I am going somewhere with this, stay with me for a moment.  In the 1980s, where I spent my formative years, there was a kids’ cartoon that I really liked, it was the must see event of the week and it had the world’s best theme tune – or at least me and my mates thought so and you’d often hear me humming it on the way to or from school until I got to the main chorus at which point I’d go into full club mode and belt out the words at full tilt.  The cartoon was, Ulysses 31 and whilst dredging through You Tube to find a decent quality upload of the theme in stereo, I stumbled upon this rather funky remix by someone called Teezo.

Large speakers please, turned up to 11, if you will.  Listen to the build up at the start, amazing.  Unfortunately the last 30 seconds is a bit of a let down, but other than that, this is a great rendition and stays very true to the original – which is a given seeing as it’s sampled all the way through.  Anyway kids, this is what your Dad liked when he was a bit older than you are now.  Oh, and in case you are wondering, the live action bloke that appears with the puppet is Philip Schofield, he was the continuity announcer who introduced each programme from “The Broom Cupboard” at BBC Television Centre.  Those were the days.  Just you wait until I find a decent Inspector Gadget video…

It’ll be Mana’s fifth birthday in April and preparations are already well underway for it, she’s going to have her first proper birthday party – with lots of her friends at a fun venue that her Mother has just booked.  Usually it’s just us; Mum, Dad, the Birthday Kid and their sibling all sat around our dining room table eating cakes that are so sweet that they could easily give you diabetes if you ate too much, by which I mean more than a single mouthful. 

Hopefully she’ll love it and if I remember my first birthday party correctly, that was also when I turned five, I think my second (and last) was when I hit ten.  That was interesting because one of my friends, Harry, fell into the ground level pond in the garden.  It was covered in a particular type of weed that packed itself in so tightly that it could easily be mistaken for moss covered rocks, alas that’s just what he did and of course he thought he could run over it.  Subsequently found himself swimming with the fishes… in the literal sense, not in the deathly fashion, of course.  That would have been a bit of a downer on the party mood if he did manage to croak it in 18″ of water.  Hmm, maybe this is why I never had another party after that.  I must ask my Mother.  I wonder if I were to drop subtle hints, like writing about it on my blog, that someone may get the idea to arrange a surprise party for my mile stone birthday that’s coming up in a few years time… who knows.

There seems to be a lot of hyperbole surrounding this particular prop, as well as some disinformation being bandied around, for reasons known only to those who are doing it, so with luck, we’ll be able to put the myth to bed and bring out the facts.  There’s not much to say about it to be honest as it’s pretty straight forward.

The main issue is that Jon Pertwee’s key was supposedly a hand made, one off item that was then remade in a simplified manner that lacked certain details for when Tom Baker took over the role.  This is, to be brutally frank, utter nonsense and anyone who tells you otherwise does not know what they’re talking about.  Both keys were identical.  Yes I am aware that people have doubted me in the past when I’ve said this, so here below is a nice little picture montage to prove that I wasn’t speaking from whence the sun doesn’t shine… I’ve had to use public domain images to illustrate this as I’ve been banned from using other images that I have.  Typical really, but there you go.

They say that a picture speaks a thousand words, so this ought to prevent me from having to write yet another of my weighty tomes.  The bottom line is this; both keys were cast out of a mould (and both props show many signs of this) so therefore we can safely say without any doubt that Jon’s TARDIS door key was identical to Tom’s TARDIS door key.

The colour pictures are from an eBay auction dating back to the mid 2000′s when Jon Pertwee’s personal key was put up for sale by a fan who had bought it directly from the man himself.  I don’t know who this was and to be honest, for this blog entry, it doesn’t matter either.  The black and white images are both cropped from high resolution publicity images taken during two of Tom Baker’s early stories; “Genesis of the Daleks” and “Terror of the Zygons” respectively.  You can clearly see Tom’s costumes from those stories behind the key, in case you have any doubts.  So, what can we draw from this?  Quite simply, both props were identical – as I’ve now said three times.  Maybe I’m trying to really stress the point, either that or I’m so bunged up with the flu that I’m forgetting what I’ve already said and am just repeating myself.  It’s most likely the latter. 

In the late 1970s or early 1980s, Jon Pertwee loaned his personal screen used key to the president of the Jon Pertwee Fan Club, a chap named Stuart Money, so that duplicates could be made and offered exclusively to the members of this society.  The reproductions were cast in silver (or at least a silver alloy), rather than the dulled tones of the likes of pewter and such like.  Although a number of these are known to still exist, they very rarely ever surface, though one appears to have been included in the Doctor Who Experience exhibition in London.  Who that one belonged to, I have no idea.  Strangely though, those who own the copies tend to not want to talk about the piece, especially the detailing on the rear.  Well stuff that, feel free to look at it in all it’s glory!  Hmm, I’m sure I’ll get flak for this from disgruntled key owners.  It’s a chance that I’m willing to take.

And that is about it.  Told you that there wasn’t much to say about it.

If anyone wants to make a perfectly accurate replica and thinks of doing a run of casts, (it will not surprise me if I see them on eBay with the original rear detailing now included in the coming months) do think of me as I wouldn’t mind one myself – I’ve been meaning to do it myself for years, but I never quite got around to it.  Life always got in the way.

So long then and enjoy!

Right now, we’re in a period of flux; there are items coming up that may impact our future, plus the kids are going through a stage or two in their development, some good and some not so good, depending on how you view it.  Last time I told you how Mana had chicken pox, well now Alex has it too and he’s got it far worse than his sister had.  I say had because she’s healing really well now almost to the point that the scabbing is starting to come away.  Give it a few weeks and you’ll never know.  Probably.  Alex on the other hand is absolutely covered from head to toe, even in his mouth and around his eyes.  Poor little bugger.  He often comes up to me wanting me to itch his back for him and he just cuddles into my arms while I oblige him.  Still, he’s coping with it very well, just like his sister did.

