Here's the setup. It's Halloween. I like William T. Riker. My wife likes William T. Riker. So I decided to take a shot at it. It's not too hard since you can buy the TNG officer shirt at any costume shop and they wore plain slacks with loafers on the show. But I wanted to put some zazz into the whole situation somehow so I decided to mod the phaser.
I got this bad boy at a costume shop online for about 10 bucks. It was actually pretty decent for a crappy plastic cast prop. It has sounds and everything!
The first step was to take it apart. Oh me oh my!
That orange thing is the worst. I can understand putting those on toys that actually look like guns but this is a TNG phaser. It looks like a dead cobra on a good day. Not to say that I don't like it. Either way I had a silver that was pretty close to the original paint so I threw some on to make it match.
I decided that the paint job sortof looked a lot like crap. So I masked off the silver parts to get an even coat of black in all the right places. This took a while but I learned a lot about masking by doing it.
Then I pulled off the cheap little sticker and cut out a window for the LED's with my dremel. I think it turned out pretty good.
Next up was actually getting those LED's up and running. I started this by cutting out 6 slots in some styrene plastic to set them in.
I glued the whole rig up with hot glue to get it set and soldered the leads together.
Here is is after I got everything hooked up.
BTW I used a 9 volt to power these. Don't forget to use resistors!!!
In the end it turned out pretttyyyy good. I put a little switch on the bottom to turn the lights on and off and made it look grimy with some paint. Looks like I just came back from a dirty, sexy away mission.
Dannnng giiiiiiirl them lights look good.
I made a last minute holster out of some styrene and fleece. I started by making a pattern that made no sense than then proceeded to wing it.
After getting the right shape I glued the pieces together to see what I had. It was a box. Sortof.
While making the belt clip I looked down and saw this little guy. I ended up not using it but it still made me laugh. Looks like a shocked whale.
Here it is with the felt glued on and fit to the phaser.
I'll leave you with this rare video footage. A shuttlecraft has been seen in the neutral zone. Shaking it's shit in order to get back home. So moving.
Until next time...
