[RedSpecial]

Well, despite the piss poor mould I managed to get two good workable castings for use on my thrower so any other castings at this point are just the cherry on top.
I've taped them tightly onto some tubestock the same diameter as the thrower handles so that they'll maintain the perfect fit while the resin reaches it's full shore hardness.
Hopefully I'll be able to fit them soon.

[RedSpecial]

So after pouring over as much clear reference of the grips as possible over the last few days I'm still of the mind that these were most likely sculpted or carved as a master before being moulded but thats no more verifiable than anything else at the moment so it's a moot point.
I agree that the linear striations are most likely to be file marks as the number and placement of them vary so much from grip to grip.
They must have had some real trouble with their castings after producing the Super hero grips.
Those appear to be the cleanest by far, relatively speaking.
Where as the majority of the grips across the other hero packs which we have clear reference for have all sorts of issues like warping, gouges, pitting and air bubbles.
If those are file marks, that must have been the least of the issues on those castings judging by their placement.

With that in mind and because i can never just leave things as is, I've decided to do a little work on each of my castings.
That way it'll not only give me the opportunity to correct a few things but also give me a distinct front and rear grip.

Just when you think you're done eh?

[RedSpecial]

Today I finished and attached the angled grips




Rear grip riveted in place




Front grip held by bolts at the barrel lock and gun ear




I also made a pair of barrel collar spacers.



With that, I'm ready to disassemble and clean the parts then on to primer and paint

[JWils23]

Great work as always! My hat is off to you, actually building all your own aluminum parts and then down to such detail is amazing.

[RedSpecial]

Thanks for the kind comments
And sorry for the late reply.
I haven't been able to login all day for some reason.

Today was primer day, I'm leaving everything overnight before I start to paint tomorrow, then it'll be left for at least a few days before I start to reassemble everything.
After that the paint will get a further week to ten days to make sure it's fully cured before I start to add weathering.

[RedSpecial]

And it's painted.
Now I need to wait until its cured enough to reassemble the parts.
Like the pack, there are some quirks to how the paint is applied on a hero thrower but I'll go over that when I'm putting it all together.

[TheLegendOfMart]

I notice in one of your earlier pics on first page you have templates for bending the metal for wand. Are the templates anywhere or is it something you made yourself?

[RedSpecial]

Yeah I used templates to begin with.
That was my MK1 thrower body, I scrapped it soon after due to inaccuracy in terms of the way the right side of the body is shaped and some warping due to user error.

The templates were from this forum but I can't seem to find the thread for the life of me.
I printed off a set and filed them away years ago but the file and bookmark to the thread seem to be long gone from my laptop.
I'll post a link if I manage to find it though.

[RedSpecial]

I'm currently waiting on some E6000 so that I can attach a reflector behind the vent in the thrower but as usual, I couldn't help tinkering with this a bit today.
Mostly assembling a few bits and applying some decals

I mentioned that there are some quirks to how the hero throwers were painted.
This mostly applies to the guntrack.

You'll notice in my previous post that I had the track laying on a box instead of having it elevated in order to get all round paint coverage.
This is because the underside of the track which faces up when it's attached to the thrower is unpainted.






The disks are also painted in situ, with the rear disk then being flipped later in production to be used as a washer which holds on the S-Hook.
You can see evidence of this in the following images.

Ramis hero pack, paint left around the edge of the disk


Superhero pack, paint around the edge of the disk and a circle of bare metal underneath the S-Hook where the disk was painted in place.



And my recreation of it:






The retention knob for the pop mech lever was also painted black on all of the hero throwers apart from the Murray hero.
You can see this during the movie and theres evidence of the paint left on all but the Murray hero today.



I also added some of the aluminium knobs and the front barrel collar spacers.
That was all I dared to do for today until the vent reflector is in there.
Once that's done though, I'll be able to run my wiring and reassemble the rest of it.

[RedSpecial]

More tinkering today.
This time I added the wiring to the instrument bar and trigger box.
Running the switch and button to the trigger box was not fun.
That's what I get for going the accurate route with a completely enclosed part.
I also bolted the assembly onto the thrower body, added the green clippard tubing and the red Arcolectric indicator lens, then threw on the slo-blo and danger label for good measure.

I really don't like how clean this thing is, it makes me want to treat it with kid gloves.
Can't wait until I can rough the sucker up a bit.

[RedSpecial]

The smallest tube of E6000 I've ever seen arrived today so I set about attaching a reflector behind the vent as can be seen on the screen used packs.
I need to let it fully cure over night then I can move on with the rest of the assembly.

[l3w1sb159]

Very nice, is that a regular flashlight reflector or a more low profile one?

[RedSpecial]

Its slightly more low profile than a regular flashlight reflector.
I had bought a low profile reflector from an angled military torch which would have been perfect but turned out to be just a fraction too large at around 39mm in diameter due to brazed edges inside the thrower getting in the way but I'd imagine it'd probably fit otherwise.
The one I went with came from a dog walking torch of all things.
It's around 36mm in diameter.

[RedSpecial]

On todays episode of the parts of this project I've been dreading, I drilled holes into a pair of Legris banjos.