What do your kids get up to when you’re not looking?  I often wonder about that and the other day, when it went a bit quiet, suspiciously quiet, I decided to pop up stairs and have a look.  Oh dear…

The picture above just about sums it all up, there was shaving foam everywhere -  all over the bathroom, in the sink, on the walls, the toilet, the floor and themselves, you name it, it was probably slathered in the gunk.  I just walked in and then walked straight out and refused point blank to clean it up.  It’s their creation, they can deal with it and rightly so.

For quite a while now, Mana has been asking for a bunk bed so that she and Alex can share a room together.  Well, Mum finally took the initiative and bought one and I put it together.  That in itself was a bit of a task – as all these prefab items are.  Going by the book, I assembled it as instructed, however, there was a problem, some of the bolt holes didn’t quite line up perfectly and my only option was to assemble the bunk in a slightly adhock manner… this is fine for the moment, but if we ever have to take the bed down to move it anywhere, I know I’m going to have a small problem because one part jammed solidly into another part and try as I may, I couldn’t get them to separate again.  Oh well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So then, the kids are loving the experience and our room is rather quiet now without Alex farting and snoring throughout the night.  Occasionally he does come back to his old bed, so we’re slowly making the transition between the old and the new.  Give it a week or so and he’ll have permanently moved into the other room.  Our little darlings are growing up. 

Just like the rest of the UK, we’ve had snow.  Yaay.

…And of course we had chaos on the roads.  Quite why folk fly into a panic when they see the white stuff, I have no idea.  All they seem to do is think that if the stamp the pedal to the metal, they’ll be okay in their cars.  Then they wonder why they’re wheel spinning and losing control, crashing their vehicles into each other, the curbside and whatever buildings happen to be near them.  Me, I just take it easy and progress with no issue.

The other thing to happen when a single snow flake dares to touch the ground is that the schools immediately close.  At least because of this we finally got to use something that we bought just before the last winter… in which we had no snow at all.  Typical.

Weeeeee!  Mana loved it…

…As did Alex.  They even made a couple of snowmen, despite the -8°C temperature outside.  I can’t think why, but the snowman in the picture on the right there was dubbed, “The Snow Winkle” and even got its own song to the tune of “We’re walking in the air.”  Some people can be very childish!  Can’t think who though.

When we got up this morning, Ines noticed that it was colder than usual and so checked the temperature outside, it was a staggering -17.8 °C (0.04 °F), though when I went out to see for myself to take a photo, it’d warmed to a balmy -17.2 °C (1.04 °F).  Nice.  I also noticed that the steam from the air vent on the front of the house had immediately frozen to the wall, you don’t see that very often.  Turns out, we are the coldest place in the UK at the moment.  It’s a claim to fame, I guess, as far as “The Big Freeze” goes.

Non weather related stuff now.

My mate Simon (and his wife) were the subject of a one hour long documentary on Channel Four the other day where some architect and a bunch of historians followed his progress as he restored his 15th century castle.  Restoration Man, if you’re interested.  As usual, there was the obligatory shot of one of the Daleks that he built for Doctor Who, plus they visited his parents’ house where they filmed “Tooth and Claw“ and whatever the Agatha Christie episode was called… “The unicorn and the wasp” I think it may have been.  It was a laugh and they came across really well.  Wish I was able to have recorded it though.  Never mind.

Speaking of Doctor Who, my Mother has been commissioned to knit a season 18, 4th Doctor scarf for a well known bod from the world of WHO.  That sounds like fun, hopefully I’ll be able to get some pictures to show of her progress.

What else has been going on?  Oh yeah, there’s a few meetings coming up that may lead on to some work for me, one of which will have quite an interesting outcome if it goes our way.  I’ll let you know if all that pans out.  Speaking of such things, I’m off for a sort of informal chat on Monday about building some props for a couple of programmes.  Again I don’t want to say too much in case it goes no-where, but fingers crossed, though as usual, I’m not holding my breath as this sort of thing can be rather flakey.

I’ve been noticing over the last few months that this blog gets a lot of traffic because folk are Googling questions like;

The difference between the 9th and 10th Doctor Sonic Screwdriver
Sonic Screwdriver history
Purple Sonic (What?)
Buy a PurpleBlancmange Sonic Screwdriver (Um, there’s no such thing)
TARDIS Door Key (both varieties)
TARDIS Paint

And so on.

It makes me wonder what the hell is going on, maybe I should do a few dedicated entries on some of this stuff if people really are that interested.  All that is for the future though, I can’t be arsed with it right now.

That my friends is about it for today, I’ve had enough and the kids are at large.  Need I say more?

And to give you a better idea of what we’ve done…

All this happened about a week ago when agents of the London 2012 Olympics Committee informed us all that they no longer thought that views around London’s current location was suitable enough for such a prestigious event and so the decision had been made to relocate everything (lock, stock and barrel) to a new venue with a much nicer vista, in this case, the sea. 

Don’t worry, where we now are is absolutely fine, there was nothing really much here before, just Norfolk and Suffolk and all they were, were just boring flat fields and estuaries with nothing much of any importance on them anyway, so no harm done.  So, if you have my home address in your books, fret not, it’s still the same - more or less as we even took our complete road system, general infrastructure and houses along too, almost lost St. Paul’s along the way, but that’s another story.  All you have to do now is just scribble out my old Post Code and replace it with; IP12 4FS.

