Captain Jack Harkness Coat Revisited

Greetings True Believers! For those of you who discovered my blog via a search for Captain Jack Harkness Costume or Cosplay information, welcome to my blog! If you want some seriously detailed dope on the Harkness costume and my recipe for it, poke around here for a little bit. In fact, here's a link that will take you to all of my posts about my build of the Harkness costume.

Today's topic is about some recent changes I made to the Harkness coat.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I'm a huge fan of Abbyshot and all of their products. They make licensed Doctor Who stuff and a bunch of other great genre stuff also. I still remember back in the day when Abbyshot was just getting started in the business, and debuted their awesome Neo coat from The Matrix. Ah, the glory days.

Hey look it's me!!!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I absolutely love this jacket. I think it's a fantastic replica, it's amazingly well made, it strikes my eye as extremely accurate, and it's a very flattering cut. Go buy one right now from Abbyshot.com

Passionate costumers have noticed that there are some inaccuracies to the Abbyshot Harkness coat, and many of them are easily correctable. First up is the button placement. Even the casual observer will note that the buttons do not line up with the button holes, which seems pretty odd, and a weird thing to overlook in a production coat.

But then I see promotional photos like this, where the buttons DO seem to flare out way too far on the top of the coat. Could it be that the costumers for Torchwood repositioned the buttons on some of the jackets so that they would be visible when Jack is wearing the jacket in "open" position? Could be. I don't know for sure, but this picture sure as heck looks like the buttons would NOT properly fit into the button holes.

That said, there are plenty of contradictory promo shots that show the buttons properly aligned, and even one where it shows the jacket buttoned up. I guess my theory is that possibly Abbyshot patterned their jacket after one that they were given by the BBC that happened to have the buttons moved to different locations. Who knows.

Repositioning the buttons is very simple work. A seam ripper was used to pull out the old ones, and then I just hand stitched them back on.

This picture shows my jacket and the new location of the buttons. They actually look a little off kilter in this photo, but I assure you they line up to the button holes really nicely.

Another popular criticism of the Abbyshot jacket is in regards to the epaulets. Not only do they appear shorter than the ones in pretty much all reference photos and screen caps, but for some reason they used the wrong rank braid. Having had a little experience in manufacturing and dealing with vendors to provide parts, I can easily see how something like the rank braid just slipped through the cracks. Perhaps they ordered the correct braid from their supplier, but when the spool of 10,000 yards of the stuff showed up, it was not correct. Rather than wait another six months for another run of the braid, they just plowed ahead with production, knowing full well that 99.99% of the people purchasing this jacket would not even notice the inaccurate braid.

The great news is that accurate braid is readily available on ebay, and it's darn cheap.

But that's about where the great news ends if you were planning on making your jacket more accurate. Problem number one is that abbyshot constructed their jacket REALLY well, and in the process deviated from the screen used jacket. On the screen used jackets, the braid looks like it wraps AROUND the epaulets. On the AS jacket, it's sewn INTO it. Hard to explain, as I'm not familiar enough with sewing/tailoring terminology to use the right words, but the bottom line is it's different. With a seam ripper and a bit of time, I was able to pull out the existing rank braid without effecting the epaulet at all. I considered myself really lucky. I was worried I was going to have to pop the top stitching and the seams in order to get it out.

For the novice, the next step is simply to add on the accurate rank braid. I just glued mine on, as I was unable to locate any stitching on the screen used jackets. The rank wraps around the epaulet entirely, joining on the underside.

BUT, what was really important to me was lengthening the epaulet. By my calculations, based on screen captures and comparing it to the Abbyshot jacket, I figured the things needed to be extended by 1 inch. There are a few options on how to do this, but ALL of them require a bit of fabric that matches the jacket. I forget who sold it to me, but about a year ago I acquired a length of the fabric. I think it was from a discarded belt or something. My initial plan was to build my own epaulets, add on the rank braid, then install them. However, upon looking at the construction of the jacket, I realized this would mean pulling apart the shoulder of the jacket. Which would also mean pulling out the lining. Yikes. Already WAY too complicated. My second approach had me thinking of cutting off the existing epaulet directly underneath one of the rank braids. I would then graft onto the epaulet stump my newly constructed epaulet, with the extra inch added in.

