Well, we’ve been waiting for this one since Martin McClean announced it last year, and this week David got his hands on the full-size fan-made naquadah reactor prop. To say we are blown away by Martin’s work is an understatement. It’s almost as if the naquadah inside detonated in our faces. See for yourself!

Share This Video ► https://youtu.be/Nz8etJ4ukRw

GateBuilder Etsy Portal ► https://www.etsy.com/shop/GateBuilderModels
Free Blueprints ► https://www.gateworld.net/author/3dgatebuilder/

Visit DialtheGate ► http://www.dialthegate.com
on Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/dialthegate
on Instagram ► https://instagram.com/dialthegateshow
on Twitter ► https://twitter.com/dial_the_gate
Visit Wormhole X-Tremists ► https://www.youtube.com/WormholeXTremists

MERCHANDISE!
http://www.dialthegate.com/merch

SUBSCRIBE!
https://youtube.com/dialthegate/

Timecodes
0:00 – Welcome and Opening Credits
0:34 – Unboxing the Naquadah Generator
9:47 – Chatting with Martin McClean, the Designer
12:43 – Trial and Error
17:36 – Making 3D-Printed Model Kits
22:57 – Don’t Miss Small Details
29:24 – Skillsets Involved in Creating Props
30:23 – The Grail Diary from Indiana Jones
32:22 – Owning the Last Mile
36:11 – Making a Replica Look Like the Original
42:20 – Failure is a Step, Then a Directi
45:25 – Unboxing Parts We Missed
46:34 – End Credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

#Stargate
#DialtheGate
#TurtleTimeline

TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Hi, everybody. Welcome to Dial the Gate. I’m David Read and welcome to my dining room. It was the only place big enough to handle this. Martin McClean has sent me his full-size Naquadah generator prop, we are gonna unbox it together and then we’re gonna talk to him. Let’s take a look. I’ve been waiting for this for probably a year, so very eager to dig inside of it and see what we’ve got here. If I can get into it. Getting into it would be helpful. I might need a hacksaw. We’ve got a Russian nesting doll, ladies and gentlemen. Finally. And guess what? Another box. Actually, I’m glad he went to the trouble of packaging it like he did. All right. Whoa. My God. Cut, cut, OK. This man understands presentation. He left little instructions for me everywhere. Just cut on the sides, don’t cut the back. The back is evidently important. All right. Geez. Man. All right. Go Martin, as always. Let’s see what we got here. What sequence am I meant to open it? Let me see. Wow. OK. Stargate, his Stargate blueprints, all right. Abydos coordinates. Sick. All right, and what have we got here? Man. That’s required. Getting started guide. OK, we have to get it out first. Let’s get it out first. This is starting to look right. Let’s see here. OK. I don’t wanna hurt it. Where do I grab from, Martin? No, I don’t wanna do that. There we go. Geez, it’s heavy. Holy cow, it must have Naquadah in it already. All right. Beautiful presentation. Beautiful box. Very well done. Definitely not throw that away. The fan community does amazing work. There are so many brilliant people out there; Martin McClean, Remington Philips at SG-1 Props. My gosh. We never had one of these at Propworx. We had the little one that Martin made before, but it was attached to the X-699, the BFG. Wow. All right. Let’s get this thing out of here. Wow, how beautiful. My gosh, look at that. Let’s see here, if it does its signature… It’s like a concertina. “Extend the power gloves for operation. Extend the Naquadah generator power gloves. Carefully slide each glove outward, taking care not to push too hard. Switch on main power. On the bottom of the Naquadah generator base, toggle the base switch to the on position. You will see the lights blink.” Whoops. Sorry, Martin. Sorry. They blinked. That’s apparently normal. It’s like, “Oh no, I already broke it.” “You will see the lights blink. Activate the handle for arming. Lift the control cone plunger. The control cone green lights will light up. Rotate the handle for the start sequence. Turn the control cone plunger handle counterclockwise, approximately 45 degrees. The control cone red lights will light.” Counterclockwise. OK. “To activate the device, lower the handle slowly. The device will now activate and you will see rotating blue lights in the control cone, red activation lights in the control cone and each reactor arm illuminated and you’re done. Reverse these steps to power off.” Wow. What a job well done. He’s just a master. He’s absolutely out of his mind. “Replacing the batteries.” Geez, “From time to time, you’ll need to change the batteries. Fresh batteries will last upwards of 20 hours of continuous use. You can use rechargeable batteries. You’ll need a small Phillips-head screwdriver.” All right. Geez, Louise, man. That is so spectacular. His signature look is putting the SGC logo on the bottom here. One of the things that’s cool about a lot of Martin’s work is some of his stuff is screen accurate, but some things, like in areas where we didn’t see, like the bottom, he will go ahead and tweak where he believes, theoretically, if this were real, this would go. This is just so legitimate. I’m really tickled. …then close for storage. So, you want one. Let’s talk with Martin and see how you can get one. Let’s jump right in. My God, dude, you have fricking outdone yourself. Holy cow.

