Wesley's Weekly Presents... The Sonic Screwdriver

POSTED BY Wesley Scoggins, 03 September 2008

Hey everybody, Wes here. As you might have heard on the news Hurrican Gustav rolled through the Southern United States, causing trouble for everybody down here. Well I just happened to exist in the Southern United States, and it has caused me trouble as well. The Hardware stores down here are still closed because of the storm, so i'm unable to purchase many of the doodads that I would usually get to build something today.

So I thought, heck, today is as good as any other day for me to take a short break, and features another Moguler's fantastic USER SUBMITTED TUTORIALS.

This week's submission is from Moguler Wraith 5, who like many of our great members is an accomplished Prop builder. Check out some of his tutorials on his prop building thread! But he passed on to me his tutorial for his fantastic Sonic Screwdriver (of Doctor Who Fame), and I thought it was just fantastic and definitely worth sharing with you guys, so without further adu... Wraith 5's Sonic Screwdriver Tutorial!

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Custom Sonic Screwdriver: Step By Step

As most of you should know, this is a prop from the popular British Tv series 'Doctor Who'. If you don't happen to be a fan of the Doctor, you could easily adapt this prop to be used in your films as a generic futuristic tool.
I built this completely out of free stuff I had lying around, though the cost will come in under £5 ($10) if you plan on buying all the components needed.. Some of the parts may be UK specific, but I'm sure you non-uk mogulers will use your initiative and find similar items if you wish to recreate this.

For the bulk of this project you'll need the following:

-A pencil or thin dowel(not pictured)
-An empty tube of kids craft glue (can be bought at Tesco)
-The top plastic section of a freebie umbrella (this can be replaced with other tubular objects depending on how you want it to look.)
-A car indicator bulb
-fine grain sandpaper (not pictured), cardstock or thick paper will work also.
-small screws and other gribblies for detail
Tools:
-Scissors
-Hot glue gun + glue

Next, hot-glue the umbrella component onto the end of the pencil (I’ve also hot-glued metal rods to the top of the umbrella section, you’ll see why later).

After waving it around excitedly for a few minutes, I realised it really needed more grip on the handle, this is where the sandpaper comes in. Cut a few strips of the sandpaper, and glue them around the handle section. I used 3 strips, but you can use as many as you want to suit your tastes. 

I also added some strips of sandpaper around the top edge, and the join between the glue tube and umbrella component, to hide the joins and blobs of hot-glue. I also cut down the metal rods to just above the bulb; this gives interesting detail, and also serves to protect the bulb from breaking if dropped.

Now it’s painting time! I opted for a silver and bronze colour scheme, with a ceramic/bone coloured handle. Undercoat the whole thing in black. I then followed this with darker shades of the colours I wanted. So for the bone handle, start with a layer of skin-tone paint first. For the bronze, use a coat of dark yellow first, and for light metal, a coat of white. This adds more depth to these areas, and makes the desired colours stand out more than if they’d just been painted onto the black undercoat.

And you’re done!

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Thank you so much Wraith! What a great tutorial! Make sure to cruise on by Wraith's Prop thread where you'll see more builds like this!  And make sure to leave some comments for him!