I proceeded down this path until I realized that I don't know how to make button holes yet!!! lol. Rather than make things more complicated than they needed to be, I decided to salvage the tip of the epaulet and the base, and basically just graft in a length of the epaulet in between the first and last rank braids. I had already completely built the replacement epaulets, which was actually a really good exercise. It was then just a simple matter of cutting those down to size, using a zig-zag stitch to join the whole thing together, then gluing the rank braid on top of it.

I am EXTREMELY happy with how they turned out, though as of this picture I have not yet re-sewn the epaulet buttons.

Which brings me to another thing some fans take issue with on the jacket, the buttons. From what I can tell, the buttons used on the jacket are replica RAF buttons. Real ones are fairly available on ebay, and upgrades are possible. I'm not super hot to do this upgrade, just because to my eye the existing buttons are just fine. I guess if I saw a full set of the properly sized buttons pop up on ebay, I would get them, but it's really not a big deal to me.

The only other modification that I've heard of people doing is replacing the belt buckle. File under "who cares!!!" in my book. But again, if an accurate one was presented to me, it's a simple enough mod to make. It's just so far below the line that it's something I'm just not motivated enough to attend to.

Captain Jack Harkness Rank Braid

A fellow RPF member sent me a PM today asking for some details on my Captain Jack Harkness costume.

One of the things he was curious about was if I had replaced my rank braids on my AbbyShot jacket. The short answer is no I did not, but for the sake of completeness, I thought this detail was worthy of a blog post.

Here are a few reference photos of Jack's coat that I found using google. I cannot guarantee that these are all the same actual coat. If I had to guess, I would suspect they are not. But they serve to illustrate my point:

In these first two photos, you can see how the braid appears wider on the Abbyshot braid, which is in the fourth photo.

This photo, though at a profile angle on the shoulders, clearly shows that the rank braids have a thin strip of light, greyish blue in the middle. Scan ahead a couple of pics to see the abbyshot stripes, which are VERY different from the ones seen in this pic.

But here it gets a little muddy, as these ones seem a little wider, and a little more grey.

This is a publicity photo of the AbbyShot Captain Jack Harkness costume, which I completely endorse, and own one of myself.

To my eye, the Abbyshot braid appears to be a different color in the middle, and also has a wider grey band.

Here is ACTUAL RAF Flying Officer Braid, that I purchased from a seller on ebay. Honestly, looking at screen caps now, it's all getting a bit fuzzy, but this is what is believed to be more accurate to the screen used coat. I own some.

I purchased this from ebay user shiz999, who as of this writing (March, 2013) is still selling this exact braid on ebay. Try searching for "RAF Flying Officer Braid" for more results.

The irony to this entire discussion is that I actually ended up leaving my jacket exactly the way it came from Abbyshot. I acquired the "correct" braid, and even got some extra fabric so that I could extend the epaulets to more accurate lenghts. But when I sat down with the jacket to modify it, I realized that if I pulled it apart, I probably wouldn't be able to get it back together properly. The jacket is very well made, and looks great. Pulling apart the shoulders is a daunting task, and getting them back together is even harder.

I have worn this jacket and my Harkness costume to numerous costuming events, including the worlds biggest Doctor Who gathering, Gallifrey one. Not ONCE did someone stop me to point out that my epaulets were the wrong length, or that my braid was inaccurate. Not once. Out of the hundreds of people who saw me and took photos... nobody cared.

