Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Head above water

 The holidays are over, ABT opened 3 shows, my kids were in two shows, and we just moved!  NOW I can start blogging again!  (Not that I was very prolific before!)  So this post is a bit of bragging about a prop I made at the last second...literally, still drilling about 3 pm before Opening Night!  They are some steam-punky old-fashioned sound operator headphones.  I think they turned out pretty cute!
On my head!
My replica close-up.

My research 1.

My research 2.
I started with some airline headphones, and added wire to the top. I removed the foam around the ear pieces.  Drilled holes in the center of the earpieces.   I had found some old brown rubber furniture slides to put on the outside of the ear pieces, and also drilled hles in the center.  I had to Dremel a groove in the earpieces and the furniture slides to fit the small dowel "antennas" on. Spray painted various parts with the must-have Copper Metallic paint from Krylon.  I sandwiched the dowels in between the ears and the slides, bolting them together with my favorite small #6 screws and nuts.  Put the ear foam back on and gaff-taped some speaker cord to part of the original cord of the headphones!  Pretty cool, huh?