TARDIS Painting Booth & MattMobile Fenders

When I painted my TARDIS, I did it in my garage. It was a big mess, smelled really bad, and I got blue overspray everywhere. This time around, with the work shop in full swing, we decided to do something different. FULL credit goes to Ewan for coming up with this idea.

My workshop has a big door that opens upward. Ewans idea was basically to attach plastic sheets to the door. That way, when the door opens, a "room" is automatically formed that happens to have one wall open to the outside. You know, fresh air. When we are done for the day, we simply close the door and the room collapses.

Here's how it looks collapsed:

And here's what it looks like with the door open. Pure genius.

Here are some of the results from the painting room.

In unrelated news, work continues on the MattMobile. Here I am working on making the sub-fender uniform.

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.

Sherlock Bits & Pieces

Like the rest of the civilized world, I've been greatly enjoying the BBC series "Sherlock", which recently had its third series. Really fantastic television, if you've managed to be living under a rock for the past few years.

I picked up a few pieces recently that I think are pretty neat.

From Amazon, I picked up a copy of London A to Z. Not entirely sure if this is the right one, but it's iconic enough from the first season episode that it's good for a laugh or two. Something I will probably carry in my pocket when running around in Sherlock garb.

The iconic magnifying glass that Sherlock is seen sporting throughout the series is also available on Amazon.com, though not terribly cheap. Big thanks to the website www.sherlockology.com/ who provided information and links for this piece.

I also wanted to find a Deerstalker. The one pictured here was my first attempt. I believe the supplier of this hat was the same one the Sherlock production used for their third season herringbone hat, but they have since changed the fabric used and it now appears much darker than the one seen on screen. Which is kind of a shame.

After that, I resigned myself to finding one of the more available tweed deerstalker hat, which is the style worn in the first season. Though the one I found is not IDENTICAL, it falls clearly into the "Close enough" category that I'm happy. Which is unusual for me. Not the part about being happy. The part about being happy with a "close enough" alternative.

The big reveal though is still to come. I recently broke down and ordered one of the Sherlock coat replicas from the Celestial Toystore. For reference, these coats are made from the exact same fabric used in the original Belstaff coats, using a pattern pulled from an original coat. CT also provided a few coats to the Sherlock production for series 3. So for my money, this is THE coat to get, barring stumbling upon an original Belstaff.

I'm holding off on posting pictures until I can get some quality shots of the coat in good lighting. I can however confirm that it's an amazing jacket, and you should get one.

Workshop Tour

As of late January, 2014, here's what my workshop looks like:

I set up a welding station by the main door so that some work could be done on the shell supports for the MattMobile.

This table is the exclusive domain of Bo The Welder, my friend and cohort who has been invaluable on many of my projects.

A 2 ton engine hoist, just in case. I actually used this recently to lift the mill onto my workbench.

I build this workbench a few months, and it has since been taken over by my girlfriend, who also happens to be a super talented fabricator and costumer.

You can tell it belongs to a girl because the molds are pink.

Nothing ties a room together like a TARDIS replica.

A pretty good master shot of the workshop, from the back wall looking forward. You can see the Dexter kill room that was the brainchild of my friend Ewan. We set this up to use as a spray booth for his TARDIS build. Works like a frickin' charm.

These are most of my small hand tools and stuff that I use to build smaller things.

This is kind of my wall of supplies. In the boxes are materials, tools, paint... stuff that is used in the creation of all kinds of stuff. A bunch of the boxes on the right hand side are filled with R2 parts and paints.

This is my primary work bench. This is where most of the action takes place, when I'm not working on the car.

The current state of Ewan's TARDIS build.

Another workstation near the front door where I keep my drill press, belt sander, vacuum pump, and some misc supplies.

My lathe is still there too. I need to figure out where that will go.

Lastly, one of the things I love most about the shop... a bathroom!!

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.

Batmobile Fender Work Continues, Tardis Paint

As new years eve rapidly approaches, I'm on a mad man's mission to squeeze out every last ounce of potential productivity in the remainder of 2013. Today also featured a reunion of Team Tardis, an outfit that has been on an unintentional hiatus for the past couple of months. Executive summary: Awesome.

The day started with me tackling the other fender, using the same bondo squish style technique I used the other day on the opposing fender. Same tactic, hopefully the same great results.

Here's what the repaired one looks like, the one I squished yesterday.

This is after a bit of sanding and clean up, where I got rid of all the excess fiber and resin. Overall I am extremely pleased with the results. It still needs a bit of fine tuning around the edges, but it really turned out wonderfully. It was based on the success of this piece that I gained the confidence to tackle the other fender.

Here's another shot of the fender that kind of shows a different view of how the top is now pretty flat. It was NOT like this before I started! I promise you this!!

the other big accomplishment of the day was getting some paint finally laid down on Ewan's Tardis. We had to buy a new spray gun, as mine was pretty well gummed up and we couldn't seem to get it apart to clean it out. A quick trip to Home Depot (and a stop at Five Guys along the way) we were back in business.

We did the roof first, and it turned out really nicely.

We took a calculated risk and kept painting after the sun had set. Mixed results, to be sure. Word of advice: paint in warm weather, and/or daylight.