My advice is to not get lost in the details, but to focus on the overall presentation. The jacket looks great, and everyone recognizes it as Captain Jack. The time, trouble, effort and heartache involved in changing out the tiny details just isn't worth it, imho. Whatever sense of satisfaction I may have found by having a "more accurate" coat would never compensate for all the time and extra money put into it to make it an invisible fraction better. Your mileage may vary.

MattMobile Shell Leveller and Captain Jack Harkness

Progress continues at a brisk pace!

Bo The Welder has ABSOLUTELY outdone himself with the creation of an amazing piece of engineering. BTW designed and built an adjustable wooden harness that fits inside the car, and allows him to position the shell at the EXACT location it needs to be on the frame. Once positioned, BTW will be able to take precise measurements and start building out the metal infrastructure which will be used not only to add stability to the shell, but more importantly to keep it in place. I'm absolutely thrilled with the brilliance Bo delivered on this task, and I could not be happier!

Meanwhile, I continue to contribute in the little ways that I can. lol. Just today I used my reciprocating saw to remove the flat part of the side air intake.

I also did a little bit of work cleaning up the flash on the intake, but I burned through my last sanding disk before I could finish.

I also spent about an hour working on the passenger side and gas cap area. This part is really coming together. It might not be entirely obvious from this photo, but you can sort of see all the different layers of putty and sanding that have gone into making this side the proper shape. Even more work has been done right where a drivers side door would be, if the car had that feature. The next coat of primer will cover up this area so I can figure out where else I need to work.

Lastly, with Gallifrey One nearly upon us, some friends of mine are putting together a little video that is a mashup of Doctor Who and The Big Lebowsky. They needed a Captain Jack Harkness to play the part of Jackie Treehorn (Noted pornographer and producer of fan favorite "Log Jammin'") and who better than me!

It's a bad photo, but you get the idea. As soon as the video is finished and on youtube, I'll be sure to post a link.

Second Torchwood/Harkness Earpiece Identified

Update: I can say with near complete certainty that the earpiece used on the show was the Jabra BT250v. I watched the second episode of season 1 last night, which may be the only place these ear pieces appear, and confirmed that they are indeed entirely black. The picture below, in which it appears to have some grey on it, it merely a trick of the lighting and camera angle.

If you are searching for one, ebay is your best bet as they are fairly plentiful. I accidentally found an item listed under "jabra wave" that appears to be a different product, but uses the exact same shell as the BT250v. There are a couple selling for under 20 bucks right now.

This picture was posted on the RPF shortly after I announced my find of the earpiece used in a Jack Harkness ear piece.

Based on the success I had in my previous hunt, I decided the same methodology was in order. This basically meant using Google image search in combination with Amazon.

The key points I was riffing off from the picture are the three slices in the ear piece along the top of Jack's ear, and the near vertical line on the part under his ear lobe, where it transitions from the ear piece into the mic with the word "Torchwood" on it. Also, I made the assumption that this mouth piece was an add on. You can also see in the picture what appears to be a button on the piece under his ear lob.

A few pages down, I found this image, which looks like it might be the right ear piece, but obviously this was of the opposite side of the thing, and has some minor differences. But I was definitely on the right track.

I zoomed in on the logo and realized it said "Jabra" which helped immensely in my search. Then I just looked for "Jabra blue tooth" on google, and was very quickly led to this picture, which I think is the right one.

This picture comes from this website.

It's not that good of a picture, so it's hard to see details clearly, but all of the tell tale signs are there. The color cannot be confirmed, but it looks pretty darn close.

I've found that there are some non trivial differences between the Jabra BT250 and the BT250v, the main one being the color. I'll need to go and watch the episode that this one appears in to be sure, but I'm feeling very confident that it's one of the two Jabra sets identified here. There's also a BT200 that has the same body shape, and the coloring is different.

I actually like the BT200 the best, but the upper ear piece is not black. Definitely need to go watch that episode.

BT200 at Amazon.