Sorted.  Respect is due.  (I would be mightily impressed if anyone knows what that sly reference is from.)

What else then has been going on since we last spoke?  Other than the news of our move.  Well, my wife went over to Munich for a few days on business and left me as a responsible and well meaning adult to look after the kids – and what could possibly go wrong? 

As usual, I ran the school run with military precision and got them in to the right places slightly earlier than they normally would – purely because I take no shit from them or from anyone else for that matter; get up, have breakfast, get washed, get dressed – get in the bloody car and then do battle with the arseholes on the road who seemingly got their driver’s licence out of a cereal box.  One day I’ll do a drive around town video and show you precisely what I keep moaning about, but that’s for another time… when I work out how to do it.

Everything was going swimmingly when Alex started with the sniffles, of course he was fine, but when it got to me, I received full blown man flu and ended up pretty much unconscious for a couple of days.  Luckily for the most part, the kids were at school for all that.  Then Mana came down to me one evening in a right panicked state and showed me her belly.

Oh and very much dear.  Unclean!  Unclean!  Houston, we have a problem.  Chicken Pox, quick, run away!  Actually, despite the severity, even having a huge one on her eye lid, right where the eye lashes emerge, she’s coped with it really well and as I type this, it’s slowly disappearing.  Still, it’s given her a few days off school which has made her happy.  Now, when will Alex break out in them? 

So, given all this, I felt not so bad about having not done any of the washing up while the wife was away… at least I cleaned up the conservatory (without being asked to, I might add) and got rid of 90% of the crap in there which means that we can now walk around freely without the fear of knocking over towers of junk and prop parts.

Everything is pretty much back to normal now.  I’m working on some rough thumbnail proposal designs for a client, in between that I’ve spent a few days mathematically plotting out the dimensions to the Series Four TARDIS prop.  That was a right bugger as I was missing 3mm from somewhere and it took 5 pages of calculations, testing out multiple possibilities as to where they could have gone and it even got to the point that I was starting to think that somehow space-time was bending to produce wrong numbers, then I found them hidden away as a series of 6 half millimeters, so I dragged them out kicking and screaming and put them into their rightful place.  Grrrrr!

A couple of amuzing videos now.

What’s Ferris Bueller, Matthew Broderick, up to these days?  Well let’s see…

And what happens when you mix a childrens’ TV show with a classic Sci-Fi / Horror movie?

Lee Hardcastle who originally made this has run into some legal issues and has been made to take the video down, though someone else took the liberty to re-upload it and make themselves a bit of cash along the way.  Some people eh?  This is the only way that I could show you his work – skip the ad at the start though.  Yeah, stick it to The Man!  Right on, Bro.

And on that bumshell, I think we’re all up to date.

Have you ever really wanted to splash your own hard earned cash on something, but deep down you knew that the object of your desire was so trivial that it made no reasoned sense whatsoever to justify the expenditure?  Well, I’m currently in that very situation and have been for some considerable time now.

So what am I talking about here?  Bottom line is this; it’s a glorified torch (flash light) that does nothing more than look pretty for the princely sum of $4000 or in English, about £2600.

And this here is the object of my current infatuation. 

I know I’m being stupid, I know that there are far more important things that this kind of money could be directed to; stuff that is useful, has a point or could satisfy a dilemma or a need that the family could well be in or have, but this does none of those things.  It would be a trinket to sit on a shelf and get looked at, other than that, it serves not a single, useful or functional purpose other than to be what it is – a Sonic Screwdriver prop.

But what a prop it is!  Come on, it’s made by Nick Robatto who made the originals for the show and he’s doing it to the same spec too, more than likely using the same materials, tools and resources as those used in the tv hero props – you just cannot get more authentic to the originals than this!!!  These pieces could more or less be a Sonic that had somehow managed to wander straight from the set in Cardiff and miraculously become trapped in a display cabinet at your house.

But it’s the price.  I could not justify it.  Trust me, I have tried this with all who would listen.  I’ve even thought about how I could get the money for it – if I had a Grandmother, I would probably sell her to get this, but no, it’s not to be… I don’t even own anything of worth or of similar value to sell to help me raise that kind of capital.  It’s a constant dead end and that really should tell me something; this is a pipe dream, it’s never going to happen.  Even my wife says that I’m crazy by merely considering it and worse still, I completely agree with her.  What am I thinking?

I know what I’m thinking.  That this is one of those rare chances to get something that is more than just a little bit special and they don’t come along every day.  How often would you get the chance to own a famous prop, made by the original maker, knowing that there will only be 25 of these made available to the public?  Once in a blue moon, I guess.  This is one of those moments and I have to be realistic.  No matter how much I want or desire it, the bottom line is that it’s a very expensive stick with a light on the end and what use is that?

Bollocks.

Okay, Nick is piggy backing QMx’s license to release this due to the supposed popular demand, so it’s not actually something that they are making, he is, and QMx themselves say that they will release their own version at a later date (which will probably be around the time that Hell freezes over), but for me, that just doesn’t have the same appeal – it doesn’t cut the mustard, it’s an Also-Ran.  I want a Sonic crafted by Nick-Sodding-Robatto.  Apologies to Nick there, but you get my point, hopefully.  How weird does all that sound, next you’ll find me hiding in the bins at Nick’s house on the off chance that he may accidentally throw one away.  Yeah…

You know what?  It’s probably for the best that I stop talking about this and put it out of my mind.  Writing this blog entry has helped with that to a degree, now I can set myself free and think about other things.  Useful and meaningful things – that actually do something and have a purpose…

… Arse.  I still want that damned thing!  Anyone want to lend me the cash?  No?  Okay.

Now where’s my A to Z of Cardiff?

