Sunday 13 February 2011

the finished thing


These are the photos of the almost finished jetpack, there are a few things that I rushed towards the end of the day, I will re make these parts and finish it for the presentation and for a photo for my portolio.

the last few things

A gold and brass paint job, the paint I used was plasticote, this may be ok for doing RC car models or painting model railways, but I regretusing it on my model, especially the gold, the paint has a very shiny finish and because of this it needs hours and hours to dry properly, I didnt have hours and hour so the paint has been dulled by fingerprints, cloth imprints etc etc.
I was looking through some of the drawings I had done earlier in the project and had realised that some of them had swirls and filigree on the birds to indicate feathers but not realistically. I really liked the idea of this and set about drilling the designs out, In this photo, the lines in white are unpainted and the brown lines are the finished lines. I really like this improvement as it gives more detail to them and also makes them look more feminine.

The next things to go on were the wings, I hade made these from the same material as the harness, not only beause I had lots left but It would tie the jetpack in nicely with the harness. I used contact adhesive to attach the wings.


the jetpack is comeplete, now to attach it to the harness, im just going to screw through the harness into the jetpack, and i've made a small wedge at the base of the jetpack to point the exhaust away from the wearer.


Friday 11 February 2011

Lathing the gauges

the start if the largest gauge, the chest gauge, made from a large bar of alluminium
after facing off the exess material, I set about making the angled im around the egde

next I bored out a large hole, this will help when it comes to boring out the whole cavity of the gauge
I used this boring tool to work from the inside if the hole that I just drilled, working from the inside to the outside of the gauge

 Finished shaping the gaug now, just parting off to do, I repeated the steps to make this gauge for the next one also


Thursday 10 February 2011

attaching the birds to the rocket

I've almost finished the jet pack now, I'm going to screw the rocket to a back plate and then the birds to the back plate.
going to surform the birds sides so that they fit snuggly onto the rocket

using a curved surform I made the profile of the rocket

I then set out to making the backplate
I've design the shape of this to give enough strength but to minimise weight and space. I also gave it a stylish flair so it doesnt stick out from the jet pack design

just placed the back plate over the rocket and birds to see where to attach it

I first screwed the rocket to the backplate as that is the center piece and the birds would attach to that

screwed the birds on with some long screws, I used three to optimise strength as the foam and plaster isnt really a strong material to screw into.

view from the top of the jetpack, this is looking pretty good now

because the foam and plaster isn't ideal to screw into im applying a few layers of fibreglass to strengthen the part im screwing into

im going to leave it over night to set then i'll sand it and re drill the holes tomorrow

I probably should have taken a few more pictures to explain what this is, the fire extinguisher is on a wall mount like this

image 170
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=fire+extinguisher+mounting+bracket&view=detail&id=AB2DB8DB95EC90D15C57847FB9310F4B17DBFF9F&first=1&FORM=IDFRIR the bracket I have has three holes for screws to mount it to a wall or inside the rocket, but I couldnt get a screw driver in the tube to screw it in, so I drill holes in line with the mounting bracket, then I screwed the bracket on and filled the drilled holes back in with car body filler, i'll sand it back to the surface of the rocket to hide to holes.

Wednesday 9 February 2011

The day my camera batteries were flat

I didnt realise untill I came to take a picture that my camera batteries had run out of juice, this was very annoying.
What I got done today:
  • sanded the additional filler I applied the night before
  • Screwed the birds on again, throught the fibreglass that I applied yesturday
  • drilled a hole in the rocket for the pressure gauge pipe 
  • drilled and cut a hole for the pressure gauge housing to sit in
  • pirimed the jetpack and most of the smaller items that I'll be attaching to the hand control
  • sprayed the jetpack and fittings with gold and brass paint
  • made milliput wing bones to later tonight attach the leather feathers to
I will get some more batteries later tonight and upload an image or two of the jetpack as it is now, and some more images of the progress I make tonight also.

The wings that I'm going to make will be made from the same leather that I made the harness from so that they fit the colour scheme of the jetpack and because I still have quite a bit of it left over.

The wings will be made up of individual feathers and then sewn into a sheet of feathers that I will attach to the wing bones, making these wings was going to be left out but I'm not keen on the look of the jetpack as it is now as it seems very plain and boring so these wings will make it seem much better.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

testing the trigger mechanism

Ive decided that tonight I'm going to go ahead and finish the trigger so i'm going to test the trigger mech to see if and how well it works,



I think it worked really well, only took one test so I'm pleased with that, I also liked the sound that the extinguisher makes when firing the powder out, it almost sounds like a thruster, The width of the jet is good and the amount of powder in the extinguisher is enough to take a few photos.
Im going to attach the trigger and cable to the finished jetpack by drilling a hole through the jetpack and making loops inside the harness for the cable to go through

Friday 4 February 2011

the hand control

so I've started to collect things to make the control, including this old bicycle break leverm im using this as it is vintage and simple so that there isnt much that can go wrong with the mechanism.
I've attached it to this piece of pipe just to show how it will work, im going to use a thicker handle on the final one though as the space between the handle and trigger is uncomfortable.
Im using a handle from a small paint roller as the base for my handle, Ive stuck the lever to the handle with milliput, im going to sand thge milliput smooth when it sets, then make a leather handle grip to cover the majority of the plastoc handle and some of the lever body,

to make the trigger work im using a number of components from a bike break system, this is a cable grip bolt, the cable goes through that small hole, then a washer goes on then a nut to clamp the cable in place, but since this bolt isnt going to be on a break arm, im having to make the section with the hole thinner so the nut can screw all the way upthe bolt,

using a grinding disk on my dremel tool I grinded away some of the bulk material.

once I had it the right  thickness the nut was able to fasten all the way up to the wire making it secure to attach to the fire extinguisher,


The harness

Since I've made the maquette harness and now ave my fabric I'm gonna get started with the harness.
drawing out the pattern with tailors chalk, adding a border round it to allow for seams.

once I cut them out I layed them all out , this is what it looked like


after sewing all the pieces together I added the belt straps, I sewed them like this so that it not only gave the harness structure but I really like the look of this.
the inside looked like this below

I had to be really careful when sewing throught the belt, I snapped 4 machine needles in total for the harness, and one almost went in my eye. Might be a good idea to wear goggles next time I sew through belts or other thick stubborn materials.

this is a view from the back of the harness, this is only the outside ply, im also going to sew an inner ply in anoter colour material, see howthe belts add detail to the harness, im going to use more belt on te fron parts to also make the front as riggid as the back but also to add detail to the front.

the harness is almost done, it has taken quite a lot of work to get it to this stage and am quite pleased with it so far
luckily I was able to disassemble the belts to individual pieces, this would make the straps neater and would be easier to atachthem to the harness.