Martin McClean:
It arrived good, in one piece.

David Read:
It sure did. It’s just mind-blowing. What did you say the number of hours was that you put into this?

Martin McClean:
Hundreds. There were a couple of hundred hours to print it and then to post-production to get all the right aluminum finish and then all the electronics and stuff. It’s a couple of hundred hours. It’s quite a lot.

David Read:
It absolutely is, and it’s all on time when you should be resting from work. I guess you are recreating and resting in your own way. I took it out and I was like, “We’re gonna do a segment on it.” The more I started playing with it, it’s like, “No, we’re doing a full episode and I’ll just surprise drop it for everyone.” Did you ever have access to the original prop?

Martin McClean:
No. I’ve never seen it, actually.

David Read:
Wow.

Martin McClean:
I suspected mine’s fairly close, but that’s only because I’ve studied the photos as much as possible. I don’t actually have access to blueprints or the original, which is unfortunate. I would love to have seen it.

David Read:
The dimensions of it have got to be right. This looks right.

Martin McClean:
It took a lot of iterations, actually. You’d be surprised how many variations we went through. Even the original, the little small one that we made a while back, even that didn’t really give us enough information when we made it to more towards studio scale. At least it helped; at least I had a reference point to go to. It took many iterations to get it right. Of course, when you see all those photos that are posted on the internet, they’re all screen based with studio lighting and things like that. Trying to make sure that you understand what those dimensions are and trying to make sure that it at least represents what the studio lighting portrayed, because often, the props, when you see them in reality, and I haven’t seen that many of them, but when you see them… When you did the auction, for example, a lot of them looked very different when they’re not studio lit.

David Read:
It’s a lighting thing, pure and simple. That’s just absolutely crazy. Take us through your process of creating this. I’m assuming you used some kind of 3D program to generate some of the components here. This doesn’t look 3D printed. You had to have brushed it. My camera does not do it justice; I’m just putting that out there right now.

Martin McClean:
I started with the small original versions and got a bit of an idea for what was possible. Everything in that is so round, everything has a curved surface in it. There are very few straight pieces in there at all, with the exception of a couple on the control cone and the base, there’s very little that’s straight. Historically, when you design something like that, that’s the worst shape that you have to deal with. Once I did the research on how it looked and tried to find out how it worked on screen, making sure that I had that right and that the lights were going the right way and all of that sort of thing. I designed it in Fusion 360, which is a CAD application, which a lot of makers and creatives are using, an awesome tool. From there, I 3D printed it. In order to try save myself time, I decided what I would do is print it in high resolution so that I didn’t have as much post-production work to do on it.

David Read:
OK. So, that would take longer to print?

Martin McClean:
Much longer, about 260 hours I think, to sort of print it in that resolution. You would think, “Well, great. You’ve saved yourself some time. Post is no longer as big an issue.” It didn’t turn out that way because anything that’s metallic or aluminum or aluminum-looking is difficult to render; you can see any imperfection. There’s a lot of post-production finishing, what have you, in there, to try and get it as close as possible to it. Then you have to come up with the right sort of paint and the right sheen, stuff like that, to give it that sort of metallic sheen without turning it into chrome. I went with quite a few iterations, actually, on the paint, trying to work out exactly how dull, dulled surfaces with slight sheens worked and make sure it really looked good in the light. That’s how it happened. The biggest problem with it was working out how to get the control cone mechanism working with the electronics and to make sure that it was faithful to what we’d seen in the television program.