Although I think these films are fantastic, and yes – including the new one, I’m not much of an expert in the field of the props used in the four movies.  About the only thing that I do know is that Indy’s hat is the exact same make and model as that donned by Tom Baker as the 4th Doctor Who… it’s a Herbert Johnson’s “Poet” hat.  The only difference is that Indy’s version had been given the “Dimension Cut” on the brim, shorter on the sides and longer in the front and back, while Tom’s was the same width all the way around.  If we really want to get anal about this, Herbert Johnson didn’t actually make the hats at all back then (as is widely believed), no, they bought them in wholesale from Christies and rebranded them with their own logo.

Anyway, we’re straying from the point now, so let’s get back to talking about shooty things.

This is the kit.  It arrived about a month or so before Christmas and the plan was that I’d make a start on it in the spring when the weather warms up a bit, but seeing as it has been so mild of late, I thought that I could just crack on with it regardless.

Now this kit really has nothing much to it, it’s a straight forward assemble, paint and weather job and I know damned well that my mate could have done this himself with ease, but the issue was that he was too close to it.  He feared that somewhere along the lines that he might balls the prop up and so rather than carry on with that hanging over him as he did the work, it was far easier for him to let go and get someone else to do it for him… me.  Fair enough.

Despite the simplicity of this kit, it did have a number issues that needed addressing.  I won’t slag the maker off because on the whole it’s not too bad, in fact I’d go as far as to say that it’s actually rather nice, though I will say that his excellent castings were let down mainly by two important factors.  Firstly his sloppy prep work when he remoulded the original Webley; where he’d plasticined in all the voids to allow for the moulding process, if he’d just spent a little more time smoothing all this out, there would have been little to no work required on the finished casts to rid them of the multitude of “blibbles” and lumps inherent in the captured plasticine.  The other main issue was that the handle grips were completely misshapen, one had shrunk by a considerable amount, while the other had twisted and warped to the point that neither would sit correctly on the handle.  In fact one of these grips, the warped one, seemed to have somehow grown in the casting process as it was clearly larger than the handle that it was to sit on!  Odd.  Very odd in deed.  Again, all this could be sorted and it wouldn’t be a major problem at all.

The bottom line with this kit was that both I and my mate knew that it could never be made to look absolutely perfect or pristine as there were several large areas of imperfections in places that neither my files, nor sand paper, not even my various fine tipped dental tools could reach in to and so it was decided that so long as it could look great on a shelf or in a display cabinet, then fine… getting up close and personal with it would reveal the inaccessible blibbles.  Thankfully the worst of these were on one side only, just around the “revolving” chamber, so it could always be displayed with that side facing inwards.  A trade off, but what could we do?  Very little.

Stage One:  Sanding and Filling.
As usual with most cast up kits, the first thing that you will want to do is rid it of any seam lines, air bubbles, areas of coarseness (the blibbles that I mentioned earlier) and any other ugly lumps or defects.  For this you will need a sharp modeller’s knife, sand paper, wet or dry paper, a sanding sponge, a flat file, a needle nose file, a rotary tool (Dremel or similar) and some filler.  I also used a number of dental tools to get into those hard to reach areas where the files were too big.

Having gotten rid of all the two part mould seam lines (that encircled the entire gun) by drawing the sharp edge of my modelling knife along the seam at 90 degrees to the direction of travel, I then sanded the offending area smooth and proceeded to use the sanding sponge to give the gun body a polishing once over to even out the surface and tidy it up.

I could now direct my attention to sharpening up some of the lost detailing that had been obliterated by the plasticine work, see the image above.  I should mention here that this shot was taken during a break from the work being carried out.  Although fiddly and rather boring, it was simply a matter of using the needle nose file to grind back the blibbles and then apply pressure with the dental tools in a similar grinding motion to that as used with the file, into any of the “joins” to redefine those detail areas.  Working slowly at it, the results were worth it, I feel.  In the case of the larger lumps, I turned to using the rotary tool with a fine sanding drum attachment to get rid of the main bulk, followed by the copious usage of sand paper and much grunting like a not so coy porn star.

For the handle surface where the grips were to be placed, this required a certain amount of flat sanding with a coarse grit sand paper that I’d temporarily stuck to my work desk.  This would later allow the grips to sit home on the level when they’re added to the prop.  Sticking the sand paper to the table also facilitates an even amount of pressure to be applied during the sanding procedure, thusly creating a perfectly flat result.  No half cocked and wonky surfaces here!  I also used this method to sand the rear of the grips too.

The gun’s trigger, by its very nature is quite thin.  For something cast in metal, this would be fine, but for a resin prop, this would make it very prone to snapping and so the kit maker quite rightly elected to mould it with a built up area at the rear of the bottom end to support it, circled in blue above… after my work on it.  Again though, the prep work on this was quite bad, in fact it looked very crude and so this would need some attention.  I simply used a long, thin strip of sand paper and gripped this between my thumb and forefinger of both hands to sand it back and forth in a similar fashion to that of someone polishing up your shoes with a rag.  Obviously I had no hand free to hold the gun, so I held it between my knees.  Needs must and all that.

Once the grips were at a point where they were clean enough (shapewise) to be stuck to the main body, I did so by carefully using a sparing amount of Araldite adhesive and pressed the grips into place.  I then clamped them down while the glue cured, being careful not to crush any of the detailing in the surface of the casts.  The only issue that I had with these grips was that I noticed that they contained areas of uncured resin, possibly caused by a bit of dampness getting into them during casting process or the mix not being done thoroughly enough.  Either way, all I could do to remedy this was to dig out the offending area and back fill it.  Thankfully, there wasn’t much of this to do.

