Just a few short years ago, we the public had next to no solid information on authentic communicator props.  Everything was a guess.  Oh, how times have changed!  The famous Alpha hero has been found, photo-graphed, measured, 3D laser scanned (>>) and then even cast - for the making of super-accurate reproductions.  Zeta's shells too have been cast and its progeny is available in a licensed kit.  Even Epsilon has been at least flat-bed scanned.  All told, a spectacular wealth of data is now at our fingertips.  So when it comes to the creation of the most accurate comm shells possible, are we done?  Can it still be done better?  The answer we at HeroComm confidently give to that question is "yes."

The discovery that the found object of a Sterling Pencil Box was Wah's true source for the shape of his forming bucks has once again raised the bar on the old Expectation-Meter.  All of the surviving comm props bear witness to the passing of time, in the warping here and there of the shells from heat and stresses, so any replica faithfully based on those is bound to pass on those unintended alterations.  In the pencil box we now have the means to literally turn back the clock and side-step those limitations by bringing about a new set of bucks in the exact same manner, with the exact same shape and added features, as those first created back in 1966.

In an amazingly generous offering towards this hefty goal, Mr. Greg Schnitzer has made a gift of his pencil box (the one pictured on the Detail pages linked above) to one of our senior researchers.  In concert with other specialists and in combination with ALL available information...

... the pencil box (either in surrogate form or directly) will be pressed into service to recreate Wah's original plastic "proto-bucks" and the final cast "plaster bucks" just as he himself did it, complete with the same compound corrections of misaligned seams.  The end result is currently intended to be a large fleet of plaster bucks available for free use by anyone worldwide.  These will enable you to create your own shells identical in form to those as they were first delivered fresh to the studio and then filmed in episodes.  The timeframe looks to be second half 2010.  We'll also at some point have a downloadable scanned 3D digital model (for CG milling) of same for Trek prop geeks distanced by geography or time.

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On a related subject, we have also been working directly with a sales executive (and Trek fan) at Kleerdex, the manufacturer of the Kydex plastic which the shells are made of, to see if the original fine haircell texture or something similar can be made available to us hobbyists.  Despite his comprehensive search throughout the company and with past affiliates, he has not yet found a way to do so.  The 1960s drums that pressed the texture into the plastic were retooled and eventually eliminated three decades ago, sample stock was depleted that long ago too, and prototype processes are not currently geared in our direction.  To start from scratch would require an estimated half-million dollar initial outlay.  Needless to say, all we can do right now is work with available materials, so we suggest using their glossy P1 and modestly abrading down the high texture grain with steel wool while the sheet is still flat, prior to vacuforming, to best replicate Wah's Kydex.