[Christof]

Hi guys! So I've always loved Ghostbusters, and as a kid owned a completely random off-the-rack flight suit from a surplus store. Slap on crappy printer iron-on paper logo and that was my uniform for many years. Then several moves later it's thankfully been lost to time because let's be honest it was a joke. Now, on to the show!

Well, ain't I pretty.

1984 in the streets, 2016 in the sheets!
*Ahem* So there's the flightsuit. Following some advice here I hopped onto eBay and found myself a nomex in about perfect size, $70 shipped. Hurrah!


In my fervor I may have grabbed a questionably accurate logo patch on Amazon. I'm pretty satisfied with how they look, and the size appears to be correct but without something made exactingly accurate I have nothing to compare it against.

Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to order my leg hose and connector from GBFans, though.

Aaaaand let's get fancy and setup a little magnet connector for the hose, it'll stay and I don't have to permanentl-...
...
...

Huh. Soooo. Turns out the magnets I bought are stronger than the Gorilla glue I'm using. Ruhroh.
Nope, that's ok I'll just trim down a flat spacer to connect to the end of my hose to give it a more solid anchor point, that oughta do it, yeah?
...
Crap.

Still not a loss! With those two magnets glued into my connector I can make a little metal plug to fit into the end of the hose. I might go crazy and paint it a matching color to the connector so it blends in, or at least looks like a plug.

Right, with the connector all setup, it's just a matter of sewing it into the flightsuit.
Along with logo patch

Aaaaaand allll the way frooooom Thaaaaailaaaaaand, the nametag.
Coming Soon: Part 2, Let's Learn to Sew with Christof! Or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the thimble.

[Naptime]

Hahaha. That's awesome. Looking forward to reading more about your uniform build!

[Christof]

Hey, thanks! I've honestly been putting off updating this for a while, because I learned to love the thimble much faster than expected, and didn't want to bleed all over my phone. Again.
Or I'm just lazy and neglected to take progress pics, also plausible.
So after getting my Nametag ALLLLL the way from Thailand, I was pretty unsatisfied. I pulled some reference material and figured out the logo patch was undersized as well, however thankfully Katarra88 is also in California and it took less than a week to get muuuuch nicer patches.


Unassembled, but collected!
And through the magic of the internet:

Et voila!
As you can see I opted to go with a clear hose cause I just can't stand the GB1 yellow hose (It looks like pee!)
I also went off and grabbed a set of belt fobs from Tyger Cheex, if you need fobs man he is the best guy to go through. Super professional, amazing product, just an all around positive experience. I really can't say enough to compliment his work. So I went ahead, grabbed a crabiner clip I had laying around, and attached my goggles to my belt. They hang pretty low still with the fob, so I'll have to figure out another method for shortening that so I'm not getting wailed in the giblets every step.

The final pieces I'm still considering are my Belt Gizmo and boots. I haven't settled on how I want to go about the Belt Gizmo, I have an eye on Spongface's amazing looking kits, but because of a lack of Electronics experience I'm also mighty tempted to commission one, or possibly use theRockman's method with styrene, circuit board print out, etc.
I've got my eyes on some Corcorans, but the $160 price tag is a slight drag, so instead I'll spend my money on some OTHER parts:

And just wear my good ol' fashioned Chucks for now.
Coming soon! My first Con: Or, How to Make an Ass of Yourself in Public.

[Naptime]

Woo hoo! Looks fantastic! Katarra88's name tags are great, and I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment of Tyger Cheex's fobs - I've got a set of those myself! As for the gizmo, I scratch built one from styrene but have just ordered Spongeface's set. I'm pretty inept when it comes to electronics so I'll let you know how it turns out!

I lucked out on a used pair of corcorans at an army surplus store - while not the exact kind (no zippers on the sides) they're close enough for me AND they're already broken in!

Great looking pack! Who's she'll are you using?

[PssdffJay]

I use a little carabiner I got at the dollar store and use that for my goggles. I hook it in the little elastic loop in the middle strap close to the goggles. That will stop the low hang and swing.

[Christof]

Thanks Jay, I'll give it a try!
Naptime: it's a GBFans shell and Crix resin parts kit. Still waiting on more parts before I get started on the building.