Now that the grips were stuck fast, all that remained to be done with them was to run the final sanding pass to shape them perfectly with the main handle.  More grunt work with the sand paper and some minor filling was required here.

As always with filler work, it’s best to apply a little amount and build it up over a short period of time.  I’ve seen many folk absolutely slather their prop projects in filler as if they were icing an award winning cake, but this then creates more work than is strictly necessary with hours of elbow crushing sanding to be done afterwards.  Not doing this avoids the resultant wanker’s cramp that you’d obviously get as a result.  Remember, less is more in this case.

At this juncture, now that I was nearing to the painting stage, all I had to do was go around the gun prop and carry out a final fine tuning with a small amount of filler here and there, merely a swipe of the stuff on the tip of my finger and then giving it another pass with the wet or dry sand paper, followed by a gentle buff up with the sanding sponge.

Now I was ready to get the spray cans out.

Stage Two:  Painting.
Before painting any kits, or even props for that matter, it’s usually a good idea to give them a good clean to remove any dust, detritus or grease that will ultimately adversely affect the quality of your finish.  With something like this resin gun, the most obvious choice was a quick bath in warm, soapy water, however for something larger or anything made from a porous material such as wood or MDF for example, a careful brush down with a soft dry paint brush, followed by a once over with a damp rag will do. 

I tend to let the pieces air dry afterwards as this negates any possibility of transferring bits of lint or dust and the like as you would if you were to towel dry your prop.  Of course in the end once the item in question is thoroughly dried, just before you start to apply your paint, it’s always a good idea to do a final check and see if any airborne particles have appeared and if they have, simply blow them free or get out your soft, dry brush again.

Something else to consider before you wield the spray can is this, temperature.  The cold can really make your life quite difficult when doing this kind of work to the point that if it’s that bad, the paint can (and probably will) curdle and congeal as it hits the subject matter.  To circumvent this, what I tend to do is keep both the prop and the supply of paints in a warm room well before I intend to start spraying, do this and you’ll be well on your way to a good finish.

Although this kit came with its own painting instructions, I opted to completely ignore them and so I didn’t bother to read them at all.  Now you may ask why I did this and the answer is very simple; I wanted to research the colouring myself as the colour of things (and matching them) is highly subjective, thusly I didn’t want to rely on someone else’s interpretation of the finish.  Instead Google’s image search became my friend and so I trawled through many, many photographs.

The resultant information that I came up with is that Webleys vary in their colour scheme, some are entirely black, others are black with silver accents and several that I saw were a sort of gun metal grey with dark brown handle grips.  Looking at the various gun props used in the four films wasn’t all that helpful to be honest, though I did manage to come to the conclusion that yes, they were black… so I got on the phone to my client and asked him which scheme he would be the most happy with; pure black with areas of wear and tear that reveals the silver base metal of the gun.  That was sorted then and so the paints were bought to reflect this. 

You’re probably wondering what the image above is all about – and I don’t blame you. 

When you start to use your warm spray cans that have been thoroughly agitated to mix the contents, the first thing that I do is run a quick test to ensure the mix is good and equal.  All I do here is whip the spray in a linear fashion across the surface of the board that I’m working on, to which I then inspect the results.  If the mark is even in density and colour, I can carry on, if it’s insipid, then the can gets a further bout of rattling until I’m satisfied that enough has been done – a quick check for clarity and off I go.

You can really cock a spray job up very easily.  I’ve watched people absolutely hammer their props with paint because they just get too carried away in trying to achieve maximum coverage in the first go.  This is not good as too much of the stuff sitting on the surface will result in pooling, blotchiness, runs and often the dreaded “orange peel” effect – which, of course, you don’t want.  No sir! 

It’s far more effective to build the paint up in several thin layers, let the first dry and then continue with the next and keep going until you have a solid block of colour that you’re happy with.  Yes, it’s more time consuming, but the results are certainly worth it.

When I’ve spoken to friends about spray painting, one of the main topics that often crops up is that of paint splatter ruining their work.  Now this is easily avoided, to a degree.  It’s always a good idea to start spraying with your can a good six inches to a foot away from your prop and then draw the paint across it and off to the other side.  Once you’re clear of the piece, you can stop spraying.  The reason for this is that you’re allowing the spray to reach its effective pressure before you hit the prop, any splattering that the paint would suffer from will happen before you reach what you’re painting.  The only other time that you may experience paint splatter is when your can is nearing empty, effectively the propellant can no longer maintain an equal spray pressure to carry the paint evenly – it’s usually around this time that I call it a day on that can and reach for another.  However, if you’re really clever, you will have bought just enough paint for the job… in this instance, I knew that one can of each colour would be enough.

In the above image montage, you can see what I’ve done;  First of all a grey undercoat was applied, after this (while not shown) was a thin layer of white primer, while that was still wet, I zapped it with silver paint, let that dry and hit it again with more silver.  The reason why I did this is that a layer of white really helps the silver to pop.  On top of the fully cured silver went the black.

I actually bought two cans of black, one in a matt finish and the other in a satin finish and why I did this is because during my research, I noticed that the black variations of the Webley were not quite matt (flat) black and not quite satin black either, but somewhere between the two.  To replicate this look, all I did was lay down a layer of the satin to block the gun out in pure black, I could have used the matt here as it didn’t really matter, but the next stage did…

Effectively I wet mixed the layers of both types of paint, always putting down the satin first and whilst still damp, misting an equal layer of the matt over top of that.  The result looked closer to the real finish of the actual guns than any of the two individual paint finishes alone would have done.

The next stage is all about ruining your lovely hard work in getting that pristine finish.  Yes, we’re getting the sanding blocks and the sharp blades out again because now we’re going to start weathering the prop.  I would normally say ‘Yay!’ here, but this process is always a little daunting… only a little – a tiny bit perhaps.  Hmm.

