Hi guys,

So I decided that I would make a Vortex manipulator out of faux leather. I did have one of the toys, but my ex, who cosplayed River ended up using it and never gave it back to me   Oh well It took a day and a half to make. I'm planning to possibly replace the control pad with the one from the toy, but they're quite expensive, so I might not. It took a few attempts to make the strap. The main 'plate' of leather has a thin piece of cardboard inside, although I think I should have kept it as a thin piece of leather. I also stitched on a piece of black felt on the inside to make it comfortable to wear.

The main control panel was laser cut. I then cut out the gold section out of sheet copper. I then mounted this on a thick bit of 10mm MDF. I tried to get some poppers from fashion and textiles, but they didn't have any, so I found some small ones in my sewing kit and then glue gunned some tops of drawing pins on top. I then textured it with gold paint which i rubbed into the fabric to make it look aged. I had also rubbed the leather up against a brick wall to scuff it up. So here are the pics of the finished thing....











With Weathering/Aging





Thoughts??

BioDoctor900

Loved it without the Weathering... Now I absolutely ADORE it with the Weathering! That is also one mighty fine Vortex Manipulator, even if it does look a teensy bit battered

- Tom

Well, if it's Jack's vortex manipulator, rather than River's, considering how many times Jack has been killed (in nasty ways) and how long he's been around (in years of age he's got River beat!), the more battered it looks the better! Fantastic job, BioDoc!

Dino.

So it was nearly 6 years ago when I built this and I was never really happy with it. I wanted it to have lights and I wasn't very happy with the proportions and the flat feeling of the panel. Fortunately a friend of mine had one of the panels 3D printed. I have had the Screen Accurate directional button and a load of other bits and bobs in a box for a while waiting for me to do something with it, and so that's exactly what I've done. I've started working on Version 2.0



This was how the base plate turned up to me. You could still see the print lines and so it needed some sanding and priming





It took a bit of sanding to get the buttons to  sit in the holes well enough and not get wedged







I've got a two LEDs in the body, which run off of 3 little watch batteries. This is operated by the middle button, and the other two have momentary switches behind them to give them some functionality. I did plan to try and get most of it done today, but my sewing machine had other ideas, so I'm going to have to try and fix that, and then maybe I can get it all finished

You can also see I'm using real leather this time, and I'm using the wooden jig to mould the top cover. I soaked the leather in water, put the wooden block in and wedged it between the two. It needs to be left overnight, so hopefully it works

More soon

BioDoctor900