[Christof]

Mini update:
Mah first Con! It was a near complete failure! Which was to be expected, this thread IS subtitled a Comedy of Errors afterall. So because of some last minute communication and scheduling errors I only made it within the last hour of the Santa Rosa Toy & Comic Con. The 90 degree weather was not conducive to wearing Nomex, so I was just dying by the time we got there. Thankfully once I got on my feet and started walking around there was some air flow in my flight suit, but MAN Nomex is NOT designed for the California climate. I missed the Ghostheads I've reached out to around the area completely, so I just had to go and meet up with the Bay Area Ghostbusters, who were friendly even at the end of a full day of Convention-eering. Unfortunately, I had also dragged some friends with me who wanted to look around and after an awkward introduction and standing around quietly I quickly snapped a picture of their Ecto and took off. We only had an Hour to look around! Unfortunately I didn't manage to get ANY of the shots I hoped to get, and honestly I had a bit of sensory overload walking into the convention hall, so I just kind of forgot about my camera entirely. (The R2 Builder's group was there, tell me you wouldn't get distracted!) I'll post a full update with the few pictures I grabbed in the morning.

[Christof]

Good morning, Ghostheads!
So with my mini update I basically hit the highlights, but left out some details. In preparation for the Convention, I test fitted my uniform and just could not get my leg hose to stow flat on my belt, so I innovated a little.

A plumber's cable clamp turned out to be insanely useful, not only did it keep the loop in place but it held it flat to my side so I wasn't flailing about. It's not screen accurate, but you can actually hide it behind the pistol belt, and my leg hose isn't 100% screen accurate anyways.

As I mentioned in my mini update due to friends dragging me and no small amount of sensory overload I clammed up and only grabbed one quick shot of the Bay Area Ghostbusters' Ecto...

Aaaand even so, I have never wanted to steal a car before in my life.

So besides being super awkward in my first real interaction with fellow Ghostheads, it was a pretty awesome experience! The Con had just all the cool stuff to check out, and we only managed to see one of the three halls before getting ushered out by security. Ironically, perhaps my favorite moment was from afterwards, sitting in In-N-Out in Uniform eating. I got a lot of sideways looks, but the highlight was when a kid walked in, saw my No-Ghost patch, and yelled Hey Ghostbuster! I gave him a high five.

[Christof]

Hark! An Update!

Wow, looking back at my old uniform thread sure is illuminating as to how far I've come since then. So many more cons and events under my belt, I've made friends, managed to get to Fan Fest, accidentally founded a Franchise, and still have a few surprises up my sleeve.

Which is why I'm updating my uniform thread?
Of course!
First and foremost, I accidentally founded a franchise. Don't ask, it's just a thing that happened. I used science.
And since three of us were attending Fan Fest, we absolutely had to have our franchise patches in time to rep the Northern California Ghostbusters. With some help from a skilled artist friend, and TheStudio.com, I was able to produce a quick short run of these!


And they came in time for my group to rock at Fan Fest!


With Fan Fest out of the way, I finally got things started on a project a team member and I have been discussing for a few months now, bleaching and dyeing our own sets of GB2 grey flightsuits. After plenty of reading, I decided it would be best to try and replicate PyHasanon's method. Starting with a Black TruSpec flightsuit,

I gave it the standard 1, 1, 2 cups of bleach which did start to penetrate and lighten the existing dye but definitely didn't make a dent overall


Obviously, way off the color I wanted, so I went ahead and got the big guns out; Rit Dye Remover.

The Rit really did the bulk of the work, I kept it in a pot of near boiling water/Rit for 30 minutes then dumped the WHOLE pot into the washing machine and ran it as HOT as I could get it. Great! Unfortunately, it also brought the color WAAAAY to light. So I broke out my secret weapon, Rit DyeMore Synthetic Fabric dye.
I discovered it while Amazon shopping for all my dye supplies, and it's turned out to work much better than I had anticipated.

While it has a lot of blue in the color, I rather like how it comes out in the end, and it feels like a close-to-accurate shade of grey.
(You can see the subtlety of it here, Color stripped and undyed on the left, Dyed with Graphite on the Right.)