DareDevil Billy Clubs Revisitied - Now More Accurate

Many moons ago, I wrote a blog post walking through a very quick and dirty build up I did of some DareDevil Billy Clubs, which I needed to go with a costume.

Check it out here:

Through an unforseen and unexpected twist of events, it has come time to revisit this project, and put together a much more accurate version of these billy clubs.

My goal is still to build them at the "cosplay" level, meaning only that I will not be attempting to make them museum quality. It does not mean that costuming stuff is lower quality, or that less effort goes into it. Only that I will be focusing on a different set of requirements. For example, one of my goals is to make sure that these are robust enough to withstand constant handling, dropping, slipping in and out of the holster, etc. Will this be less work than a museum quality set? Probably not. Will it be a different KIND of work? Absolutely.

I start off with two raw, resin castings of a stunt billy club. The master for these is a made for production piece. This is great because I know it's 100% accurate. The master also serves as great color reference.

I did a bit of clean up on the pieces, but nothing too extreme. Remember, the goal is that these look good in photos, and from ten feet away. This allows me a lot of freedom in the process, and doesn't require that each little bubble be filled, or that the seam be completely cleaned up.

I had to do some serious thinking about how I was going to manage keeping these two clubs together. I ended up choosing some 1/16" cable that I got from home depot. There's some little crimping widgets that I used to form the ends into a loop, which a set screw is threaded through.

To get the set screw into place, I had to drill a hole through the club and tap it. Then I had to drill a hold down the top of the club, through which the cable and newly formed loop would feed.

Though this looks pretty simple, you are looking at the culmination of a few hours of work here.

As of today, that's all the progress I have. I will need to do some more primering on these before painting, but they are almost ready for the next steps now.

UD Replicas Smallville Jacket

When Smallville was on the air, I was a huge fan of this jacket and definitely wanted to get one. There were a couple of alternatives that cropped up over the years. The folks that made the jackets for the show started offering jackets for sale, but at a price tag that was too steep for me. Not saying that it wasn't a fair price, just that it was more than I was interested in paying. There were also a few cosplay companies online and ebay who offered a jacket, though the quality looked extremely questionable.

So it came as a complete thrill, and no surprise, to learn that UD Replicas would be bringing a high quality, affordable replica of the jacket to market. Though they announcement was made after Smallville went off the air (May need some fact checking on that claim - ed) interest still existed for the jacket, especially from me.

Mine arrived just the other day, and as with all of my previous UD Replicas purchases, I'm really happy with it. To my eyes, it's a really well made garment, and looks just like the one from the show. It's a very flattering cut, and looks great when worn.

Please be sure to check out the UD Replicas website at www.udreplicas.com for more information, and a listing of their currently available products.

Doctor Who Bells of St. John Costume

Regular readers of my blog (HI MOM!) will know that I am a stickler for accuracy, terminally so. Which is why it came as such a great surprise to my readers (HI MOM!) that I would be assembling a Doctor Who replica costume under the "close enough" guidelines.

The Horror.

I must confess, I am the FIRST person to run shrieking in terror and agony when I see a "close enough" costume, as they tend to teeter on the "not really at all close, but I'm wearing it anyway" category. Yeah, yeah, call me an elitist snob if you want. It's not about them, it's about me. I just like to get as close as humanly possible to accurate. Granted, that usually forbids me from doing a costume in the first place, but that's an argument for another day.

I am of course a big Doctor Who fan, though I must confess that the Matt Smith years didn't really resonate with me the way Tennant and Eccleston did. No big deal. However, one of Smith's costumes really stuck out in my mind as something that was pretty darn good looking. This one:

I don't know if I've got this right, but I'm branding this one the "Bells of St. John's Costume", though I think it is also lovingly referred to as "7b". Please feel free to correct me if this is incorrect. Some of my good pals in the DW Costume scene have done dead on replicas of this suit, right down to having the various pieces made from the exact same fabric used for the screen used pieces, by the exact same tailors and artisans who made them. That's pretty spot on, if you ask me.

Inspired by their enthusiasm and results, yet deterred by the price tag, I decided to undertake the project on a much humbler budget, keeping in mind the expectation that 99.9% of the people seeing the final result won't know the difference between my "close enough" and the more elaborate "Dead on".

I started with the Abbyshot jacket. Abbyshot has a history of producing amazing pieces that are not only of high quality, but are also pretty accurate. While not dead on perfect, this 11th doctor jacket from Abbyshot comes extremely close to the screen used one, while certainly satisfying the casual fan.

Only a tiny cell phone pic so far, but you get the idea.

The shoes worn by the Doctor in this outfit are hand made by some folks in England. They do happen to offer them for sale, but at a price that is outside of my budget for this build.

Fortunately, this style of shoe is fairly common, if you know where to look. Though the details are not perfect, I feel that this pair of Steve Madden shoes I found on ebay for 40 bucks captures the essence of them.

There was a small split in one of the seams along the wingtip, which I was able to quickly repair with some Barge cement and a sewing needle. Consider me a cobbler from here on out. I also painted parts with some purple acrylic paint from Angelus which I picked up from Sav-Mor Leather, a super amazing place in downtown Los Angeles.