David Read:
What was your process for that?

Martin McClean:
Mostly trial and error. I had an original design in my head and that was we were gonna use what they call magnetic switches in there to make it much easier. I haven’t seen how the real mechanism works so I’m not sure how they did it. I suspect they had a cut-out cylinder that they could rotate through and that’s essentially what mine’s is like as well. It uses a number of magnetic switches to activate different circuits, I don’t know if the original did that or not. The problem with working with magnets that no one ever tells you about, and magnetic switches, is you get these errant signals sometimes. The device will pick up odd signals. There was a lot of software to go into it to make sure that we didn’t detect the wrong signal and turn on the wrong lights. For a while, there were a few days there of hitting the head against the wall because it would work 9 times out of 10, and then suddenly it wouldn’t. All of a sudden, I worked out there was some coding issues.

David Read:
It’s like Jack said, “Magnets.”

Martin McClean:
That’s it. I have access to an extremely titled wife who is also in software and could help out.

David Read:
I was wondering. The physical stuff is only a portion of… Don’t get me wrong, it’s a huge fricking portion. But then you have programming the software that has to go into this thing. At Stargate they had whole teams that could do one or the other and you kind of have to be this island unto yourself to bring it into…It’s crazy.

Martin McClean:
Doing something like this is an act of madness because you ultimately need to be part mechanical, part electrical engineer. You need to have software skills. You need to have electronic skills to build it and stuff like that and design it. I designed all the circuitry myself and stuff like that so there was all that to learn as well. There are funny things that happen on it though. The globes that go in and out on the side seem like a trivial thing to do. It turned out they were not a trivial thing to do because there was a huge amount of issues with getting guide rails and things like that to flow properly and to have them stop.

David Read:
They’re smooth, they’re clearly on a track. When you see it on screen, you see how it operates and you not only need to duplicate the look, but you need to duplicate the movement.

Martin McClean:
Trying to get that smooth, that cost me a bit of time because I had to design that into the control spheres at either side as well. I couldn’t just sort of add it in later. I wanted to make sure that the fans that came behind me that wanted one could build their own, so I had to write the assembly manual and all of the bits and pieces that went with it. I’m pretty sure I included them with you as well.

David Read:
I had the power-on instruction. There are whole other pages to this. You are a mad scientist. Look, it’s in color.

Martin McClean:
It’s in color. I included it because I thought if you and I ever need to do remote surgery in any way on it, at least I’ll be able to guide you through with the manual.

David Read:
All right. Open main bus B with your micro screwdriver. There’s two of them. There’s two or three that exist right now.

Martin McClean:
There’s two.

David Read:
That’s it?

Martin McClean:
That’s it.

David Read:
Of this design.

Martin McClean:
There is only two.

David Read:
So, that, of course, begs the next question, where do people go to get one? I can pull it up on screen right now while we talk.

Martin McClean:
They can go to Etsy if they want to download the kit that allows them to 3D print it out and to assemble it. There’s a manual in there that tells them how to go from A to Z. That will help them walk through the entire process and there’s a larger instruction manual to the one you have that also includes electronics design and how they can put that together and all the code. They don’t need to write any computer code, if that’s of concern to anyone, but they will need to assemble the circuit. There is a little bit of time involved but hopefully they just follow the manual. It should be straightforward.

David Read:
OK, so the Naquadah Generator 3D-printed model kit, digital downloads, $39.95. You have detailed photos here. Wow. You have actually a breakdown of all the STL files that they’ll get and their individual components. It’s color-coded.

Martin McClean:
It has to be. It’s too many parts to do it any other way. When I started, I thought, “I’m gonna make this with as few pieces as possible so it’s easier for fans to go out and create their own, or even for a fan to buy this and have someone create it for them.” Unfortunately, it’s a complicated piece of prop. When you look at it, there are no screws that you can see on it, with the exception of the battery hatch at the base.

David Read:
We never saw that on screen.

Martin McClean:
No, you never see that. The cone connects with hidden screws and different hatches and stuff that you can’t see. That’s in there so that it looks as close as possible to the original prop. I would love to see the original.

David Read:
I bet you would.

Martin McClean:
Yes, I would. I would love to see it. I think Remington said to me he may have one, but I don’t know. I should reach out to him and see.

