Faced with a deadline of a GB1 screening at the historic Alabama Theatre in Birmingham, I applied every spare moment these past couple of weeks to rewiring and reassembling my pack, and also to getting my sons' smaller packs put together, if not fully detailed.
I love how smug they look here.
The Matty gun handles are solid, so the PVC adapters connecting them to the looms were a last-minute expenditure at Lowe's... a whopping 66 cents each and a quick coat of black paint.
The shells are by Studio Creations. They're 80% full size. The ALICE frames and straps are full size, pieced together from a variety of sources including eBay, OpticsPlanet, and a local surplus place. The mobos are made from Sintra, donated by a friend from my high school days (who my youngest said was a "very, VERY cool guy").
The smaller size of the shells/mobos left me very little clearance for attaching the two lower bolts to the ALICE. As a result, I changed the four L-bracket system of a full-sized pack into a three L-bracket design. The L-brackets were hacksawed from a 4' bar of 1/16th" thick right-angle aluminum, then riveted to the Sintra.
At the surplus place, they asked me when they get their boots. I said, "When your feet stop growing."
I've still got some last-minute glitches to fix on my pack-- a broken wire, etc-- but this is the first time it's been reassembled in months. I last wore it in October!
In that time, I've replaced the broken ALICE frame, the fried blue-brick, a broken DPDT firing button, and a cracked clear cylinder. I had a barrel extension/rotation mechanism installed by FreekyGeeky. I re-did one of the L-brackets because it had been mis-tapped four years ago.
When the movie started, I took it off, put it in the floor, turned to help my son with his buckles, and heard it thunk against the concrete floor. Fell sideways onto the gun. SMH.
Alex