I took this picture without a flash, as WITH it, the purple appears super bright and garish. It's actually a very rich and dark shade of purple. These shoes turned out FANTASTICALLY, and I actually enjoy wearing them as everyday wear shoes. Very posh!

Though probably not obvious, I also replaced the laces. The kind I got are not accurate, but they accurately keep the shoes on my feet.

I got from ebay a decent match for the fob chain that the good doctor wears. Shout out to S. Ricks and his blog for pointing me to this piece.

That's all I have for now. Check back soon for more updates and pictures.

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.

Dark Knight Costume from UD Replicas

This is my second purchase from UD Replicas, and I'm just as happy with this suit as I was with my DareDevil suit. Great work, as always David!

Since this type of suit has already been documented pretty heavily online, I won't really go into photographic detail too much. But it is pretty fantastic.

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!

DareDevil Billy Clubs In One Hour

UPDATE - July 31, 2015 - I have since build a much more screen accurate version of these billy clubs. If you want to check them out, go here:

http://mattmunson.blogspot.com/2015/02/daredevil-billy-clubs-version-20-almost.html

I hate to rush. I also hate to wait. But I think I hate rushing more. Which is why I like to start things like halloween costumes, or con costumes REALLY far in advance. I want them finished WEEKS before the event, so that I don't stress out, freak out, and then make mistakes.

So this is the exception. My friend and fellow Batgirl:Spoiled conspirator Damian Buerer called me at 5:30 in the evening and said "Do you want to go to an Avengers themed party tonight??" Naturally, I did. But I didn't have any Avengers costumes. The only Marvel costume I even had on hand was my shiny new DareDevil suit from UD Replicas. Damian ASSURES me that DD spent some time in the Avengers. Seeing as how he is THE Comic Book Nerd, I took his word for it.

Problem: I have a great costume, but no billy clubs. There's a dude on the RPF who has been working on a VERY excellent budget replica of the billy clubs, of which I will no doubt be acquiring a pair. However, to my knowledge, they are not ready. Even if they were, it's doubtful he would be able to get a pair to me in the next sixty minutes.

Solution: Use whatever you have on hand to build a pair of billy clubs, and quick.

As luck would have it, I had ALMOST everything in my garage that I needed. The other lucky thing is that I live five minutes from Home Depot.

Here's a sneak peek at the final results. CERTAINLY not movie accurate, and borderline cheesy. However, as I suspected, everyone thought they were just great.

It all started with a length of 1" dowel I had in the closet. I held this next to the holster of the DD costume, and roughly guesstimated how long the clubs should be. I wanted them sticking out of the holster, but not too far. I really just eyeballed this. I did not use any reference or anything.

I then took my rotary saw and cut it as close to the mark as I possibly could. I did not square it off, didn't measure. Just held it with my foot against a piece of the car chassis, and sawed. Close enough for costume parties!

I now had my first piece cut. The next task was to cut another piece the same size.

To do this I taped the already cut piece to the uncut piece, and made sure the two ends lined up pretty well.

Then I made another cut, clipping off a tiny length of the original piece, but cutting through the longer stock. I now had two equal length pieces of dowel rod.

I happen to have some grey primer on hand that works really great with wood. It goes on pretty thickly, and dries quickly. Another piece of good news is that it was a very warm, dry day here in Irvine, so paint would be drying quickly. I quickly sanded off any splinters that had shown up around the cut edges of the wood.

I employed one of my favorite tricks for painting things like this. The problem here is that you don't want to have to sit the piece down, spray one side, then flip it over to paint the other. This usually leads to a pretty bad paint job. I like to embed a wood screw in one end, then clamp onto the part of the screw that is sticking out. This means I can paint the entire piece in one pass.

Here are the clubs after a coat of primer. I only had time for one coat! (for those of you that are new to my blog, Yes, that's the batmobile in the background.)

And then it was on to painting! Again, as luck would have it, I had some red paint on hand, along with some silver.

I blasted on two coats of red paint, which seemed like more than enough. Coverage was certainly not perfect. Because of the wood grain, there was still some grey visible here and there. But who cares! I've only got 30 minutes left before I have to leave for the party!!!

The heat of the evening helped the paint dry pretty quickly, and it was then time to work on the silver tips. I stared by using green painters tape to mask off what I thought was a decent length on both clubs.

Then I masked off the bodies of the clubs with some printer paper, which was taped into place using the same painters tape.

Then I hit them with the silver paint.

And FINALLY I was at a point where I had to run to home depot. I wanted to make nun-chuck style billy clubs, which meant I need some chain and a way to fasten it to each club. About 15 minutes later, I came home with this. A six link section of chain, and a bunch of U nails. I don't even know if that's the right word for it, but you can see them right there in the box.

The timing of the Home Depot run worked out great, as it gave the paint time to dry. I peeled off the masking tape. There was of course a TINY little flaw where the paint sank underneath the tape seam, but oh well. (flash forward: guess what? Nobody noticed!!!!!)

I didn't want to risk splitting the wood on the dowels, so I drilled two pilot holes for each nail.

I tapped the nails into place with a hammer, and that was it! All done!!!!

You can see from this pic that the coloring wasn't quite right, but again... nobody seemed to notice!!!!