Captain Jack Harkness Earpiece Found Item Identified

A thread got necro bumped recently on the RPF that caught my attention. It was a thread on the construction of the ear piece that Captain Jack Harkness wears on the show "Torchwood." The thread started with a members showing off an excellent hand made replica of the ear piece, which was followed up shortly thereafter with a behind the scenes pic of the ACTUAL ear piece by member RubberToe, who is Nick Robatto, who has made numerous key props for Torchwood and Doctor Who.

Here's a link to Nick's website if you'd like to check out some of his work:
http://www.rubbertoeprops.com/

Here's the pic Nick posted:

I immediately recognized the ear loop as something I had seen before, possibly at work. It looked like the back of a hands free phone set.

Thank goodness for Amazon.com, because after skimming through 9 pages of their head sets I found the one that looked right. Here's a comparison picture showing the Plantronics M220 headset compared to Nick's hero prop:

Clearly, there's no mistaking that this is the right piece. If you want to order one for yourself, so that you can build up your own headset, they are five bucks on amazon. Here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/Plantronics-Mobile-Headset-Phones-Standard/dp/B0001O04SS/ref=sr_1_188?ie=UTF8&qid=1341266111&sr=8-188&keywords=phone+headset

Captain Jack Harkness Costume Is Finished

Cardiff, watch out!

For reference, this is the publicity photo that inspired and guided the costume. I'm not entirely sure if he's wearing grey trousers here, but you get the idea.

We didn't quite get the pose or the camera angle right for this photo, but surely you get the idea.

The Breakdown.

For reference, my goal was not to replicate one of Jack's costumes to perfection. I have found that the art of chasing down off the shelf items, especially ones that are a few years old and were probably purchased in the UK, to be extremely daunting at best, often terminally frustrating. My goal for this costume was to make it look recognizable to the human eye, not a perfect match for screen caps and publicity photos. Note that this is NOT my usual process, but for this iconic costume, it seemed the best way to go.

Jacket - In my opinion, the jacket is the critical component on this costume. If you get the jacket right, the details on the rest of the costume don't matter. The opposite is also true.

From Abbyshot clothiers in Canada. An excellent company to work with, they provide high quality clothing from Movies, TV shows, anime, all kinds of stuff. Their focus was originally on jackets and coats, but they've since branched out. I have purchased a few things from them, and have been happy with their customer service, delivery speed, and quality every time.

http://www.abbyshot.com/

Shirt - From Old Navy. Men's Non-Iron Regular-Fit. I chose "Ink Blue". Jack wears many different shirt and suspender combinations in the show, so you'll need to pick one you like and go from there. I like the navy blue, and this shirt, with the light colored buttons, seems a decent match. It's not perfect, and it's not the same manufacturer as the ones used in the show, but it looks great.

http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=79372&vid=1&pid=897435&scid=897435052

Suspenders - I went with light grey suspenders, as those are the color Jack wears when he sports the navy shirt. Get the button on kind, not the clasp on, or the combo button/clasp. I got mine here:

http://www.bestsuspenders.com/products/Bostonian-Y-Back-Button-On-Light-Grey.html

To attach the suspenders to the trousers, I went to Michael's (My LEAST favorite store) and just grabbed off the shelf a bag of black buttons. They came in a variety of sizes and hole counts. I chose ones that best matched the ones on the pants, though it didn't matter as they would be covered by the belt.

Belt - I am wearing a medium brown belt from Fossil. This was something I had on hand that happened to match some screen caps I found. Someone on LJ sourced the manufacturer of one of Jack's actual costume belts to Belstaff, though I found the belt to be prohibitively expensive for my needs. See the bottom of this post for a link to the LJ article.

Trousers - I actually like nice pants, and I figured I would just buy a nice pair that I would be able to wear even when not in costume. I picked up a very nice pair of Joseph & Feiss pants at Men's Warehouse. They have all the characteristics I was looking for, including cuffs at the ankle, and a nice sharp crease down the front. They are double pleated, which I cannot say for sure are an exact match for Jack's, but hey... they look great! I got mine in a dark charcoal grey, which seem to match some key publicity shots that I found.