Stage Three:  Weathering.
Unfortunately, there’s no hard and fast rule to weathering a prop, all I can say is just don’t go mad with it.  Perhaps the best piece of advice that I could give is to look at the world around you and see how real everyday objects have either weathered, aged or gotten scuffed in their lifetime of usage and use this as the basis for your own project.

For this particular project, I have the benefit of it being a replica of something that was used in a movie and so I was given a series of screen grabs as reference.  Now for the Indy anoraks, I’m all too well aware that different models of the Webley were used throughout the four films, but that doesn’t matter – all I’m after here is the general look of wear and tear to Indy’s gun.  This prop has to feel like it’s been with Indy through his various adventures, getting worn through slipping it in and out of its holster, dropped, chipped, dinged, you name it, it probably happened to the gun.  So, here are some of the references that I used.

The way that I tackled the weathering on this replica was pretty straight forward with little to no trickery involved.  I simply used my sanding sponge to knock back the paint in all the obvious areas, then I took my modelling knife and scratched through the black paint in a similar fashion to the way you’d peel potatoes – though clearly with not as much pressure.  This resulted in some fairly realistic scratches… because they were actual scratches that revealed the underlying silver paint.

Having looked at my reference pictures again, I then took some wet or dry sand paper and worked the edges where I thought this treatment was necessary, I followed this with a final buff and polish with the sanding sponge just to key everything together.

In a few areas, I did end up revealing the red of the cast resin, but this was all built in as part of the plan – these would be the areas that would be painted again, this time with silver modelling paint, straight from a tub.  Doing this would just add an accent of a pure silver over the blackened silver that I’d revealed with the sanding and scratching technique.

Above are the detail pieces for the gun.  These are the only parts to have the silver painted directly on, rather than to have the black paint scratched back.  Like with the main body of the prop, the paint work here had to be subtle… or as subtle as you can be with a display item.

Stage Four:  Finishing Off.
The final task was very simple and straight forward; glue on the sight, all the screws and the tag thing (whatever it’s called) that the handle strap attaches to.  All this was done with Araldite, two part epoxy on the end of a cocktail stick and judiciously dropped into place.

For some reason, the kit did not come with the three appropriate screws that sit in both of the handle grips and the sight, which was slightly annoying.  I asked my mate to get back in touch with the kit maker and for one reason or another, he (the kit maker) was unable to help, so it was up to me to find an alternative.

As it happened, I noticed that the screws that fix our light switches and electrical sockets to the wall were very similar – almost to the point of being identical, and when my wife caught me looking at them rather too enthusiastically, she said, ‘Don’t you even dare think about it!’  Okay then, so I had my mate go and buy some and send them down to me instead.

These were simply cut right down in size, painted and glued on.  Looking at them, you’d never guess that they’re not the authentic versions. 

The gun kit was now completed.

The Finished Kit.
Each and every time I finish something, I always think that I could have done better and this time around was no exception to that rule.  It’s okay I think, but you can be the judge, if you want.  I only hope that my mate approves of the job.

And from the other side…

Well, it’s all done now and by the time you’ll be reading this, the replica will be in the hands of its owner… either that or sat in a box, under his stairs!

I hope that I haven’t bored you with this posting, I know it’s quite long, but at least there are lots of pictures to look at – and with luck, maybe you’ll find a few of the tips that I’ve spoken about today of some use to you.  Everything I’ve mentioned here is easily transferable to a multitude of other projects and applications.

That’s yer lot!

It’s already written and I’m just waiting for a few things to fall into place before I can publish the piece, but be warned, it is quite a detailed walk through on the building up of a replica of Indiana Jones‘ Webley gun that you’ve probably seen me mention before.  When I say detailed, I really do mean DETAILED, so if you’re not interested in prop things, just ignore it – like most people do with this blog anyway.

I’ve also been considering blogging about some of the truly weird events that have been happening here at the towers over the last month or two – and when I say ‘weird’, what I actually mean is full on spooky… voices, things moving of their own accord and all that kind of nonsense.  There has to be a rational explanation for it, but so far, I can’t explain the majority of it in a convincing way, but give me time.

In other news, (name drop central now) I was buying milk the other day and who did I see behind me?  Tony Harding.  If you don’t know who he is, then you wouldn’t be interested in what he does and what he’s done in the past, so I won’t bother explaining.  Anyway, I didn’t say anything to him, though I did just shoot him a quick look and then carried on my way home.

And finally…

This is how I taught Mana to write with the “correct” posture, the other day.  Up until now, she’s been writing with her elbows flapping about and I didn’t think this was conducive to producing neat and legible hand writing – so I tied her right elbow to her waist with my scarf.  She’s also been given a corrective pen that forces you to hold it in a certain way and so far, it’s worked extremely well – she’s coming along in leaps and bounds now.

Get ‘em while they’re young, I say.

Until next time then.  Cheerio.

Phoning it in?  Me?  Noooo…  Actually, I was getting a little bit self-conscious of the fact that if you click onto this blog, the first thing you see is a ‘Happy Christmas’ message – it just had to go.

Speaking of Christmas, as usual, it was a fairly quiet affair, but then it would be as it’s just the four of us here with no relatives living close enough by to visit, sad but true.  Anyway, this year was quite a special year; both of the kids are now at that age where they can get really excited about the big day together and that was a joy to see.  Here they are, engrossed in unwrapping the presents that the jolly fat man brought.

There was quite the mountain of presents for the kids and that kept them busy for ages, then Mummy and Daddy were kept busy for a few hours more as we had to assemble and stick various stickers to all manner of toys.  Joy.

