STARGATE ATLANTIS/ORIGINS- DHD - Dialing Home Device - PART 1/3
What an holy grail for a Stargate Fan ! I got my hands on an original DHD from the franchise !!!
Bit of history is needed :
Three DHDs were made for the show :
1) The hero one. I am gonna call that one DHD#1
2) The black rubber one from SG-1 season 10, episode 16 “Bad Guys” aka DHD#2
3) The battle damaged one from SGA, season 3, episode 9 “Phantoms”, of course DHD#3
Besides DHD#1, the other two were owned by Propstore, and were available for quite a while. But at some point in 2017 DHD#2 was sold. Later that same year in October, Propstore cleared out some of their long time inventory, that’s when they auctioned off DHD#3.
Right before that auction, DHD#1 owner was having talks with the Stargate Origins production about loaning his DHD (his hero DHD) for their show. When he saw Propstore was selling DHD#3, a deal start to form ; he would send the top of DHD#1 to the production, he would buy DHD#3 at the auction and let the production use both, in order to get a full working DHD on stage.
He eventually won Propstore’s DHD#3, send it and the DHD#1 top to the Origins production, and that was that !
After the Origins production wrapped, DHD#1 owner had them the DHD#3, top fo DHD#1 and various other props at a storage facility in Los Angeles. At this point It came quite obvious that DHD#3 was of no use to him anymore. His first thought was to keep the battle damaged top of DHD#3 as an extra to switch on (his) DHD#1 on occasion. The rest of DHD#3 would then be cut into little pieces that would be sold later on, savings hundreds of dollars in shipping fees.
So when - after the Origins production wrapped - he made a Facebook post to gauge interest about cutting the DHD#3 body into pieces, i had the idea to buying the whole DHD from him, and eventually did.
The next step was waiting on DHD#1 owner to ship all his props. That happened at the end of June 2018.
We had lots of trouble retrieving our props :
- container being infested with cockroaches,
- Owner getting hospitalized on his way to the port,
- etc etc,
but it would take too long to explain and this website is not about complaining about that :).
Wrap up at port Le Havre (France) when picking up DHD#3, the top of DHD#1 and other props :
A quick overview when I got it home. You can see all the damages that would need to be repaired :
- The backside had big cracks, like REALLY big, so big that the back had collapsed in the inside
- The base had several cracks as well, one of the side was not cast properly by the SG1 production, causing a major defect, significant holes along the seamline, etc etc
- Paint had ripped off from multiples areas.
It became clear that DHD#3 was more likely a throw-away cast. It was made really thin. Just by carrying the base I could feel it was really fragile and could break in my hands. There was no board of wood to the base like on DHD#1, the frontplate had been roughly cutted out to be used on DHD#1, lots of damage. Simply said : it looked like nobody cared about it after production.
The battle damaged parts were removed as they would go to DHD#1 owner.
Pic 1 : These are the parts beneath the top, located inside the DHD, it is supposed to be 2 parts, but one of these was broken, and needed bit of restoration (would be for another entry on this website)
Pic 2 : It was quite a pain because the top was screwed from the inside during the casting process which made it very hard to undo: I had to saw the top coming in from the little gap between top and the arms seen in pic 2.
My DHD was finally free (just like Teal’c) !!!
July 2018 :
I recently got my first proper workshop, but it wasn’t big enough to be able to work on my DHD. So it was stored in my apartment, without knowing when I would be able to restore it.
Bloup blip blop , and then came November 2018, with a new workshop, shared inside a 200 square meters one. So plenty of space to work on my DHD.
December 2018 :
I started with a simple task : make the wood board for the base.
Depending of what you’ll want use the wood for you want to buy a reliable type. In my case, I’m planning to get this DHD to conventions, events, etc so I bought okoume plywood for outside use, pricey but tough. Then it was simply screwed to the resin.
I painted it in matching DHD colors.
As you’ve noticed (i’d like to hope so) the DHD base had a big hole at the front. It was missing the frontplate. So DHD#1 owner loan me his original one. I made a mold of that part and casted one unit :
I already had done some research one which products I’d Need to used to reinforce the DHD.
I went with Smooth-on ones, mainly epoxy systems.
I was confident in what I was doing, but before going big scale I did a small test using the frontplate mold.
- Brushing release agent into the mold (waiting 15 minutes)
- Brushing epoxacoat grey (waiting 1 hour)
- Applying mat fiber and epoxamite for the mat to adhere to epoxacoat, waiting 1h30
- The pumps supplied by Smooth-on were quite helpful
- Prepping two layers of fiber clothes
- Applyling more epoxamite to help the fiber stick to the previous layer
- Saturating the fiber
- Applying two layers of fiber clothes
- Waiting 16 hours for full cure
- Demolding
Result : the cast was a success ! Compared to the urethane cast I had made earlier to cover the hole in the DHD base, this epoxy cast was WAY sturdier. Heck, I even tried to break it by hand. While it could be done, it’s hard to do so.
I couldn’t reinforce the base without patching the big hole on the front, so I installed the urethane frontplate.
I glued a board of foamcore on inside the DHD, on which I glued the urethane frontplate. I filled the gaps all around with Free FormAir. That’s a 2 part epoxy dough, applied by hand, to be smooth out with water.
After a 24hour wait for full cure I removed the foamcore board.
I repaired a big defect as part of the cast was collapsing on itself. To do so I applied bondo, sanded, applied bondo, sanded again, etc etc until I was fully satisfied with the result.
Last step : in order to give the epoxy something to bond well with the polyester resin from the DHD I sanded the insides of the full DHD with 80 grit sandpaper. I wore a respirator, because polyster-dust is very toxic. I would say all the products i’ve used are, but polyster would take home the prize !
Dust was wiped out using air and cleaned up with acetone.
>> Reinforcement process
And there I was : ready to start the reinforcement process on the DHD base. I won’t explain all of it, because it’s basically the same as with from the frontplate epoxy test cast.
One thing though: the strips of tape, the foamcore and the plexiglass glued to the DHD were there to cover the cracks that needed to be filled with epoxy resins during the process.
Once fully cured the excess resin was trimmed off and the ridges completely sanded flat.
As explained previously, the back of the “arms” had collapsed. So I tried to pushed it back from the inside out, but it was stuck. I had to dremmel out some material where the crack was located. Than it gave me some slack and I was able to raise it.
To be sure it would never collapse again, I added a piece of ledger on the inside, like a pole.
Once again, the reinforcement process is done.
>> Test fit
As the whole DHD was now reinforced, it was time to assemble it.
Because it was used very briefly during production, those two parts were originally just glued together. So I draw the pattern from the bottom part, stuck it to the top part, drill the necessary holes and assemble it with butterfly screws.
For the first time in months, the DHD top and bottom were back together.
Yes, the top is a bit on a incline. While when I chose to restore it I decided to make it like the hero version, in the end I wanted to keep its history. It was inclined in the first place, so I kept it that way.
Fun fact : DHD#1 top is actually inclinded as well.
[ Thanks to Alex who reviewed the article for spelling and grammar errors :) as english is not my native language ]