Its time for another update, and long story short, this pack is done! I’ll start back from where we left off, but basically I had to wait for my gbfans order to come in which had everything else that was needed to complete this thing. A week later it came, so it was time to get back to work. Theres a few things in here that I’m saving for the next pack like the alice frame foam (although I may swap it out for white foam), neoprene motherboard foam, and the aluminum ribbon cable clamp.
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Our first step was to disassemble the entire pack and start sealing the holes with white glue so they do not disintegrate when we spray paint it. After that, we took it outside and started spray painting with Rustoleum flat black paint. The external parts were painted first, and it was going well until something happened.. strange vein like things started appearing on a few of the parts..![:shock:]( "Shocked")
I remember seeing in canpara’s semi hero build that the same thing happened on the shell only that it was MUCH more severe. We quickly sanded the “veins” off when it was dry to the touch and then resprayed it but we had to do this multiple times because sometimes they reappeared. At this point I was panicking because I was terrified the same thing would happen to the shell. After all the parts were dry, we decided to spray paint the shell inside the garage instead of outside. It was humid and windy that day so that is probably why the veins happened. We took our time painting the shell very carefully, and then the motherboard. Fortunately, they all turned out well which was a major relief.
![Image]()
![Image]()
There were a few other things we had to paint too like the v-hook and bellows, so I had some Rustoleum silver spray paint from a while ago and used that on those parts. I also made the ribbon cable clamp out of some 1/16” wood that I cut. I decided that the electronics would be glued to the shell, so we used the high tech solution of making reflector cups out of old egg cartons. It’s handy to know a few homemade tricks from when I used to make packs out of cardboard lol.
![Image]()
Now it was finally time to assemble this thing. The first thing we chose was the ion arm. I forgot to spray paint the end cap so I quickly did that but accidentally over-sprayed it. It was okay though since we were gonna scratch the hell out of the end cap. My buddy was the one who did this and based it off the GB2 Venkman pack. The resin resistors were then all properly attached with 4-40 socket cap heads except the PH-25. I couldn’t find black steel 4-40 socket cap heads online that weren’t in quantities of 100, only managed to find stainless steel ones, but I painted them black so hopefully its not that noticable.
![Image]()
We then started bolting everything else on, and started the tubing/labels which were a lot of fun. For the legris straights, I reused the old compression fittings from the last pack since I didn’t want to pay so much for nice replicas for this pack, but I did use the clippard brass fittings that I got from gbfans. The ribbon cable was a bit tricky, I was worried about this part since my last attempt at twisting the cable didn’t look so good. I wanted this pack to be loosely based off of the GB2 Venkman pack. My buddy said that the ribbon cable looks more like it was folded a lot to achieve the twist, so that’s what we did. We later fine tuned it so in the pictures below it looks a bit bad.
![Image]()
![Image]()
By now the pack was looking way too clean. I was a little bit worried about this since looking at reference photos of the packs today, they look almost like a super dark gray now from the amount of grime and dust.
![Image]()
After we attached the electronics, bolted it to the motherboard/alice frame, attached the gun, it was time to weather this thing. I’m going to throw a disclaimer that I didn’t take pics of the weathering process we did since it was a super messy, but I’ll do my best to explain it. None of us have weathered anything before so we didn’t know what we were doing, but we first scratched the hell out of the parts like the cyclotron and crank gen, and then moved to the dust pass. I had read in multiple threads as well as Legend642’s excellent GB2 pack build that fullers earth does a very good job with making things look old and dusty. I had also heard that baby powder was good too. The problem was, we didn’t have either of those things so I decided to get a bit creative. Instead of fuller’s earth, we would use literal dirt dust and brown pastel powder, and for baby powder, we would use corn starch. We literally dumped this stuff onto the pack and then used brushes and rags to just get it all off as best we could so it accumulates into corners like how dust would. After that, we then mixed a concoction of acrylic paints to make a sort of dark gray mud color, and put some on the pack, and wipe it off immediately. The final result shocked me a little bit because it actually looked pretty decent. I think we may have gone too far on some of the scratching and dust, but overall not too bad. A close up shot of the cyclotron weathering.
![Image]()
The pack was now technically wearable! It was a great feeling, but it was still technically not done yet. After I packed up and moved all the things I brought to my friend’s place, I took a few days break, and then got back to it. The last few things were the motherboard/alice frame padding, as well as the masking tape reading “Bill M” at the bottom. For the alice frame padding, I for some reason had a pool noodle lying around that wasn’t being used, so I took that stuff and cut it to length. I then spray painted the ends with flat black. I later on removed the masking tape and just sprayed the edges since I was cutting a sheet of black 2mm foam to glue over it.
![Image]()
I then cut the slit, and zip tied it on. My alice frame padding is not accurate at all since the real ones used white insulation foam that had gaffer’s tape on it to attach to the frame, but I thought this looks good enough. For the foam protector at the top, I traced a loose paper template and then when I had it down, I traced it onto some 6mm white eva foam I had leftover from my last packs. I then spray painted the eva foam, and glued it onto the motherboard with a gluestick. I then finally wrote “Bill M” on masking tape, stuck it on and the pack was done.