David Read:
Absolutely. I would love to see you guys collaborate on something. I think the two of you together might actually bring the world to a grating halt.

Martin McClean:
He did amazing work. He does amazing work.

David Read:
You guys are brilliant. Did mine come with a base?

Martin McClean:
Yes, it’s in the box.

David Read:
I missed it. After this, I’m gonna go down and show it.

Martin McClean:
It’s definitely in the box.

David Read:
We’re not done!

Martin McClean:
We’re not done. I think in the box, where the manuals are. It’s there.

David Read:
It’s in the back. OK, ’cause I pulled the manuals out. OK, to be continued everyone. Follow us after this and we will finish showing this off. Wow.

Martin McClean:
It’s definitely there.

David Read:
This is a work of art and it’s a credit to your intelligence and your thoroughness and your precision for it to be as accurate as possible without actually having the tools to make it possible. It’s crazy. It’s nuts.

Martin McClean:
It’s a lot of work. I think I mistakenly thought the bigger I make the prop, the easier it will be. In some senses, it doesn’t always work like that, for strange reasons.

David Read:
Why? Why do you think?

Martin McClean:
The larger you go, the more your eye can detect and you need to make sure that small details don’t get missed. Even if it’s down to things like rubber grommets on the spaces and things like that. You can’t afford to miss it because it becomes really obvious. On the side of those power globes, there’s little magnetic latches where you can open the doors at the side. I had to make sure that I replicated those as closely as I could.

David Read:
The doors actually don’t open?

Martin McClean:
No, they do.

David Read:
The sides open?

Martin McClean:
Yeah, on the end of the power globe there’s a little nodule for your fingernail and you can just open the door. they’re magnetically locked so if you give a little bit of force, I’m sure you can do it.

David Read:
I didn’t wanna break it. On the ends here?

Martin McClean:
No. It’s on the end.

David Read:
On both sides?

Martin McClean:
On both sides, the original had them on both sides as well. They were interesting because trying to get a door to match without really the look of the visible hinge was…

David Read:
You completely fooled me! I was like, “No, he didn’t do that.” Then it’s like, “Oh my God, he did!” And caution. Dude, you are a mad scientist. I’m sorry, I’m blown away. That is so crazy.

Martin McClean:
It’s one of my pleasures. I think that was probably the biggest challenge, was trying to get the hatches on the side to make sure they met perfectly when they joined, to do exactly what they did with you, which is to not be obvious that they opened at the side. You have the better version. The one I built for myself, the prototype, has a couple of problems around that. I fixed them all when I did yours and then updated the kit too so that folks could enjoy the better pieces.

David Read:
Absolutely. You know what people are gonna be saying? It’s like, “Why can’t you connect USB-C to it and recharge it? Or use it as an iPhone charger?”

Martin McClean:
Yeah. I get that quite a lot and I actually investigated putting that in. I may do that in a later release. There are two things I would like to do with it moving forward. I would like to put sound in there. I designed the circuitry to support it. You have to be respectful of intellectual property so you can’t use sound effects that are copyrighted material. We’d have to create our own sound effects for that as well. That’s why I haven’t put it in there, but I would like to do that. I would like to put in the USB power as well. I’ve actually ironically had this conversation only with someone yesterday about this and I have worked out how to do it. The challenge was that the globes go in and out. Any cabling that runs through the globes has to be able to contract and expand so that you don’t crimp cables and it doesn’t interfere with the physical movement of the globes moving out and in. That’s the reason it’s not in V1. There is an older model, I put it on my Etsy store, that has it designed for it. You can put a cable in there if you want. I did do that originally, my original one had that. I helped someone out recently who went and got their kit and they made their own. We’ve been helping them along as they go, to make sure that they get the right result. Their work’s looking great as well. It’s always humbling and really satisfying to see other people make their own and come up sometimes with their own variants on it that you didn’t think of. It’s super creative, if you know what they’re doing, it’s exciting.

David Read:
To the novice, you look at it and you go, “Wow.” These guys are so talented. Hey, you put an apple in with one of the shots. Check that out. For size comparison, this is your apple.

Martin McClean:
It’s bigger than it looks, isn’t it?

