Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

BRING THE FIRE!!!



I decided I'd better anneal the brass after all, or I'd be working on this past Christmas. As I explained above, annealing just means heating it and cooling it to take the fight out of the metal. After I brought one of these over to my bench...



...I got down to it. I made this little 30-second video to show how it's done:

How to Anneal Your Phaser Handle - YouTube

Yes, I know how tempting it is now to turn this thread into a discussion of my use of symbolism and montage vs. Sergei Eisenstein​'s, but we've got a job to do!

After I annealed the brass, I wrapped it tightly around the form again and gave it a good, long squeeze in the bench vise.



And it came out great, and ready for soldering at last! The annealed brass was no longer springy at all and conformed perfectly to the wooden form.



See how there's still a wee bit of overlap? Not enough to cause a problem. It helped out in the soldering process, though next time around I'll be going for a straight-up butt joint. That's not how you usually smoke those, but hey, new century, right?

Time for soldering! I shot video of this, so I'm off to prep it and I'll be back in a little bit...
[EDIT -- Belay that. Video sucks. I'll get some better video another time and come back and drop it in. Plus I think there's a much better way to do it than the way I did it, and I'd rather show you that. So I'm getting on with the post with just photos for now.]

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

After soldering, which went okay but not my best work, I had me something that was beginning to look like a phaser handle...



As the late Freddie Prinz used to say to Jack Albertson, Lookin' goooood!



Of course, no way I could resist...



Next stage: clean it all up. It's got soot, dirt, and flux all over it.

This is Scotch-Brite. We keep it in the machine shop for making metal nice and shiny. For a while at first, I was scratching my head about where to get it, because I didn't recognize it.



Then a few months ago, I remembered. This is also Scotch-Brite:



You can get it at the grocery store pretty cheap, and they even sell it without the sponge part. Does a helluva job brightening up metal. Most of the grunge came off with this stuff pretty easily, and the flux paste just flushes away with water. After drying it with compressed air (because life's too short to wait for it to dry on its own), it looked like this:




Hmm... dents on a phaser handle... nope, never seen those before.

And now, begging your forgiveness, I'm signing off for tonight -- sorry for such short posting tonight, but I'm just pooped. There's more left from yesterday's session of course, so I'll leave you with a little preview.



Back tomorrow, fresh as a daisy.

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Nice work on that handle you made from scratch.:thumbsup Just like the original one.
I will be taking the lazy way out for my build and just buy one.
Keep up the good work, it's looking good!

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

OK, last post for this session...

So, back to the laser cutter, this time with better-sized artwork and more thicknesses of wood. The thicker stuff is basswood, the thin stuff is 1/32" birch plywood. All of it's from Michael's. Pretty decent wood prices there, cheapest dowels I've seen in my area, and of course... coupons!!



So the one with the large hole is the base, and it's the same diameter as the handle. This took a little trial and error. The thick one with the smaller hole is the inside part, and the thin ones are just to help me eyeball the thickness. Wood never needs to be the exact thickness. It's easy to laminate, and easy to sand or plane down.

Here they are ready for laminating. Those are two phaser 1 screws to help me stack the wood sections more easily, and they've been dunked in vaseline for ease of removal. The other picture is the bottom view, after I removed the C-clamp. The larger hole is sized to match the outer "wings" of the butterfly cutout, which seems to be the way the original is done, as well as I can tell from the photos. I'm going to do a final visual comparison with the photos next session just to be sure, since I think I may have used one shim too many. If that's the case, it's 80 grit for a couple of minutes and let's move on.



On to the popsicle sticks!

You can get the right kind from Michael's or other such craft stores. They just need to be 1/4" wide, and you might have to stack two and then sand down to get the right thickness, but if we didn't love sanding so much, we'd find another ****ing hobby right quick.

I wouldn't try to use the curved tops though; I'd cut that off and then gently apply a sanding block to make the curve yourself. Not hard at all.

However, other than doing a demo for a thread, I wouldn't bother with that, since on the laser cutter I can make them in pretty big numbers in just a few minutes, never worry about breaking one while I'm working with it because there are more where it came from (and trust me, I WILL break a few doing a handle because ****tarded hands), and keep the leftovers in a baggie for the next umpteen handles I'll need for filling my house with hero phasers. Yay!