Then I set about making a flashbulb holder.
This one is heavily inspired by the ones used on the Hero throwers but the proportions differ in order to house a large LED beneath the flash bulb.



I then drilled holes in the frosted tube in order to secure the holder in place and run the LED's wires out and through the banjos.





To say this whole mini project was nerve wracking would be a vast understatement
Next I'll be moving on to routing the wires under the grip and into the body of the thrower, then its onto adding the remaining wiring and circuit board to the thrower and adding electronics to the pack.

[tobycj]

Ooh, I like the idea of mounting the LED in the holder bit, I hadn't thought of that! I've got some 8mm LEDs on the way from eBay, so might give this a test as well as a cut off flash bulb (I already cut one up).

[RedSpecial]

I know practically nothing about electronics so when it comes to dealing with them in any capacity I find it very stressful.
Todays task was trickier than I'd have liked but I eventually managed to get the acrylic tube assembly mounted, ran the barrel lights through the front barrel and attached the front handle.







I've opted to use clear heatshrink for the wires than run under the front grip.
The clear stuff doesn't seem to get a lot of love these days but it was used on the majority of the hero throwers, with the exception of the the Super hero and the Hudson/Omni hero and I like the added little bit of colour the wires add.



Here you can see the flash bulb wires running along the left ear which lacks the channel drilled through it as this was a GB2 upgrade.
This and much of the right ear will eventually be covered with a strip of Gaffer tape as can be seen in various scenes in the movie and production stills as was discussed here in Mburkit's fantastic thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=46478



Next I'll run the bargraph, the rest of the switches, secure each light in place then hook it all up to the circuit board.

[JWils23]

Looking great! Your thrower really is a beauty, and the details are first rate as always.

[Darth_Egon]

I agree outstanding work! I added those details on mine and it looks so much more screen accurate!!

[RedSpecial]

Thanks for the kind words, gents

[RedSpecial]

Today I reached a real milestone with this build and finished the thrower, aside from the weathering and dry rub transfers which I'll add once I have them.

The next job will be to run wiring for the pack then connect it all together.

Here's a few pics and a short video of todays progress.







I finally got to add those dome top barb ty's



The hatlight and arcolectric lights look way brighter than they are in person for some reason.

[JWils23]

Looks amazing, love the white LED at the tip. I’m doing the same, along with a double white strobe for the barrel light. Replacing the RGB that comes with the wand board to be more screen accurate.

What positions are you dip switches? I want to have the scrolling bar graph as well but right now mine only comes on when I turn on the vent light. Swear I’ve read the directions 100 times and still can’t get the right config.

[RedSpecial]

Id love to do that and have only white strobes going on.
Maybe some time in the future.

I have the speed dial set to movie mode.

for the dips:
1 off
2off
3 on which is rumble mode so the flash bulb light shines continuously when firing after the initial flash to give me more white light.
4 off
5 on

not sure why the bargraph is only coming on with the vent

[tobycj]

What positions are you dip switches? I want to have the scrolling bar graph as well but right now mine only comes on when I turn on the vent light. Swear I’ve read the directions 100 times and still can’t get the right config.

Mine are on, off, on, off, on (flash bulb at start and end of firing with overheating effect, vent light max). I think strictly speaking the most accurate would be off, off, off, off, on, with the flash bulb controlled from the front ear fire button.

The bargraph is controlled from the potentiometer though, for mine I went fully clockwise and then gradually turned it back for special effects mode (bargraph goes centre out when firing, and there is a power up sequence) until I got the bargraph speed I wanted. You could go fully anti clockwise and gradually turn clockwise to get to movie accurate mode and an appropriate bargraph speed. It's not the most intuitive I have to say, it took me quite a few reads to understand it!

Hope that helps!

[JWils23]

Thanks for the quick reply’s gents, I’ll double check mine and mess with the pot on the board. Right now when I flip the activate switch it turns the pack on and the arcolectric lights on the thrower but not the bar graph. Then when I flip the vent switch the light and bar graph come one. I’d like it to be accurate to the movie where the bar graph is scrolling before the vent light comes on.

Red I got my barrel strobe from CS props, it’s plug and play with the GBFans board so might be worth looking into if you want to go that route.

[RedSpecial]

Thanks for that

[JWils23]

Thanks for that

Absolutely, from my experience a good dude who makes some cool stuff. Got it shipped to me real quick and worked exactly as advertised. Can’t ask for much more!

[RedSpecial]

So this happened today.
I'll take some decent pics and a proper video soon but these crappy phone pics will have to do for now.
I've yet to change out the legris elbows when I receive the replacements but it's pretty much there other than some minor tweaks.
I'm going to very lightly weather the thrower this Sunday to match the level of weathering on the pack and let it further weather naturally from that point on.





There's a switch on the thrower light kit which plays the Ghostbusters theme tune.
I didn't like the idea of having that on the pack but couldn't think of anything from the movie that I would rather have.
So I decided to add the misfire sound effect from the GB3 teaser that was released a while back as a little easter egg.

[JWils23]

The video is showing private right now, would love to see it!

[RedSpecial]

Sorry about that.
Can you see it now?

[JWils23]

Yep, super cool! Nice little touch bridging original and new.