STARGATE SG-1 - Cargo ship's self destruct device

In may 2017, i acquired this original prop from Stargate SG-1, this is a self destruct device on board of the goa’uld cargo ship.

It came in pretty bad shape, the dome’s feet were broken, the paint were chipping off so bad, the board was so dirty it couldn’t be softly removed without damaging the paint.

So it come to a point were it needed to be restored, here is the fucker little sweet story !

With all the damages, it was kinda difficult to figure out what was damages from bad storage, bad shipping, from the production, etc so i took a few hours to dig everything i could find from that prop.

And tadaa ! Here is a pic of the original prop on set :

So with all those informations i’d been able to find, i could start the restoration process efficiently.

The first hours of labour were dedicated to removing scrap paint from the dome.

Best weapons : sculpting tools and acetone

The interesting part of this step was seeing the fabrication process made by the production :
Dome was made of a resin/bondo type material, been covered with bondo to fix many defects, painted with grey light primer, pale gold paint, and clear varnish.

Using acetone caused some bondo repairs to dissolve in some spots, i had to start again repairs from the production.

For small bubbles i used superglue mixed with baby powder, that mix is way more liquid than bondo, which too thick doesn’t fill holes enough.
This mixture dries very quickly and become rock hard, while pretty dangerous to breathe.
Vapors are bad for eyes and lungs, wearing a respirator is mandatory.

Then came a classic process : superglue mix, primer, sanding, primer, sanding, etc a real pleasure as you could imagine !

Dome’s feet

No idea if it was from production or previous owner, but repairs had been done before, and not in the best way.

They tried to reinforce the foot with two thin layers of metal, probably efficient on set for a scene or two (if from production), but it ultimatly broke again.

I knew that gluing them - even with strong expoy - wouldn’t provide enough durability, so i reinforce repairs with threaded rods.

I drilled holes into dome’s feet in order to insert the threads, made them larger than the rods, filled with 5 minutes epoxy, inserted the rods and mount all back.

During the drilling process one of the foot completly blow out, even if i had done it gently, it seems that something inside the feet were struggling letting the rod being inserted, it turns out, they (the production/previous owner) also tried to reinforce the feet with tiny rod pins, not even larger than a paper clip.

Once the tiny pins were removed, then i processed as the first foot, drilling, epoxy glue filling and 2 hours letting all of that drying

You remember the process of sanding, priming, filling from the dome, well let’s do it all over again for each feet !!

I had applied the epoxy like nutella, i had to scrapp off the excess, then sanding, bondo filling, priming, again and again until i am pleased with the result.

(pristine finish down in this article :) )

And here we are !! Dome is completly repaired, primmed and ready to paint.

In order to prep the dome for painting i sand it off all the way with an aluminium steel wool to give it some teeth for the paint to bond well(i also did that on the dome for the primmer coat).

I used high quality automotive paint can, they ain’t cheap but they provide top notch quality, thin and flat coating.

Few coats of light pale gold to ensure full coverage, then sealer to protect it and here we are, the dome is done.

Now the easiest part ; the mdf wood board.

It was really clean, no damages, but SO dirty. I tried to remove the dirt with window spray cleaner, then stronger and stronger products, but it was inneficient and strong products were ultimatly removing the paint, so i used acetone to remove most of the paint, wetsand all the board with 400 grip sandpaper, let it dry, primming, paint, and done !!

The only pain was that the board was too big for my spray booth, so i had to paint it spray booth open and fans on to blow out the air outside the workshop.

Green translucent dome was just glued back with hot glue, nothing fancy.

I retaped all the electronic as the previous 20 years one wasn’t sticking anymore.

Only one green crystal was provided with the device (sold as is by Propworx), so i removed it, mold it, and made another one.

Little catch, i only had epoxy under my hand, and i figured that for small parts , the tint doesn’t go all the way to the sides

Pic 1 : original on the left, two casts loose tint on the thin sides.
Photo 2 : so i made a cast without tint, wetsanding, applied clear varnish tinted green (pic 3), which is actually the process that happens on the original one.

Was finally time to assemble all back.

Not really needed to describe the whole process, it was mainly screwing back the frame to the board, the dome and crystal to the frame.
Made some light test with protective sheet from shipping supplies as diffuseur

One last missing part was the main crystal that control the device, i tried to hunt it down for a while, the previous owner of the device had an original crystal, i contacted him few months after purchase to know if he still had it, but he went silence and never heard back from him anymore. I didn’t bought the crystal in the first place, because i thought the missing ones were all the same, which obviously i was wrong.

Finally found a crystal from a collector that lived in France !! What a luck ! Owner sold it to me at the price she got it from Propworx, and no shipping because i picked it up ! Woot Woot !

And here we are, the device at it’s full glory again, ready for another 20 years of use, as long as it’s stored well :-p

Possédant d'autres props sur le thème Goa'uld, je prévois de fabriquer un plus grand display et de tous les y intégrer, la suite au prochain épisode. :)

Next step will be to build a large display like the cargo table holding the self destruct device, but that’s for another day :)