Men's Warehouse - Joseph & Feiss slacks

Vortex Manipulator - A good friend and talented prop maker, Kai Norman made this for me. The one in the pictures is a version 1.0 model, with improvements to come. For costuming purposes, I find it to be perfect. It looks great, and is rugged. I know of no other person making replicas of this piece at this time. The one that comes with the Sonic Screwdriver toy from Character Options is undersized, and wrong in details. It's also not leather. Hit Kai up on facebook if you want one.

http://www.facebook.com/KommissarProps

Holster - I found a great place online that sells Webley holsters. The price is very reasonable, and they look great. The downside is that you'll need to dye it darker in order to make it work for this costume. I used a dye and sealer I got from Tandy leather.

http://www.ima-usa.com/british-455-webley-revolver-holster-ww1-ww2.html

Here's a link to an earlier blog post where I give more details on the dying of this holster.

Gun - This is a Webley Mark IV .38 replica from Denix, I believe. The Webley Mark IV .38 is the EXACT gun that Jack carries, so it's nice that there is a commonly available replica out there of the gun. For reference, the holster I purchased is fit for the .455, though I doubt anyone would notice. The downside to this piece is that it's probably not the smartest thing to carry while costuming. I'll keep this on hand for photo shoots only. Please note that Indiana Jones carries the .455, NOT the .38.

Webley Mark IV .38 at Amazon.com

Under Shirt - I got these at Target. Hanes Premium Comfort Flex undershirts. They are not an exact match. The ones Jack wears are a little higher cut, and the collar is a tad thinner.

Boots - Though not screen accurate, I am wearing a pair of Caterpillar Men's Gunnison Boots I purchased from Amazon.com. Jack actually wears Caterpillar Luke boots, but they have become increasingly rare and high priced. I have never even seen a pair for sale in my size, much less at a price I'm willing to pay. However, since the only part of the boot that is visible on the costume is the lower part, what was important to me was the match of the color, the leather quality, and the sole. I feel that the Gunnison boots accomplish this nicely.

Gunnison Boots at Amazon.com

For reference, I'd like to include (and give credit to) a Harkness breakdown I found on Live Journal a while back, which helped guide me on a few decisions. It covers some details that I ignored, and also skips some details that I paid close attention to.

http://estelofimladris.livejournal.com/246603.html

Captain Jack Harkness Vortex Manipulator V 1.0 Is Here

Made by the very talented Kai Norman, you are looking at the Vortex Manipulator that I will be wearing with my Captain Jack Harkness costume this year at San Diego Comic Con, Anime Expo and Dragon*Con.

I'm super happy with this piece, and Kai did a great job. If you'd like to get ahold of Kai to inquire about commission work, here's his facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/KommissarProps

The only thing remaining to do on this costume is get some trousers. My plan is to pick those up a few days before AX, and then sew in the buttons for suspenders. At current, I'm a week into the next round of P90X, and hope to be a few lbs lighter by the time the con rolls around. I'm already down about 20 since I started, so all signs point to WIN!

Harkness Shirt Found and Purchased

I did a little driving around town over the past few days. Went to four different stores looking for a navy or dark blue button down shirt with light buttons. For some reason, this combination is just really hard to find. Go figure. Today, after a frustrating stop at a place that specializes in men's clothing, I gave up and went online. Two links later and I found the PERFECT shirt. It's this one, from Old Navy.

If you need one for your own costume, you can get it here.

For reference, this is the costume I'm going for. It changes from episode to episode, season to season, so I really just had to pick one that I was happy with.

It looks like he's wearing some pretty straight forward dark grey slacks, which will be next on my list.