David Read:
That’s the thing. I got it and I was like, “How am I gonna fit this on the shelf?” It’s a legitimate concern ’cause I’m like, “I wanna show off everyone’s stuff. At a certain point, maybe you gotta rotate for certain episodes.”

Martin McClean:
Or get a bigger shelf.

David Read:
Or lose weight so that you can see more of past me. That’s really funny. Wow. So, you are confident that if people download this, that the instruction manuals are sufficient for them to pull it off? I’m assuming that if something is amiss or if they have trouble along the way, they can reach out to you.

Martin McClean:
Yeah. In fact, that’s what’s happening with someone that’s building a Naquadah generator at the moment. We’ve had dozens of back-and-forth conversations and I sent them some additional parts or redesigned a few parts to help them out. They were doing it a slightly different way to the way that the manual had and stuff like that. Always happy to help people who wanna do it. It’s a lot of work and there’s a lot of different skills involved to build it. Some people might be out there thinking, “Could I do it?” You can always get other people to help you. There are 3D printing services that’ll print them for you. There are technical colleges and friends and family people that will do the electronics for you and stuff like that. It’s always possible and I’m always happy to answer questions and things like that for them. I’m always amazed with the creativity that people do. Where is it? This was given to me at Christmastime from a friend of mine in the UK. It is a steampunk-themed light saber.

David Read:
Light saber.

Martin McClean:
Yeah, that he made. His name is Dave Chadwick and he made this for me and it’s fantastic. It’s got electronics in there.

David Read:
Really?

Martin McClean:
Yeah, it’s incredible. You can’t see them in there.

David Read:
Emitter.

Martin McClean:
There’s a whole bunch of things. You can put the blade on the end. They’re super, super creative. You can see some lovely, lovely details.

David Read:
Wow. Is it carved or is that 3D printed?

Martin McClean:
No, it’s not 3D printed. I think he did it on a lathe. I’m not really sure how he did all of it. He’s got leatherwork skills in there; he’s got woodworking skills. It’s amazing.

David Read:
How beautiful.

Martin McClean:
It is, isn’t it? I’m always inspired that people can go out and create things like that and sort of turn their hand to all these different skills. I’m always very confident that people can build their own Naquadah generator. I think it’s just a question of application and time to do it.

David Read:
We’ve got a problem. This end wants to keep on popping off. All right; there we go. The other skillsets involved in creating a lot of these props… Can I show you another one that I’ve never shown before?

Martin McClean:
Yeah.

David Read:
You brought in Star Wars, so I’m gonna bring in another genre. I’ll be right back. Or, not genre but property.

Martin McClean:
No problem.

David Read:
Let’s see just how nerdy you are. Do you know what this is right off the bat?

Martin McClean:
Yes, it’s the Grail diary from Indiana Jones.

David Read:
I have been wanting one since the movie. People have been making them as props for years. Only in the last couple of years did the original get scanned into a computer and all the pages individually numbered. This one is screen accurate, as best as can be determined. It has fold-out maps and inserts and it’s one of my all-time favorite pieces. I got it on Etsy for $250, which I frankly thought was a steal. Here, this is the piece that Indy was reading.

Martin McClean:
Wow.

David Read:
It’s one of my favorite things.

Martin McClean:
It’s beautifully done, isn’t it?

David Read:
It’s beautifully done. The pages are aged. There are no words. There are no words for the love and care and the construction that go into making reproductions like this. It’s just beautiful.

Martin McClean:
I can tell you, no matter what they would have charged for that, it wouldn’t even come close to the time they’ve put into it. It’s amazing.

David Read:
That’s correct. Even the pen and the stamps. Professor Henry Jones and you got Venice, Italy. Can’t throw that away.

Martin McClean:
I love that. In the business I’m in, we call that owning the last mile. That means that by the time it gets into your hands, the experience is a great one when you open it. That’s amazing. I love that work. I love the passion that created that too.

David Read:
It’s a presentation, we talked about that. Is that a Jobs quote, “owning the last mile”? Is that what that comes from?

Martin McClean:
I don’t know.

David Read:
It really started with opening the Apple products. I think Apple really began that.

Martin McClean:
It may indeed have originated there. I hear it used a lot. I think understanding the customer experience when they open it is key. Even with the generator, I couldn’t just send it in bubble wrap. I just couldn’t do it.

