This post shows how I built an electrobinocular to go with my Sandtrooper costume. In the movie Star Wars A New Hope, the Sandtroopers used a pair of electrobinoculars to search for R2-D2 and C3PO. Here's a picture from the movie:
And here are a few shots of the actual props, I think these are in a museum somewhere?
And my build
And here are a few shots of the actual props, I think these are in a museum somewhere?
And my build
And here's how I did it:
Note that this build is of a pattern,
it is being built with the intention of being molded in silicone rubber and
roto-cast. So its weight and durability is not being considered here as the final
cast will be hollow and very light.
I began by collecting as many photos of the binoculars
as I could find to build up a reference library. I was hoping to find a
blueprint but I could not. So all my measurements are estimated by measuring
the parts I planned to use and guessing at the size of the binoculars based on
those measurements. There are some details that came to my attention after I
began this build so there are a few things I’m not fully happy with. I’m pretty
fussy about this kind of stuff but I’m not willing to start over. If it
continues to bother me I’ll replace the face plate with a new one. So you
may notice a few discrepancies. 
I wanted to build the core using 2 pipes with a wood
bridge between the two. I couldn’t find a pipe the right size so I found one
that was smaller, cut up one side of the pipe and slid it over my wood core
Here you can see the wood core made up of two pieces of
¾ inch MDF with the rest filled in with ½ inch MDF. The gaps were filled with
auto-body filler.
I wanted to wrap this core with .020 styrene so I could
easily glue the ribs on using methylene chloride which is a water thin styrene
glue. To do this took a bit of trial and error, trying to find a glue that
would work on styrene, wood, and PVC pipe. Water based contact cement was the
solution, I used the green type which you should be able to find in your local
hardware store or lumber yard.
This shows some of the parts for the face plate and
some eye pieces, which I later rejected for a different style, but you can see
the nice smooth styrene surface of the main body. I’ve also drawn out the
location of the ribs and other features.
The lens for this build was made from a common 1½ inch
ABS plumbing union and a plastic jar lid.
The parts required some modification to look like this:
I used my lathe to cut the centre piece so the cap
would fit snugly over it being sure to leave about a ¼ inch of the ridges in
place. I also cut most of the ends off the left piece and glued a strip of
styrene around it. I placed the whole item back in the lathe to cut out the
centre of the white jar lid. I may mold the white cap separately from the main
body to allow a clear lens to be inserted later.
This is what the finished item looks like.
The face plate is made of one layer of 1/8 inch white sintra
and two layers of 3/8th inch MDF. It took me a while to get the
shapes of these right as they all had to stack together and fit onto the main
body correctly.
I used the lid of a ladies deodorant stick for the
bulbous shapes located under the binoculars.
I cut the lid in half and scribed it to fit the body. This also allowed me to get the final shape of the face plate by tracing the lid halves onto a template.
These shapes are held in place with a ball of epoxy
putty, pressed into place and held there with some masking tape. The putty I
have (oatey- fix-it-stick) sticks to everything and sets up rock hard in about
10 minutes. You can find it at an irrigation or pool equipment supply store.
Click here for Parts 2 and 3:
