DareDevil Billy Clubs Version 2.0 Almost Complete

Almost done now! The only task remaining on this project is to zap them with a coat of matte clear, and remove the last little piece of masking tape from the cable.

Here you can see how the clubs looked after the red. I did three light coats, in direct sunlight. I'm completely convinced that a UV blast is necessary to help these Dupli-Color paints cure properly. I tried painting at night, in a warm room, and the paint still went foggy on me. Be careful!

The red I used is just one I eyeballed. It's probably a little bit too dark, but who cares. It looks great. As I mentioned in another post, I'm more concerned with the project being done than it being accurate. This is for a costume, not a display piece.

I didn't photograph the masking off process, as this has been documented thoroughly elsewhere on this blog. I used the low tack blue tape from Home Depot. The most important thing to remember when painting something that is masked off is to do light coats. If you spray on too heavily, capillary action will pull the paint under the tape, at the corners usually, and ruin your paint job. By doing light coats, the paint never accumulates thickly enough on the surface for this to happen.

Here's a close up of one of the tips. I think the silver is a little too bright, and not enough metallic. But again, it's done, so I'm happy with it. The real ones had media blasted tips with polished angel faces, but for my purposes this is totally fine.

Because these came together so fast, and turned out so well, I think I may put together a couple variants of the clubs. In the movie, he not only has the nun-chuck style clubs, but also two separated clubs, and one version where the two clubs are joined end to end to make a longer one. I think I will try to do those two styles also.

Thanks again for keeping up with this blog! I hope you've enjoyed this build.

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.

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!!!!

DareDevil Costume Debut

I had the good fortune recently of being invited to an Avengers themed birthday party up in Los Angeles. Of course, I could not refuse, and this seemed like a great opportunity to field test my new DareDevil costume.

I posted about this costume earlier, but as a reminder it was built by David Pea's UD Replicas up in Canada. The suit is top quality, and fits really great. Sadly, the suits have sold out, and as of this writing, I cannot say for sure if David will ever be offering them again.

The cowl was purchased from Reevz Costumes & Sculpture. He delivered it to me incrediblly quickly, and I'm extremely pleased with the quality. Fans of the movie suit will notice that it is not accurate to the suit, but is more a comic book styled cowl. Of course, I would have LOVED to add a leather cowl with the tinted lenses on it, but with all of the other projects going on right now, I figured this off the shelf solution would work just fine. And it absolutely did. It's a beautiful sculpt, and the color is a very decent match for the UDReplicas suit. It's not PERFECT, but it's very close. With as much experience as I've had with tinting urethane, I'm amazed that it's as good as it is.

The billy clubs were built by me, in one hour, on the evening of the party. I got the invite at about 5:30, and by 6:45 I was on the road to the party. I will make a blog post showing the build shortly.

Overall, the costume was very comfortable, though as would be expected, pretty warm. The cowl was the killer. As it's urethane, it does not breathe AT ALL. The minute you put it on, your head starts sweating. I wore the costume as a complete unit for about 2 hours before taking off the cowl. It's totally do-able, but I'm thankful there was a cooler outside area for the party. I'm not sure how something like this would fare at a daytime event. The left boot continues to dig into the back of my heel, but this is pretty standard for a new pair of boots. I'm glad I've had a few opportunities to wear them lately, as this has helped to break them in. I'm still getting plenty of use out of those Ampoules, which I discovered in France a few years back while hiking. They are a life saver, and no costumer should be without.

DareDevil Cowl Arrives

Shawn Reeves once again hits it out of the park with this beautiful custom sculpt of the iconic DareDevil cowl. Though not sculpted for me personally, this thing fits PERFECTLY. Honestly, I cannot imagine something fitting better than this cowl. An excellent piece of good luck. This really finishes off the DD costume, which means it will for sure be ready for SDCC. If I get really bored, I may even wear it to AX, but I'm not sure.

I still want to get some billy clubs, but worst case I can just saw a couple dowel rods to length and paint them.

If you'd like a cowl of your own, please check out Shawns website, and drop him a line.

http://reevz666.com/#home

DareDevil Belt Buckle Replacement

Today I had some free time and finally got around to upgrading the belt buckle on my UD Replicas DareDevil suit.

For reference, I already have a couple of blog posts about this topic.

DareDevil Replacement Belt Buckle Arrives
DareDevil Belt Buckle Ordered

I started out by drilling out the rivets that were already on the belt.

Here's the first strap with the rivets removed. I used needle nosed pliers to crimp the rivet stem smaller so that it would slip through the hole easier.

I'm using this rivet kit from Tandy. Honestly, I'm not a fan of Tandy products. I feel that they are really geared towards the hobbyist, or home "crafter" type person. Kind of on the same level as Michael's. But hey, that's just like, my opinion, man. As the Dude would say.

And here's a little shot of what comes in the kit.

Here's everything all put into place and lined up. Then it's just a matter of hitting it with a hammer in the right place. If I was doing this pro style, I would have found an arbor press or something so that I could apply pressure smoothly and evenly. But I don't have that, so it was hammer time.

And here's what it looks like all done. Of course, I still need to paint the rivets, but that's the least of my worries.

That's pretty much it!

Here's some links if you want to play along:
Belt Buckle
Rivet Kit

DareDevil Replacement Belt Buckle Arrives

Here's the buckle I'm going to use to replace the one that came with the amazing UD Replicas DareDevil suit.

The metal one on top is the new one. The one attached is the resin one that came with the costume.

DareDevil Belt Buckle Ordered

My UD Replicas DareDevil suit showed up the other day, and I will post pics soon, I promise. In the mean time, I've decided to replace the belt buckle on it. In a totally unrelated item, Art Andrews recently set about finding the buckle to his Storm Shadow costume from the G.I. Joe movie. To his surprise, the RPF identified it in under 8 minutes. I didn't really think much of it at the time, but I read the thread ONLY because Art was raving about how impressed he was by the breadth of knowledge present on the forum.

Fair enough!

So I read the thread, and I guess mentally filed away what the buckle looked like.

A week later, my DD suit arrived and I spied on the belt what I believed was the same buckle. Sure enough, it is. The buckle on the DD suit is a repro, made of plastic. I'd rather have it in metal... and I gets what I wants!!

Here's the website selling the belt and correct buckle:

http://www.wildlandwarehouse.com/wwcatalog/Airlock_Wildland_Belt_P21989C727.cfm

Shipping was 10 bucks, which makes this a pretty expensive belt, but oh well.