![Image]()
Our first step was to disassemble the entire pack and start sealing the holes with white glue so they do not disintegrate when we spray paint it. After that, we took it outside and started spray painting with Rustoleum flat black paint. The external parts were painted first, and it was going well until something happened.. strange vein like things started appearing on a few of the parts..
I remember seeing in canpara’s semi hero build that the same thing happened on the shell only that it was MUCH more severe. We quickly sanded the “veins” off when it was dry to the touch and then resprayed it but we had to do this multiple times because sometimes they reappeared. At this point I was panicking because I was terrified the same thing would happen to the shell. After all the parts were dry, we decided to spray paint the shell inside the garage instead of outside. It was humid and windy that day so that is probably why the veins happened. We took our time painting the shell very carefully, and then the motherboard. Fortunately, they all turned out well which was a major relief.
There were a few other things we had to paint too like the v-hook and bellows, so I had some Rustoleum silver spray paint from a while ago and used that on those parts. I also made the ribbon cable clamp out of some 1/16” wood that I cut. I decided that the electronics would be glued to the shell, so we used the high tech solution of making reflector cups out of old egg cartons. It’s handy to know a few homemade tricks from when I used to make packs out of cardboard lol.
Now it was finally time to assemble this thing. The first thing we chose was the ion arm. I forgot to spray paint the end cap so I quickly did that but accidentally over-sprayed it. It was okay though since we were gonna scratch the hell out of the end cap. My buddy was the one who did this and based it off the GB2 Venkman pack. The resin resistors were then all properly attached with 4-40 socket cap heads except the PH-25. I couldn’t find black steel 4-40 socket cap heads online that weren’t in quantities of 100, only managed to find stainless steel ones, but I painted them black so hopefully its not that noticable.
We then started bolting everything else on, and started the tubing/labels which were a lot of fun. For the legris straights, I reused the old compression fittings from the last pack since I didn’t want to pay so much for nice replicas for this pack, but I did use the clippard brass fittings that I got from gbfans. The ribbon cable was a bit tricky, I was worried about this part since my last attempt at twisting the cable didn’t look so good. I wanted this pack to be loosely based off of the GB2 Venkman pack. My buddy said that the ribbon cable looks more like it was folded a lot to achieve the twist, so that’s what we did. We later fine tuned it so in the pictures below it looks a bit bad.
By now the pack was looking way too clean. I was a little bit worried about this since looking at reference photos of the packs today, they look almost like a super dark gray now from the amount of grime and dust.
After we attached the electronics, bolted it to the motherboard/alice frame, attached the gun, it was time to weather this thing. I’m going to throw a disclaimer that I didn’t take pics of the weathering process we did since it was a super messy, but I’ll do my best to explain it. None of us have weathered anything before so we didn’t know what we were doing, but we first scratched the hell out of the parts like the cyclotron and crank gen, and then moved to the dust pass. I had read in multiple threads as well as Legend642’s excellent GB2 pack build that fullers earth does a very good job with making things look old and dusty. I had also heard that baby powder was good too. The problem was, we didn’t have either of those things so I decided to get a bit creative. Instead of fuller’s earth, we would use literal dirt dust and brown pastel powder, and for baby powder, we would use corn starch. We literally dumped this stuff onto the pack and then used brushes and rags to just get it all off as best we could so it accumulates into corners like how dust would. After that, we then mixed a concoction of acrylic paints to make a sort of dark gray mud color, and put some on the pack, and wipe it off immediately. The final result shocked me a little bit because it actually looked pretty decent. I think we may have gone too far on some of the scratching and dust, but overall not too bad. A close up shot of the cyclotron weathering.
The pack was now technically wearable! It was a great feeling, but it was still technically not done yet. After I packed up and moved all the things I brought to my friend’s place, I took a few days break, and then got back to it. The last few things were the motherboard/alice frame padding, as well as the masking tape reading “Bill M” at the bottom. For the alice frame padding, I for some reason had a pool noodle lying around that wasn’t being used, so I took that stuff and cut it to length. I then spray painted the ends with flat black. I later on removed the masking tape and just sprayed the edges since I was cutting a sheet of black 2mm foam to glue over it.
I then cut the slit, and zip tied it on. My alice frame padding is not accurate at all since the real ones used white insulation foam that had gaffer’s tape on it to attach to the frame, but I thought this looks good enough. For the foam protector at the top, I traced a loose paper template and then when I had it down, I traced it onto some 6mm white eva foam I had leftover from my last packs. I then spray painted the eva foam, and glued it onto the motherboard with a gluestick. I then finally wrote “Bill M” on masking tape, stuck it on and the pack was done.
Statistics: Posted by OnEdge — July 27th, 2025, 5:35 pm