Continuing on the Christmas theme for a moment.  That evening, the family settled down to watch the festive Doctor Who episode; The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe.

Um… Yeah.  Let’s just say that I wasn’t bothered that we didn’t record it, not that we had much of a choice as we no longer have a DVD recorder, or player for that matter.  I don’t know.  On one level, it was okay as a Christmas story with all the festive trimmings and trappings, but as an episode of Doctor Who, it was just rubbish.  It seemed flat, completely trivial and pretty much without incidence. 

I genuinely do think that the BBC should just give up trying to crowbar the programme into a Christmas setting, it simply doesn’t work in my view and to make matters worse, we are guaranteed such an “adventure” every year.  I mean really, how many stories can they come up with around such a theme?  Not many, by the seems of it as the creative juices of this nature appear to have run dry years ago.  Maybe it’s just me.

Matt Smith is still the best actor to play the Doctor since Tom Baker, but unfortunately he’s been lumbered with such dire scripts of late that really are filled with the most extraordinarily laboured concepts.  They’re easy to follow, to the point of predictability, it’s just that they’re such duffers and in the grand scheme of things, they come across as incredibly lame.  I’ve been left feeling continually ambivalent towards it all over the last year, hollow even, to the point that I no longer expect much of the programme anymore; it’s now just a 45 minute time filler on a Saturday evening before the kids go to bed – which is a terrible, terrible shame.  And I had such high hopes of Steven Moffat when he took up the reigns as the show runner, especially after his Blink and Silence in the Library episodes.  Now they were genuinely brilliant.  At least his approach is more in line with the original ethos of the show and to be frank, much as I liked Russell T Davies’ other work, his tenure at the helm of Doctor Who was a struggle for me, so the fact that all that is over and done with now is a blessing – to a degree.

The final nail in the coffin of my appreciation for the Christmas episode was the last five minutes.  Just as the conclusion to the last series ended with the final rounding up of the various narrative threads for Amy, Rory and Riversong, suddenly they’re back again and they’ll be with us in the next season too!  What?!  Where we left them previously was the perfect end for them, but no, Mr. Moffat sees it fit to drag them back with a final story arc in which he promises us that it’ll be a heart wrenching end to their time with the good Doctor as a ‘one last hoorah’.  Really? 

Yeah, that would be all fine and good if we actually gave a fig about them, but these days, I couldn’t care less what happens to them…  Put them in a meat grinder and have done with them, that’s what I say – oh, and while I think about it, let’s just get back to how things used to be, the Doctor as a bloke who travels around the universe solving problems and then vanishing away before he gets a decent thank you, none of this lonely God nonsense, luckily this seems to be where we’re headed.

Hmm.  That’s unusual for me to actually talk about a Doctor Who storyline.

Now for something that we did thoroughly enjoy on the telly.  New Year’s Day brought us…

Sherlock, episode one of series two.  Yaay!  Shame it’s only a three part series, but then you can’t have too much of a good thing, otherwise it loses its appeal.  I’m not going to go on about how much we loved this because quite frankly after moaning about Doctor Who there, I’ve somewhat lost the will to live.  The irony is that it’s made by the very same people who make Doctor Who, Steven Moffat with Mark Gatiss.  How do they manage to create this marvel and yet also produce the dross that has become of our favourite Time Lord?  Perhaps they ran out of steam or simply lost interest.  Who knows?  Who cares?

Just like last time, after the airing of the first episode (as well as during) friends and family pointed out that Sherlock, Benedict Cumberbatch, looks and acts just like me – even my kids pointed at the screen and said ‘Look, there’s Daddy.’  Previously I couldn’t see the likeness, but then seeing this shot made my blood run cold.

Now I can sort of see it; the cheek bones, the jaw line, the eyebrows and hair (when I have it cut nicely) – the only difference is the clothing.  While we share the same silhouette, my attire is decidedly less stylish and most definitely more shabby.  It really made me feel quite embarrassed to the point that I now think that I ought to go and buy some replacement clothes as pretty much all of my stuff is splitting apart at the seams (or covered in paint, or both) as I tend to wear everything to death!  I’ve even been known to wear my “best” clothes while working in a workshop - which is why my current overcoat is knackered.  Thing is, I loathe clothes shopping, as you may well know.

Other news now, before I head off.

Congratulations to Colin Baker who recently won Celebrity Come Dine With Me.  Mana immediately recognised him and told me all about how she met him last year, then she said that she’d like to go to his house now that she’s seen it on the telly.  Well, he only lives a stone’s throw away – maybe she’ll get an invite… 

I’ve been working on a couple of commissions lately; that Indy Gun for a start and something else.  I’ve also been offered some potential new freelance work too, though that all hangs on whether things fall into place with a few organisations – which is out of my control.  If that comes to fruition, I’ll be pleased as it’ll be a month or two of paid work.  After the worrying drop off that I had last year that resulted in an extremely lean, money-wise, few months, I’m hoping now that things will pick up again.  Not holding my breath, but let’s wait and see.

Well, I can hear that I’m needed elsewhere, so let’s call it a day.

Happy New Year to you all!

Oh, and a new blog follower here is the first person to use the “Like” button.  Thanks for that.  Not quite sure what that’s for, but it’s certainly nice to be liked at any rate. 

Best wishes for the season and hopefully Father Christmas will have brought you fantastic goodies if you’ve been nice little boys and girls… which I’m sure you have been! 

Take care then. 

Well, to be truthful, it’s never really been specifically for the consumption and digestion of the wider public, that just happened by accident and I went with it.  No, the original purpose for all of this was for it to be a record of family life that hopefully my kids would be able to look back over, in future years, and cherish – or get embarrassed at, whichever really.  I have to leave them something as I’ve got bugger all else.