David Read:
I loved opening the box. We got that all on camera here so I understand. There’s a tactile experience to the human experience. Also, that emotional reaction that you get from connecting with an object for the first time stays with you when you make eye contact with the object. If you had a resentful experience with something, or someone the first time, it takes a while for that to go away.

Martin McClean:
First impression, absolutely. I originally thought, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to send it in a hard case?” I went and got one, but the case was 10 pounds of weight, that’s 5 or 6 kilos or something like that. It still didn’t fit in because it has quite a bulbous, sort of odd shape. It didn’t lend itself. I thought, “I’m just gonna make my own case in the end.” I was concerned that it would get there safely and I’m very pleased that it has.

David Read:
Not a problem with it. No Super Glue required on this one.

Martin McClean:
Cool. Yes, I put those in there properly.

David Read:
Very excited to see this one as well. This is the one that you can get on GateWorld, is that right?

Martin McClean:
Yes. Lots of people really like that. I had a wonderful email from a lady recently.

David Read:
I’ll put a link, folks.

Martin McClean:
She’d given that to her husband for Christmas and it was just lovely.

David Read:
You can scale it up. You can put it on a poster on the wall.

Martin McClean:
When you download it, it comes in about 15 different sizes. Everything from an iPad size up to an A0 or A1.

David Read:
Nice.

Martin McClean:
You can walk down to your local printing store and they can print it out. It’s all vector, so it’ll print nice and clear at those resolutions and stuff. You won’t have any problem.

David Read:
Craziness. The care that you put into it, the different skill sets that combine, everything from electronics to the 3D printing, to the graphics. I’m sure there’s some Photoshop involved in this as well. It all comes together into one piece, from one man. How did you get the grooves on this? Is there a way to adjust the depth of certain portions of it to make it look like it’s been laser cut?

Martin McClean:
Yes, there is. It’s not straightforward, that took quite a lot of time. When you do post-production on that object and you try to sand it and paint it and stuff, you can’t have it so that the grooves fill up and look different to the rest of the model. You have to make sure they’re the right depth, but they can’t be too deep ’cause then they’ll go inside the globe and that’ll affect the mechanism that slides in and out. There’s a whole bunch of different considerations. It worked pretty well in the end; it gave quite a good effect. It’s an interesting passion. Ultimately, I’m hoping someone at Amazon and MGM+ will go, “Geez, we should make this for fans.” Hopefully they will go out and be inspired to go and do that. I personally will be first in line to buy one of those if they do that. That would be very nice.

David Read:
If you build it, they will come and if they don’t, someone else will. The props hobby community is a strong beating heart in all the different shows.

Martin McClean:
Is it RPF or something like that?

David Read:
The RPF, that’s it. The Replica Prop Forum. There are communities if you wanna get involved and start making stuff. It’s an art form. It’s a great hobby.

Martin McClean:
People go to such incredible lengths for accuracy. You see the cosplay that people do for anime and a whole bunch of things, it’s really impressive work. There are people out there making magic out of bits of foam that you would walk by in the store. Yet, when they’re finished with it, it looks like armor or a suit or something and it’s really quite incredible. The problem with some of these props is that when this show was done, they probably had the luxury of having two or three different props that did different things, but it all looked to you on screen as if it was just one prop. Fast-forward to when I come along, I have to try find a way of making all of these hero features fit into one prop. This is a good example. This is the GDO. I don’t know if you can see that properly.

David Read:
Yes.

Martin McClean:
The interesting thing about this, of course, the original GDO never had any working display. It had a backlit, I think, piece of plastic, like overhead transparency or something like that.

David Read:
Just a little blue light.

Martin McClean:
It was just a little blue light, whereas this one is chargeable by USB-C. I’ll see if I can hold this up to the camera. I’m not sure if this will show. I apologize if it’s a bit…

David Read:
Oh, God.

Martin McClean:
This one actually has a working keypad and working display system on it to do different things. For example, it has all the original, or what looks to be all the original graphics, but it also has an updated version. You can see that. Sorry.

David Read:
Look at that green marching… Ugh. God.