Despite a few setbacks, overall it was an extremely busy and productive day. Much was accomplished. Even better, once I got home, I sewed up my coveralls. This will no doubt also contribute to keeping me warm during future build days.

Fender Work and Support Boxes

Today was definitely a "two steps forward, one steps back" kind of day. I started out pretty strong by putting another layer of glass on the rearmost support mount boxes. These are right at the tail end of the rear fenders. These should help lift up the butt-end of the shell a little bit, and correct about a vertical inch-worth of sag that is in the kit.

My next task for the day was to build some support lips for the two front fender add-ons. The idea is that I would fix the fenders in place, then go up inside the shell and lay down some fiberglass on top of the fender, thus creating a lip that can be used to secure the fenders to the body. The idea seemed simple enough to me.

I spent a lot of time with my disk sander, dremel tool and coping saw, making sure that the fender fit pretty snugly into the shell. My plan was to use a "bondo squish" style method with some cabosil thickened epoxy resin to fill in the gaps and make them perfect. I got the drivers side all figured out, clamped in, and laid in some fiberglass.

Then I switched over to the passenger side, and that's when things kind of fell apart. What I realized is that not only are the two sides of the car asymmetrical when it comes to the front fenders and headlight recesses, but also that the fender extensions are VERY wonky. They are not flat on the top, nor are they flat on the bottom. Flat on the bottom I can deal with, as nobody will ever see that. But not flat on the top is a problem, as that effects the way the fender fits into the shell, and it will also be visible. I quickly pulled out the drivers side fender addition and wiped off as much fiberglass resin as I could find. NOT a fun process.

The next step was to create a flat top surface for the passenger side fender. I did this by again doing a bondo-squish method. I laid some wax paper down on my work bench ( a pretty darn flat surface. Well, flat enough for my purposes) and first put down some epoxy resin with a few strips of matting. The matting was cut to roughly cover the most drastic void on the fender.

I then mixed up a big batch of resin and put LOADS of cabosil in it, turning it into a thick paste. I laid this down on the wax paper, on top of the fiberglass I had already set down, and built it up into roughly what I beleived to be the shape of the void on the fender. Then I pushed the fender down on top of it. SQUISH! The thickened resin filled the void perfectly and completely.

In this picture you can really see how big of a void there was to fill. A bit more than a quarter of an inch in its worst places.

Now I just need to wait until the resin cures, and I can pull the fender off the table, sand it down a bit, then try attaching it to the body again.

Overall a very busy day, and a lot of really good experience. BUT not the amount of progress I was hoping for.

MattMobile Update - Support Boxes and Misc.

Lots and lots and lots of stuff has happened since my last blog post. If you have not been following my youtube videos that document my build up, that might be a good place to start. Much of what is contained on this page is duplicated in the videos. But then, there's also some new dope here :D

Links to the latest videos will be at the bottom of this blog post.

First up, let's take a look at how the shop looks recently.

The main things worth noticing here are the fact that the shop is pretty clean, and I have organized all of my white boxes and tools and stuff along the back wall.

My three primary projects are pictured here. You can see the Tardis, the Harley, and the Batmobile. I took this pic shortly before I repositioned the batmobile into its current resting place.

The big push this month has been to get the shell mounted on the body. To do this, I built these Bo-designed boxes for the inside of the shell. The idea is that we glass these into the shell, then build out metal support arms that go from the shell to the underside of these boxes. In between the box and the arm will be a rubber bumper.

This picture shows very clearly how the boxes have been installed into the frame. The one at the top of the picture is the most recent one I installed, and the one at the bottom was the FIRST one I glassed in. It certainly appears that along the way, my technique improved greatly.

Glassing in those front boxes was NOT glamorous work. In fact, it was pretty excruciating. Getting inside the car and up under the hood with only a tiny bit of room to crawl around was physically pretty daunting. Thank goodness I'm not claustrophobic. In order to do my work safely, I was wearing safety goggles and a head lamp, and I would often wear a respirator. Pretty snazzy outfit!

Few things better than having a girlfriend around the shop not only to provide assistance, but also to take pics of me when I'm unable to.

If you want to see some of Jackie's projects, check out her facebook page here:
https://www.facebook.com/HappyGoJackie

Even better, check out some of the Smosh videos she is featured in:

I had to make sure the shell was positioned VERY precisely on top of the frame, so that when we mount the arms to the boxes, it's in the right position. It was a very laborious task. Here you can see where I've put a level on the hood of the car to make sure it sits properly. Pretty darn close!

I also built a new work bench along the way.

Work was interrupted for a while with a trip to NorCal, where we drove through some red wood forests, and also saw a pretty amazing sunset.

I actually put a video of this sunset on youtube, so be sure to check it out!

One of the tasks I need to attend to shortly is the chopping off of the top of that metal post that runs vertical to the frame.

It can (and does) get pretty cold in the shop this time of year. Here, Jackie is demonstrating a new technique she is experimenting with in order to stay warm.

A recent trip to Harbor Freight yielded this cart, which has already earned its money by keeping my welding torch and related supplies well organized and mobile.

This picture shows an example of the stacks of wood I am using to temporarily position the shell at its desired height.

Lastly is the most recent picture of the car. You can see blue tape all over the place where I have made notes about the height of the car.