Star Trek The Original Series, The Man Trap

made from scratch movie prop weapon

Black & White Fiberglass Mid-Grade Phaser: Some say there were no surviving Black & Whites to copy for a reproduction. Further, many point to the faked Black & White Hero to support this position. I want to share that there are surviving Black & White Mid-Grades. They started out as B&W’s and are now in museum or private collections. My best example is the Paul G. Allen Zolar-X. While repainted in the grey/grey scheme the old colors are underneath, just like the West Coast Mid-Grade. The old B&W scribe marks are also visible on both. I wanted to mention too that the first reproduction I made (in the Grey & Grey Colors) for the Star Trek Museum in NY was first painted with a white handle and then the silver grey. I felt that was the only way to get the color to look “right”. I did the same with the P1 and P2 bodies; black epoxy resin then overpainted with the correct vintage paint. The B&W HD screen capture reviews, and other B&W R&D I’ve done, lead me to believe the most likely hood, sight, and white-button material (on a B&W Mid-Grade) was painted brass of a very thin gauge, so I used this for the reproduction. Black painted brass was used on the B&W Heros in season one. I have listened to Ed M. and Steve P. talk about how simple and obvious items of the “time” were reused and integrated into props such as an ice cream dish becoming part of McCoy’s lab equipment. Achems razor, the simplest explanation is often the truth.