Communicator: Wooden Construction

Here is one communicator replica that is made of wood. The comm is made literally of a scrap piece of pine found in the basement when the builder, Will, was 16 (that would be 1980) Will and his brother have been cranking those wood props out ever since.This comm went through about 4 generations of re-builds simply to update it as they gained knowledge of what the real ones looked like, but as shown it remains untouched since about 1992 - long before the internet or the RPF or ASAP boards and all its great reference pics.

PRODUCTION METHODS: According to Will:

• all are made from various pine and soft woods.
• The comm grill is actually hand punched and drilled (about 200 holes) and set on a coat hanger frame.
• The paint on the comm is Krylon semi flat black-about 3 coats and thats it.The krylons seem to be very durable like an auto paint.
• Some parts are from model kits but most are literally found around the house and from countless walks down hardware shelves

Will put these together simply because he loved the design of ST TOS props since he was a kid.

Note: this is not one of my props, but I have been approached to host these images along with some information regarding its construction. Click here to view the turorial.

here is how this same prop looked back in 1980, before its rebuild.

And another version.

Phasers I & II: Wooden Construction

Here is shot of a couple of Phaser I's, again made of pine by Will. Paints on the phasers are Testors panzer gray with tons of auto clear coat. Details on these works for art would be:

• pine
• formed using band saw and bench sander.hand sanded for finishing
• recent ones made from templates taken from actual screen shots of episodes, and using auto cad computer drawings to make the templates.
• assembled with epoxy
• clear pen cases for emmiter tips
• hand scribed ribs from sheet styrene puttied in on sides then sanded.
• hand scribed p1 top plate with 60 degree lines
• hand filed notched rear fins(on one)-to match a non hero type phaser
• thin wooden side rails on p1 painted silver
• about 1 week start to finish

Phaser I, From the Episode " The City on the Edge of Forever"

Here is shot of the P1 used the that episode. The following images are of the replica Will made using this as a reference. Pretty good job, there Will!

More Phaser I's