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I spended a few months scanning over 60 or so pack PICS into my computer (I made a second trip to DC early in 2000 and took more PICS) and scaling out the pack's dimension out of found objects, such as the crank-knob, resistors, clipards, Alice frames and other parts that I already knew the dimensions to. I made a life-size blueprint of the pack's front, left and right side on trash paper. Every time I got a confirmed dimension, I would climb down from my computer chair to the floor where the blueprint laid and recorded the new found info there. I used many scale rulers. The same rulers used by Architects and designers to turn dimensions into inches and fractions. Sometimes, it was like finding the value of "X" in an algebra problem. I had a MASTER front-shot of the pack saved in my hard drive for everyday use. You would think that was enough to pull out the whole front. WRONG! Perspective is your enemy and a front full shot of NOT reliable. Parts that stick out towards you the most are the ones that will throw you off the most. I had to reinvent the wheel of scaling in many ways. Breaking down the pack to minimize perspective distortion. Sometimes, it was necessary to freeze frame from the movie to come up with a conclusion on angles that were hard to reach. Other times, it was as easy as measurement the width of a resistor and the ion arm under it.
A lot of times, things were not adding-up, fitting in together or just not making sense. I quit the project Every night, and then, the next morning I was back, day after day.
Scaling out the wand was harder than the pack. The wand is so 3-dimentional demanding and there is just so much to consider when replicating the pieces. I made wand blue prints out of my scaling work on more trash paper. I did tons of sketches and schematics on the drawing book I brought with me on the "pack crusade." It was the holy grail diary of the pack project. After tons of reviewed drawings and scaling, final drafts were ready. Some of my measurements did match with Norm's while some others disagreed. And now, for the hard part. Convert the final drafts into a 3D real life pack. Wand and accessories as well.
Everything that could go wrong with this project went wrong. Not only I did things the hard way, many of the things I was making were experimental tryouts that were every time-consuming. I started to sculpt the pack out of Roma plastilina. "It should be easy" I said very naively. I builded a turntable to round sculpt the spacer, base and cyclotron. I figured, once I had those three pieces made, I would sculpt the rest of the pack around it. After wasting many weeks trying to get this to work, I thought I should just use wood and find a shop that can cut round circles for me. That was another bad idea that ate-up more time. I put this section of the pack aside and began on the top.
I used wood coated with joint compound to achieve smooth, round edges just like the real thing. Since I live in a small apartment, I had to walk everyday with my power tools and pack parts to the Pool area to do my heavy sanding work there under the South Florida sun. Sanding box by box to achieve a smooth finish and straight angles here and there.
I coated it all with resin spray. Very toxic stuff, but effective. I made a cyclotron and spacer while watching "trekees" on video one Sunday evening. The pack was off! I felt into an optic illusion trap. The spacer was centered right, but the sides were not fitting together. Like I said before, A full, front shot of the pack can be helpful but not reliable. The front shot deceived me and was no good helping me to solve this problem. The injectors were sticking out too much while the side angle was too Vertical. I had to make new Pack blue prints. I made two pack prototypes in total. One was the original cardboard pack that I restored and a wood one.
I didn't have a lot of space to work with. Only the pavement floor under the stairs outside my door step and I could only use it after 12:00p.m. because the strong morning sun would melt me and before 6 because that's when the next door neighbors arrive from work and they don't wanna see their patio and doorstep made a mess. I always ate lunch at 6:00p.m. Forget about propping outdoors if it rained and I live in South Florida.
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