Martin McClean:
Yes. It has all of that in the original. To do that, that was an interesting problem. There are other things it can do, it can do more original things that weren’t… Sorry if that’s not showing up all right.

David Read:
It is.

Martin McClean:
It has the incoming iris codes and all of that sort of stuff.

David Read:
Geez.

Martin McClean:
That was interesting because there was no display. Trying to find a display that was the right size was difficult. The CAD work on this was straightforward for me. I didn’t spend much time doing that. There was a lot of finishing and polishing so that it looks more metallic and looks like it wasn’t 3D printed. Then fitting it all inside there, because now it has USB-C charging so you don’t have to change any batteries. It has some controller boards and it has obviously a screen, it’s an OLED screen in there. Trying to make sure that all fitted into one little size piece that was the original on the show… Fortunately for me, I don’t quite know why, when they designed the original prop, they made it fairly large, so I was celebrating.

David Read:
It was a new thing then and it’s not the easiest thing to wear. It takes up your whole arm and everything else. You have, I think, two benefits that they didn’t. You have the benefit of time, because no one’s pushing you to get it done, and the benefit of modern technology and access to it. For the GDO, that’s a 25-year-old piece with substantially smaller electronics.

Martin McClean:
Exactly. I’m always trying to find out, “are there new ways to learn new things?” When I did your case, what I originally wanted to do was laser cut the foam so that it had a custom professional insert for it. I didn’t know how to laser cut, so I went and did a course and learnt how to laser cut it. I’m working on that for the future, that’s something I wanna bring into more props. That adds more time and complexity into things because there are certain things you can cut with a laser cutter, certain things you can’t. There is an element of being careful because it’s a laser and a whole bunch of different skill sets involved in that too. One skill builds on another. To do the laser cutting, you can use your Adobe Illustrator skills to do your designs and stuff. I would say to people who wanna get involved and do this, the more you learn, it’s never wasted. What you learn then leads on to the next thing which is really nice. I find no matter what it is, there’s always something you can draw on. You’ll make so many mistakes, you’ll learn lots of things.

David Read:
In science, failure is a step in a different direction. In many respects, you are a scientist going through this and it’s trial and error. I have so many pieces in my collection. What I would love to do is have you and Remington out here. I’ve been waiting to finish building out the house. I went room by room; I was very modular because this is a bigger house than I need because my folks visit me a lot from the north and it’s full of Stargate props. I’m ready now to show the community the collection. I wanted to make sure that the house was finished first. Remington and Nicole come down and I would love to do a whole series on all of our different replica props and the real props that I have. Would you be interested in coming up to Nashville for a couple of days and doing that?

Martin McClean:
Absolutely. I don’t think I’ve ever been to Nashville, so that’d be awesome.

David Read:
There we go. I’ll take you down to Broadway. You’ll see a sea of people. It’s almost as bad as Times Square used to be.

Martin McClean:
People are finally coming out, I guess, post-COVID.

David Read:
Let’s talk about that because there’s a lot to show. I think it would be a positive experience for us to exchange thoughts and ideas about, perhaps future projects, because there’s a few things here.

Martin McClean:
You have an amazing collection there.

David Read:
I want to talk about it with someone who knows what the parts are made of and who can surmise on the fly, “looking how they did this, I would bet that this is how it was done.” Someone with experience in materials. Let’s talk about that further.

Martin McClean:
I think so. That’d be awesome, I’d love to do that. I think it would be really interesting to see how they would approach the prop making in a new Stargate television series. That’s the opportunity I had when I did the GDO was to think, “Well, how might they do those graphics if they did them today?” Try to update them, but keep them looking as close as I could to what they had. Some of the television shows we see today, the effects are just stunning. You think, “Imagine the worlds that could be visualized and what have you,” I guess when MGM eventually get around to a decision.

David Read:
Amazon and everything else, that’s a whole other thing, that’s for a different episode.

Martin McClean:
I think that’s driving 4Gen. Definitely.

David Read:
This is really special. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap this recording up and head downstairs and see the base. See this all put together.

Martin McClean:
It’s definitely there.

David Read:
Thank you and thank you for stopping by. All right. Let’s see, the part that we missed here. I missed a lot. Goodness. OK. Looky there. Wow, look at that. My gosh. What a setup. Talk about owning the last mile. Geez. Well done.