Last time I made the Peacemaker gun from Wynonna Earp (tutorial here), this time I made the Fair Plate which comes into play in Season 2
– Image from Pixel51 – goo.gl/RMPakf
And it ended up looking like this:
If you have any questions or any suggestions as to what I should make next, get me on twitter @LizzipFish
Materials List
- 2mm Thick Acrylic Sheet
- LED String Lights
- Black Adhesive-Back Vinyl
- Yellow Cellophane
- Reed Switch (normally open)
- 185mm diameter round shallow Cake Tin
- Aluminium Foil
- Magnet (I used the one from this) but any >0.25kg pull magnet should do
Tool List
- Drill
- Drill Bit: 6mm
- Ruler
- Hand Saw
- Sharpie
- Knife
- Large file (similar to this)
- Sandpaper
- Sellotape
- Glue Stick
- Soldering Iron, Solder and Superglue (not actually used, but will be used for improvements)
Process
Firstly I measured out a 190mm square section of the Acrylic sheet
Scored along the edges with a knife, before cutting it out with a hacksaw
Then I drew a circle 180mm in diameter (using the lid off a tub of Halloween sweets). The inner width of the top of the cake tin is about 183mm, and the inner width of the base about 175mm. We want the acrylic disc to sit slightly further than half way down the tin, allowing some room for the electronics underneath
Again I scored the edge with the knife
And cut out the disc with the hacksaw
The edges required a lot of filing and sanding (with the file and sandpaper)
Eventually the edges were a lot more even and smooth
Allowing the disc to sit in the tin with room for some electronics underneath it
Next I cut a square of the Vinyl
Peeled off the back and stuck it to one side of the disc
Then trimmed off the excess and tried to smooth out the edges
From the other side you can see all the trapped air bubbles. I removed as many of these as I could by pricking them with the knife and smoothing them down with my finger
Next I had to recreate the pattern on the disc. Most of the pattern I managed to get from this image
But as you can see the three closest symbols are pretty obscured. So instead of just guessing what the symbols looked like, I used the following two images from the Season One finale to piece together three symbols from the gate
While they may not be the correct symbols on the plate, at least they are canon to the show
So using all these images, I sketched out the design in Photoshop
I then stuck a bit of paper onto my monitor (that’s what the professionals do, I’m sure…) and traced this image
Note: Though this is the correct way around to look at as an image, I should have flipped it vertically before tracing it out as when stuck to the disc it is reversed
Then I stuck the tracing to the vinyl side of the disc using a glue stick
And trimmed off the excess paper at the edges
Then using a very sharp knife (trust me, it was sharp, we find out how sharp later) I started cutting out the symbols on the disc. I cut through both the paper and the vinyl and peeled off the layers so it was just the acrylic left
I went around the plate cutting out the symbols first
I made quite a few scratches on the disc with the knife, but they do not really show up so it was not an issue
I worked from the outside to the inside until everything was cut out
Next I removed the paper. The glue stuck it on pretty well, so some had to be carefully scratched off with the knife without damaging the vinyl
Small bits paper residue did not matter much as this side will not be visible anyway
Next I cut some yellow cellophane
And used the glue stick to stick this to the vinyl side (where I had just removed the paper)
I trimmed the edges and added a second layer of cellophane
This gave it a strong yellow tint. This was needed as the LED lights were more white than yellow coloured
Next I drilled a 6mm hole in the base of the tin, as close to the side as possible
This is where the wire between the lights and the batteries will thread through
And this is what the lights look like. In an attempt to make them brighter I tried to give them 6v instead of 4.5v and blew up the first set, so don’t do that. 4.5v is fine.
The switch on the battery pack sticks out, but I needed it to be flat. I cut through the switch using the Very Sharp knife mentioned earlier, and then cut right through my finger and had to spend 5 hours at the hospital and get stitches. It hurt. Don’t do that.
After all of that fun and excitement, I separated the battery pack from the lights
And removed the plastic coating
Until I had bare wires for the lights
Then I stripped the ends of the wires on the detached battery pack too
The battery pack was then attached to the base of the tin (using sellotape for now, but eventually superglue) making sure the switch was pointing away from the tin
Then the wires were fed through the hole
Next I drew a 170mm diameter circle on some tinfoil, this reflected the lights better than the dark tin
I cut this out and taped it shiny side up into the bottom of the tin, allowing the wires to come around the edge and sit on top of the foil
Next I attached a reed switch between one wire from the lights and one from the battery pack, and attached the other light wire to the other battery pack wire.
These are currently held with sellotape, but in the future when I can use my finger again and actually hold both an iron and solder I will solder these wires.
I then sellotaped the lights around the edge and slightly towards the centre so the middle would receive light
I had to bend the reed switch up and out slightly so the magnet would be able to reach it
The reed switch is activated by a magnet in the end of Peacemaker. When the magnet is near it forces the contacts in the switch together and turns on the lights
I drilled a 6mm hole in the end of the perspex rod/hot glue stick (depending on which gun I used) in the barrel of Peacemaker and inserted the magnet
Now I put the perspex rod/glue stick back into Peacemaker and placed the disc into the tin. Then when activated the plate looked like this
The final step is to add additional vinyl around the outside of the disk to seal it and reduce the light bleed