Coastal Vectors

Crafting A Souvenir for Adam Savage

From Mythbusters to YouTube, I’ve always enjoyed watching Adam Savage and his various exploits. He has an enthusiasm that is contagious. I learned about a month ago that he would be visiting Fan-X in Salt Lake City, and I thought it would be a fun opportunity to meet him in person.

I wanted to make something for him in order to make the experience hopefully memorable to both parties. About 5 years ago, he had a whole series of videos where he made the Samaritan gun from the movie Hellboy. It was something that was clearly very meaningful for him. I thought perhaps I could make an accessory to accompany that prop. I also wanted it to be a bit different enough that it would be something no one else would think to create.

I decided to make a tiny Samaritan gun housed within a full-sized bullet for the Samaritan. I think it’s kind of random, but has a good chance of being something Adam would find humorous.

Firstly, I needed plans. I had a hard time finding any explicit dimensions for the bullets. I know they are 22mm, and typically when referring to a round, the measure is applied to the projectile, and not the casing. With that in mind, I found a photo of a screen-used prop and made some measurements based off of the one known dimension.

The next step was creating a tiny gun. I was going to 3d print this, but I didn’t know anyone with a working SLA printer, and apparently you many online printing services won’t allow you to print anything gun-shaped (even if it’s less than an inch big)! I ended up sculpting it out of clay and painting it. It was fun to try to get it to be recognizable even without the ability to add as much detail as I was wanting in my head. In the end, I liked the result and it felt more heartfelt than just printing something.

The next step was turning some brass to be the casing. I used my mini-lathe and some 1″ brass bar stock. This was straight forward.

Once I had the casing, I could then create the buck for the bullet. I used some poplar dowel and turned it, shaping it by hand. I filled the wood and sanded, painted, repeat until it was as smooth as I could get.

I used the buck to create a mold. I tried 2 part molding putty, but it was not very successful. I ended up with some weird voids and bubbles. I purchased some silicone mould maker and it was very effective. I ended up with zero voids, and it had a real nice finish.

Last I needed to cast the resin bullet. Thankfully I was smart enough to test this before committing my tiny gun. The first time, I didn’t follow the instructions. I ended up with lots of bubbles and some soft spots. The second time, I followed the instruction which indicated to heat the 2 resin parts prior to mixing. This improved the flow and reduced the number of bubbles.

It still wasn’t what I hoped for, so the final step was to use my brother-in-law’s vacuum chamber to vacuum out the bubbles after mixing, but before pouring. I suspended the gun in the mold using acrylic rod and a jig. I let it cure, and was very happy with the result. After polishing and clear coating, it looked as good as I could have hoped for.

The next step was to meet Adam and give it to him. I’ve never been to a con before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I purchased a photo op beforehand thinking that would be the best way to meet him. I arrived about an hour before my appointment to look around, and figure out what the line situation was. I saw Adam at his table, but was afraid to approach as it seemed it was necessary to pay to either get an autograph or to take a selfie. Neither seemed appropriate since I was going to get a photo in just an hour, so I didn’t approach.

The photo-op experience was not what I was expecting. They funneled us into a big line, and they had us going in, getting a photo, and leaving all within seconds. I was able to say “Nice to meet you”, and then they snapped a photo, and I barely had time to say “May I give you a gift?” Adam was nice, and took it but didn’t have time to open it then. I was funneled out as quickly as I had come in. Apparently this is the nature of these photo-ops, and being a con-newbie, I had no idea.

I was glad to have met him. I hope he is able to open the gift and appreciate it. He seemed like a lovely person. I hope someday I get to actually have a conversation with him.

Finding Old Video Game Music

The other day my sister left me a voice mail hoping I could help her identify a tune she had in her head. She sang it and I instantly recognized it. I couldn’t remember where it was from, but I had the vivid recollection that it was from a game we played as kids.

I was also pretty certain it was a game we played on our Macintosh. I mentally went through some of the games we played a lot, and then it hit me; it was from Spectre VR!

Spectre was vector tank game where you have to collect flags while avoiding or destroying enemy tanks. It was available on many platforms. My first attempt to find the music track was to download MIDI files from a website that had collections of old video game music. I think these files were taken from the DOS version or some other platform, and none of them sounded quite right.

I decided to run the original game in my SheepShaver Mac OS 9 emulator to verify that this game was indeed the correct one. Bingo. Level 2 has the music in question!

The next thing I did was get a copy of ResForge (this is a forked version of ResKnife which is no longer in development). ResForge is an editor/viewer for old OS 9 resource forks. Back in the day, you could look at resource forks using ResEdit. Using ResForge, I was able to locate and export all the MIDI files from my original copy of Spectre.

The problem with MIDI files is that they only sound correct if they have the correct instruments, and unfortunately, the instruments (samples) were kept in a different resource. So the MIDI files didn’t sound right. I used the same program to export all the sampled instruments, and identified which ones were used for this music.

Example instrument (vibraslap):

I used Garage Band to import the MIDI track and then assigned a sound sampler to each voice. I loaded the appropriate sample into each one. For some reason I had to transpose a few of the samples to get it sounding just right.

Here is the final track:

If you compare it to the in game music capture, it sounds perfect. Kind of a silly diversion, but nostalgia can be intoxicating! What games from your childhood had memorable music?

Oh man. This music is going to be in my head all day…

Creating a 150 Year Old Soap Box

Have you ever heard of ACME soap? I can’t say definitively if the company still exists, but it was a soap brand from the early 1800’s. Growing up, my grandma’s bathroom was wallpapered with ACME Soap themed wall paper. It had various advertisements, pictures, logos, etc all representing the ACME Soap brand. I have memories of looking at the various artwork while doing my business there.

One of the most memorable ones was a four panel story of a boy that falls in a well. He is holding a bar of ACME Soap, and it lathers up so much that it lifts him to the top, thus saving him. Below are the four panels as seen in the official trading cards.

When the bathroom got remodeled, each grandchild was gifted this four panel advertisement framed for us to put in our own bathrooms, which we did.

I felt that the picture frame looked a little lonely on its own, and thought that making a soap box to accompany it would be appropriate. Although not at all historically accurate, I took the dimensions of a modern soap box, and styled it appropriately.

I found a graphic that was actually used on the antique soap boxes that depicts a man holding a bar of soap. I recreated the ACME logo and added some verbiage and legal text that I could find on various images of their products. According to what I found they were founded in 1811, and the trademark was registered in 1875.

I used an old paper texture to make it look more aged.

I printed it out on card stock, cut it out, and glued it up.

Now it sits and complements the original wall paper that sits on display in the bathroom.