was thinking of giving a Sharpie a try (Sharpie also has actual paint pens too). You can outline slowly with a fine point and erase it easily enough if you slip while it's still wet (I used one to outline my runes on my Conan Sword on one side for display; it can be wiped off with some elbow grease on a surface like that even after it dries, really). It dried really well on the steel plates on my Carver ribbon speakers after the foam surrounds oxidized and fell apart and I thought I'd go for the "naked' look, but the raw steel was ugly and black looked so much better, but taking them apart and masking them off so the ribbon itself didn't get damaged painting them would have been a ROYAL PITA whereas the marker's worked surprisingly well), so I figure it's worth a shot and would make getting the rings even much easier, I think. I should have a United Pacific flashlight in tomorrow to play with.
Carver Speakers Before/After (not paint, ink!)
VonMagnum
Sr Member
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull FLASHLIGHT
Here's my inked take on the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull flashlight using the "United Pacific" base flashlight. It adds nothing but permanent black ink to the basic design. The stripes aren't perfect, but it has a bit of a worn look to it. It's also very hard to photograph using a direct flash on it the way the light reflects off the ridges, but lends credence to the "weird" look in that region from the movie as the set lighting hits it. The top two photos show a smaller view/image size to mimic the difficulty in getting a high resolution picture from the movie itself (2nd image), followed by a slightly higher resolution image and then two different angle larger shots. A non-flash photo is in the next set in the post below (ultimately got moved to the bookshelf after all).
Here's my inked take on the Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull flashlight using the "United Pacific" base flashlight. It adds nothing but permanent black ink to the basic design. The stripes aren't perfect, but it has a bit of a worn look to it. It's also very hard to photograph using a direct flash on it the way the light reflects off the ridges, but lends credence to the "weird" look in that region from the movie as the set lighting hits it. The top two photos show a smaller view/image size to mimic the difficulty in getting a high resolution picture from the movie itself (2nd image), followed by a slightly higher resolution image and then two different angle larger shots. A non-flash photo is in the next set in the post below (ultimately got moved to the bookshelf after all).
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VonMagnum
Sr Member
This is an alternative snapshot that doesn't splash the metallic surface directly with a flash (some people told me it looked weird or bad, but the intention was to compare a specific movie lighting condition that suggested the middle section is a ribbed surface (along with the textured focusing ring other models like Rose, ABC and Eveready do not have) to argue in favor of the Tiger-Head / United Pacific flashlight being more likely to be the the flashlight used in the movie, but possibly modified with some type of paint to look a bit more like the other ones of the era.
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VonMagnum
Sr Member
I managed to fit the flashlight on the bookshelf display, after all with a little finagling. I'm counting 24 items squeezed into that little area now plus backdrop bits (not counting individual coins or the pouch or cigarettes separately or the Indian cloth or remote control candles). 
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Liberance
Well-Known Member
Not only does the light reflection over the black paint look a bit odd in the movie, the stripes also look too white instead of chromed, which is the way that is in the vintage flashlights. The button seems to be black in all of them, though. Still, I agree there's a good chance that it's a modern flashlight, as you say.
Personally, I think I'll go with the same Rose model MCINTOSH275 has. It's most likely the period flashlight they were going for, and being an actual vintage object, I think the look is better for display purposes.
VonMagnum
Sr Member
If you look at the bookshelf snapshot above, the rings look near white there, not chrome because of the light reflecting and camera exposure and in those scenes what appears to be white, reflective or black changes over many chrome parts of the flashlight as Harrison Ford walks around and changes the angle of the flashlight. I mean even the black part reflects light oddly in that one scene the movie snap was taken from, probably because of the ridges and metal texture.
Now they may well have painted the stripes in the back part white, but it seems a bit odd to me they would take a chromed flashlight and paint it black over the middle section, but then stick white stripes on it while leaving other areas chromed. It just doesn't look good like that, IMO and the Tiger-Head flashlight it appears to be based on (that dates back to at least the 1960s, if not '50s and itself a likely ripoff of Eveready's 1950s flashlight I posted a picture of in a previous post above) are black and chrome flashlights. There is no white stripes on any of them.