Okay, so here's the bumbling that convinced me to make a jig for this stuff for the rest of my handles. I figured I'd make a tape line to lay my sticks against for gluing into place. It worked, but personally I found this to be kind of a pain. Before you can use the tape to line up your sticks, you have to line up your tape in the first place. So you get this kind of chicken-and-egg thing going, and at my age that just makes me sleepy. But as I said, this worked. The third stick in the middle is for lineup and spacing -- this keeps them exactly 1/4" apart and perfectly parallel.

Just cut through the tape around the middle stick, and slide it out. Then cut the tape that's on the handle, using the inside edges of the sticks as a guide. Remove all the rest of the tape, leaving just the strip. At this point, I probably should have laid outside strips too, because the epoxy wanted to skate along the surface of the brass, and this made lining up a pain.



But like I said, I'm definitely making a jig next time out. And that might be its own thread, or maybe I'll do a handle-only thread or something when I really have the method nailed down.



And there it is! Ran out of time to start the puttying and priming process, but I got this far. So while I cleaned up, I gave it one last squeeze in the vise...



And that's all she wrote till next session on Tuesday! Happy Monday guys!

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Sorry guys, I have some small life fires to put out this week, and I won't make it to the shop till Friday... very bummed. Meanwhile, though, have a phaser!




OK, so scanning it with a 1.2 GW laser was a bad idea...

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Your work is top notch Aureliano, great job.

Hey so I'm thinking maybe that fried phaser you just posted a pic of could be the next phaser build for TOS fans. I mean there are even replicas of the crapazoids now, maybe the 'Who mourns for Adonais phaser' can be the next great project..

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Thanks so much, Ray! You guys are great.

Yeah, I'm thinking crapazoid + heat gun = Who Mourns for Adonais phaser.

Can't help but notice it's deformed in much the same way as the Space Seed one. I've always wondered if it was the same prop.

CRAP. You said "fried phaser," and now I'm hungry....

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

asalaw said:

...You said "fried phaser," and now I'm hungry....

Click to expand...

You can eat anything if it's fried.

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

robn1 said:

You can eat anything if it's fried.

Click to expand...

Cue Homer Simpson...

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

asalaw said:

Cue Homer Simpson...

Click to expand...

John Crichton.

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Or deep fried phaser, that's the best.

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

robn1 said:

John Crichton.

Click to expand...

Hehehe...

Well, guys, I didn't make it to the shop today, as I had to sleep off an all-nighter of organizing and de-duping my iPhoto library in preparation for upgrading to Yosemite. Haven't done it yet, because I secure-deleted the old library, which contains just over 100,000 items, and it's STILL deleting, and so ironically, my prep work for Yosemite is now preventing me from installing Yosemite.

Just as I was about to get some sleep, my wife reminded me that today was the grand reopening of Springfield Mall, now Springfield Town Center, and we were supposed to be in line for free gift cards. So at 6 AM, after pulling an all-nighter, I got to go stand in line at the mall for four hours. We got our gift cards, and they had...



PSYCHO FASHION CLOWNS!!

And then I went straight home and passed out, woke up a couple of hours ago, and am going back to bed as soon as I finish scrubbing New Elevator Smell out of my nostrils with ammonia and a toilet brush.

Meanwhile, here are some vintage photos of the MM P2 I'm now refurbishing, back when I first finished it. Please excuse the old-timey sepia tone, I had to be very careful digitizing the tintypes. BTW, I think I voted for Coolidge that year.

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Jeeze what a long last couple of days! Phaser looks great though in the old pics.

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Springfield Mall?!

You NEED a Phaser to go there.

Be careful Bro, I can't believe how sketchy that place turned into, damn shame

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

I just found out yesterday that Springfield Mall was renovated, closed for two years and I had no idea. That shows you how often I travel north of Woodbridge.

The MM looked like a nice build. I think that P1 looked more right than the one from John's hero kit, especially when compared to the ones in Assignment: Earth.

We will now observe a moment of silence, in memory of the Springfield Mall that used to be

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

The mall is now a lot like Tyson's Corner, very upscale, and there are cops everywhere, plus a substantial Fairfax PD substation. Since the new mall is the centerpiece for redeveloping Springfield, they're pretty serious about security. I feel very safe there.

Now back to your regularly scheduled phasers...

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Yes bring on the Phasers!

This thread as well as Robn 1's reminds me of the old days of the RPF! :thumbsup

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Apollo said:

Yes bring on the Phasers! :thumbsup

Click to expand...

^Totally agree!

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Hey that totally rocks, no wonder Kirk had all the hot chicks

Re: John Long Phaser 1 Kit Buildup plus MM P2 Restoration

Wow, a couple days in labor and a new phaser is born! :thumbsup