This is my primary reference picture. Navy shirt, grey suspenders, white buttons, white undershirt. No problem

Nose Cone Work, Metal Supplier Found, and More.

Where to begin! This will be a very meaty post, as a lot went on today, much of it relevant.

First off, I plopped my first coat of heavy build primer onto the nose cone today.

Here's the primer I'm using. I picked this up this morning in Fountain Valley.

I had a phone conversation with a buddy yesterday, and we were talking about materials he was unfamiliar with. I kept saying again and again, the thing you want to do is experiment on a smaller scale. Don't jump straight into the full sized project, start small. Well, with this nose cone, I'm following my own advice. This primer is new to me, as is its application and use. This is why I'm starting small, with the nose cone, to learn all about how to use this stuff. I learned a few valuable lessons today. First, I think the stuff dissolves plastic cups. I mixed up a tiny batch in a plastic dixie cup, and I think it started to eat through it. In the future, I will find a more suitable mixing cup. I'm also not really sure what the mixing ratio is between the paint and the activator, though my assumption was that even if you under-activated, it would cure eventually. I'll need to confirm if this is correct later on tonight, but we shall see. I also realized I don't know what to use as a solvent for this stuff, which I will need in order to clean out my air brush. Oh yeah, that was the other lesson I learned. I figured because I was painting a small piece, I could do it with an air brush rather than my paint gun. Bad call. It took forever, and I don't think I got it on very evenly. No worries at all, as this is purely a test bed. I'm not concerned about doing it wrong here, and that's by design.

Second, I got my portal gun yesterday. I already have a video up on youtube for it, though it's not particularly original. Here's a pic:

Bo The Welder sent me on a mission. We are in the middle of moving the engine, and Bo is going to build new engine mounts. To do that, we need some steel. Box steel, to be precise. I told Bo I knew about a metal store in Irvine, and I would check it out. I had never been there before, but I drove past it every day on my way to my old office. I always wanted to check it out, and this was my big chance.

Obviously, the place is called Industrial Metal Supply Company. Here's a link to their website.

I'm not going to lie, this place is amazing! They had so much great stuff, and the prices were really pretty low, compared to what I've seen online at places like McMaster Carr, which I totally love, mind you. I even asked one of the guys who worked there how they can offer such good prices, and he told me "volume".

They had TONS of remnants there, at wacky low prices. If I ever eventually get ahold of a mill and lathe, I will be buying ALL of my stock from here.

ooooo. Plasma Cutter. Only 1,000 bucks! Might have to get it.

I saw a nice little welding table for 100 bucks there that was practically calling my name. I almost got it right then and there, the only bummer is that I have no place to put it.

Totally unrelated, but this caught my eye at Target. People always ask me if I'm related. I am not.

Lastly, something of a costume update. I got my undershirts for my Captain Jack Harkness Costume. It's starting to look like this is going to be one of my main costumes for both SDCC and DC. It's coming together very nicely, and I think it will look great once it's all finished.

Captain Jack Harkness Holster Finished

Here is the finished holster. The dye didn't turn out perfectly, as it's a little uneven in places, but I think it will suit my purposes just fine. I'm happy with it.

For reference, here's the stuff I used to dye it and then seal it up. I got both of these at my local Tandy Leather store. The one in Costa Mesa, to be precise.

Harkness Vortex Manipulator In Transit

With all of the fun at the recent Gallifrey One Doctor Who convention in Los Angeles, I have redirected some of my attention toward this piece, which has been on my list of things to make for some time now.



Some of the good folks over at the RPF drew up the parts and uploaded them to shapeways a while back, so it was just a matter of going there and ordering the parts. They should be in my hands in a few days.

Then comes the hard part, making the leather bits. I'm thinking I'm going to commission our man Kai Norman to make it for me. Depending on his schedule, I may end up taking a stab at it myself, now that I see how thin the leather involved is. There's a good chance my sewing machine would be able to handle that. We shall see.