Short of sanding off or filling in the texture, that can't really be changed as the stripes are clearly past the smooth end part of the Tiger-Head flashlight (The United Pacific model I used appears to be a modern remake of it).
The Eveready and ABC Britain and Rose flashlights do look very similar, overall (and I do have an ABC model coming as well still), but as Lightning rightly pointed out, the movie clearly shows the textured focusing ring that is not present on the other brands except Tiger/United. That is why I ordered one.
Of course, you can easily argue I did a shoddy "paint" (ink) job (I'm not much of a paint hobby kind of guy; I used to build model rockets but finishing details like paint and decals were never my strong suit), but it's hard to argue the other flashlights are accurate when the don't have the same stripes, screw indents or focusing ring as the movie prop. If it's good enough for you, I cannot argue about personal preference.
Likewise, if there's still an as yet to be discovered brand/model flashlight that better matches what is seen on-screen from the factory, I'm certainly willing to consider purchasing one to replace the one I have if I can get a hold of one. Given the low resolution movie snapshot (a 4K release might help some day?), however, I'm not going to judge the painted white stripe versions I've seen so far, but I'm simply offering an alternative possibility.
Liberance
Well-Known Member
Your flashlight looks the closest to the movie, and you made a good case for it. I didn't mean to imply you did a shoddy job either, it's most likely the exact same thing they did in the film and looks fine. Also, by white stripes I wasn't necessarily saying they were painted white. Maybe they were. Most likely they weren't, because indeed it doesn't make much sense. I was just pointing that out as yet another detail that looks odd and suggests it may not be a vintage flashlight in the film after all. So I was just agreeing overall with you.
Now, that said, yeah, it'd go for the vintage one as a matter of personal preference. Sometimes, with props like this, we eventually have to make a choice: get the exact same thing they had in the film or what it was meant to represent in the story? Sometimes those two things match, sometimes they don't. For me, if something it's meant to be made out of metal in a movie, even if the physical prop was painted resin, I still would like my replica to be metal whenever possible. In this case, if I can have an old beat-up flashlight that looks like it may have been in a tomb in Nazca in 1957 and be the one we were supposed to believe Indy was holding, I'd rather have that. But that doesn't change a thing you said, and I still agree with you and appreciate you sharing all the pics and details!
VonMagnum
Sr Member
Liberance - I'll likely actually use the ABC Britania Hong Kong flashlight (looks pretty much identical to the Rose one other than the label on the cap) that's supposedly a real 1950s model in my home theater room if I need to see a connection, etc. and leave the more prop-like accurate Union Pacific flashlight on the shelf there.
There's some question in my mind whether holding the inked surface for long periods of time could lift ink off the metal surface anyway.
There's some question in my mind whether holding the inked surface for long periods of time could lift ink off the metal surface anyway.
agent5
Sr Member
Krylon Dulling Spray.
agent5
Sr Member
1910. The decals are correct, just not placed as in the one in the film.
And the Jack Daniels with the top label correct to the museum display.
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VonMagnum
Sr Member
Sweet. Now I just need to get my Delorean working and I'll go pick one of those 1910 bottles up.
Seriously, that seems like a rough bottle to find.
MCINTOSH275
Well-Known Member
VonMagnum
Sr Member
The ABC British Empire flashlight I bought and just received has a broken plastic clip ( >60 years old) and I don't see how the bulb was held into place to begin with except by the pressure of the batteries from underneath. It seems like a very poor design (or something is missing). I think that United Pacific flashlight is much better made (of course it's new so I'm sure that helps). I don't recommend the ABC ones.
In regards to the flashlight, I gave up and have both. One vintage, one modern with a paint job.
I also put my HJ tag on my Crystal Skull knapsack. Here’s mine with a pic of the original.
edit: I found this picture of the tag after I got my tag and put it on, the best picture I had prior was a poor screen cap. Eh, close enough.
I also put my HJ tag on my Crystal Skull knapsack. Here’s mine with a pic of the original.
edit: I found this picture of the tag after I got my tag and put it on, the best picture I had prior was a poor screen cap. Eh, close enough.
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How did handle the switch when you were painting your flashlight? Did you just mask it off or did you take it apart?
masked. Masked the whole thing including stripes, one coat bbq black.