At the time of writing this entry, the stats so far are as follows:

Blog Entries:  178
Views:  31,776
Comments:  1,376
Top 3 Commentors:  Gene Hunt, Bill and Tony.

Not too bad, eh?

Right then.  I’m going to do a quick round up events since we last spoke, so hold tight, see if you can maintain a little bit of interest and let’s dive straight in with some pictures.

First up; Mana met with Father Christmas and boy was she taken with him, as the picture above shows.  From the very moment that she entered the grotto, Mana was totally enraptured by him, especially as he knew her name without her even telling him – he is Father Christmas after all - and he has a list of all the boys and girls who’ve been good and all those who’ve been naughty.  Luckily, she’s been placed on the good list for helping Mummy and Daddy around the house and playing nicely with her brother.  They chatted for ages and after she explained what she had wished for, for Christmas, the Big Man then requested that in return, perhaps she would leave out a mince pie for him and a carrot or two for the reindeers, which she happily promised to do.  

Father Christmas really was a star and if you’ve ever wanted to see the true magic of Christmas, this was it…  The other thing about this particular meeting is that the pair of them made it to the pages of our local rag too, which was a nice bonus, so that’s twice that our little girl’s picture has been published there in as many weeks. 

A few days later, Father Christmas visited Alex’s nursery to give out gifts during the Christmas party.  He didn’t stay too long as he had so much to do that day, in fact you can tell he was rushed because as he left (see far right of the image compilation) it became very apparent that he’d put his overcoat on back-to-front!  Whoops – but never mind, eh?

Pretty much from the following day onwards, illness befell our household.  Again.  First Mana, then Mummy and (right now) Alex.  So far, I’ve managed to evade this illness, which is just as well because it’s been me that’s been ferrying kids, then a week later the wife and the kids, to the hospital for out of hours treatment.  Since then, I’ve been playing Doctor Brown Bear; administering all the medication and the antibiotics, getting drinks, taking temperatures, wiping runny noses and giving various things to sooth the pain away for one and all.  Have to say though, I’m a little bit tired and emotional right now.

A little bit of a moan now.

A shot of our television from the other day.  Tell me, why do I pay the License Fee for this level of quality broadcasting?  As of next year, the analogue signal will be switched off here in the UK and it does worry me slightly.  Even though we watch very little television, there are a few items that we do like to have on, the news for example, but the kids enjoy CBeebies – the BBC children’s channel.

If we so much as have a slight breeze outside, a dusting of snow, a smidgen of rain or even any building works nearby, this is what we end up with; a scrambled mess of unwatchable Tetris blocks.  For the most part, if we have a picture, usually the sound is intermittent and when it gets like this, you may as well just not bother, so what we’ve been doing is to revert back to the analogue signal. 

Now the quality may not be fantastic, but at least it’s consistent, even if it is rather like watching a variety of ghosts haunting unusual and fuzzy locations.  So, when the old signal is switched off for good, we’re pretty much stuffed, especially if the digital signal strength isn’t increased as they claim that it will be.  If it remains at the power that the transmitters are currently outputting, I’m pretty much convinced that we shall stop paying the fee altogether because why should we pay for something that is totally unusable?  Perhaps I should invite a member of the BBC board of directors round for a bout of, “Can you guess what we’re watching tonight?”

Is it suddenly 1982?  No it’s not.  The picture here was taken by Mana the other day when she managed to nab her mother’s new camera without anyone noticing.  On reviewing her priceless works of art, I found well framed shots of the fridge door, the contents of the freezer, the kitchen work surface with various utensils on it, a close up of her Oma’s (Grandmother) arse, Oma’s feet, a door handle and a whole host of other random things.  About 30 images in total.  Think I shall be putting the camera on a higher shelf in the future, either that or duct taping it to the ceiling!

The TARDIS tent then, which I will add is actually a fairly accurate representation of the BBC’s official plans for the 1980s prop.  This arrived the other day from our subscriber friend, Gene Hunt.  He knew that as a kid I was always jealous of one of my friends who had one of these back in the early 1980s and having never managed to get one myself, Gene took pity on me and so out of the kindness of his heart, he sent this one over and I have to say a big “Thank You” to him as my kids absolutely love it.  For the first few days of it being here, we couldn’t tear them away from it, it even got to the point that we were serving the sprogs their dinner in it, which was… interesting…  Cheers Chum!

Deep breath.  Oh, I’m seriously going to regret this next bit, but here goes.

I’m not quite sure how this came about, but my Mother recently replicated a jumper that she designed and made for me back in the late 1970s, this time however, it was knitted up for Alex and seeing him wear it was perhaps one the weirdest experiences of my life; a little bit of my childhood faithfully recreated, even down to the exact (more or less) colouring of the wool.

I can’t quite fully explain my feelings when I first saw it, but I was filled with an extreme sense of happy nostalgia and I did have a moment of wondering whether giving him such a piece of knitwear was the right thing to do, but he adored it.  When it came to take it off for bed, we really had to persude him to let us do it as he kept shouting “No!” - flipped us a frown and a wiggle of his finger, then he pulled it back on in an outright huff.  Needless to say, this 30 year old (plus) throwback was highly popular with everyone in our household. 

Awkward moment…

Yeah and that’s me in the picture there on the left.  A first really.  For personal reasons, I hate having my photo taken, loathe the idea of even having any pictures of me (or my details) online, so not only will this be a first in this regard, it will also be a last too.  Enjoy it while you can.  I’m going to run away now, squealing like a little girl at the horror of it all.

Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!