Johnny Adama
New Member
I Like my RB Replicas sonic screwdriver.....or should I say LIKED. One of the reasons I have joined this forum was to share my story and see if anyone has a similar tale.Hey there folks, I wanted to share with those of us that purchased the Russ Brown group run Sonic Screwdrivers some info on some custom detailing I did on my Tom Baker Sonic Screwdriver.
Here we have a shot of my sonic over all and for the most part I kept it original.
Basic detailing was using some steel wool to polish up the casing and really give it a nice bright look like chrome. another was adding a small stainless steel washer to the join between the red halo ring and the black bullet that connects to the core. I did that because I really like that little glint of silver there. I had seen some other replicas with this and I just really liked the look.
Now, the more interesting change was in the black portion of the emitter bullet. A lot of us know that a magnet seems to have been used in that part for the screen used prop like this:
...and indeed a 12.5 mm Alnico magnet not only looks like the part but it also fits onto Russ' sonic quite well, however many of us that tried that found the magnet to be a tad too short. Well,I have a fix for that and it didn't take me too long either.
As you can see on the far left is a standard Alnico button magnet in the 12.5 mm range. It's Powder coated in red and as we can all see by the above picture of Tom holding his sonic, it looks like what they used, however it doesn't stand out very much and looks a bit stubby. The second item is my fixed magnet, and next to it is the recreation Russ made for his sonics. Now Russ did a great job in recreating this but for many of us, we want a real magnet. So what I did was take the magnet recreation Russ made, cut off the back end of it at roughly the half inch mark from the flat end, and then use a file to flatten and remove the cut marks from where I cut it off. I recommend using a fiberglass cut of wheel on a Dremel for this. Cuts aluminum like butter! After than I soaked the magnet in acetone to get the powder coat off and once the powder coat was removed, I used gorilla glue to secure the magnet to the cut off aluminum piece we made earlier. Once this was done I used the glue to cover the seam where i glued it and let it dry, then sanded it so you couldn't see the seam, and painted the magnet with Krylon black texture paint. Nice thing about this is that it really covers any rough sanding you may have and matches the finish of the paint Russ uses on the black parts pretty well. Lastly, I noticed that with this new set up, there is a small shelf inside the new emitter head, enough to counter sink the screw in there. So I took the screw Russ provided and put in in my trusty Dremel and proceeded to grind the head diameter of the screw down till it fit inside the head without touching the paint. A few shots of red paint to the head of the screw later and you get a matching red screw to match the red powder coated ring. If you have the anodized version, don't worry, you can polish the screw up and leave it silver if you like. I believe it is stainless anyway so it shouldn't rust.
And there you have it! An alnico button magnet that is almost as long as the recreation Russ made for your Sonic Screwdriver!
EDIT: I totally forgot something that will help you all in regards to the scratching that can happen when you move your activation sleeve up and down and into the grip. It usually happens where the three grooves are cut in and can sometimes ruin a nice piece. Take either some electricians tape or some shrink tubing that is smaller than the 3/4 inch size. Remove your activation sleeve from the sonic, and below the grip line by say 1/8th inch below, wrap the activation sleeve. With the shrink tubing you will only need one layer, but with the new models you will need two even layers of the black electricians tape. When you're done it should look like this:
I used black electricians tape and trimmed the excess off just past the bottom of the sleeve because believe it or not, if you leave any on there the spring will snag it and make the operation a lot less smooth XD nice thing is you can also put some three in one oil on either tape or shrink tubing to make sure you have a nice smooth action when you use it.
As a bonus, I thought I would tell you where I found a penlight that can pass as a great Patrick Troughton era Sonic Screwdriver.
FindingKing - Gem Grading Penlight
This pen is listed as being silver but it actually comes in black. No biggie since a good acetone bath will take the paint right off the casing and nice thing is, tis thing can be completely taken apart so no need to worry about leaving the bulb in it. Once that's done you can buff the casing with steel wool and viola! A pen light worthy of the 1967 - 1969 seasons of Doctor Who.
I have to say that I never seen any pictures of the 2nd Doctor sonic screwdriver alone. I always sen it in his hand so I have NO idea what the butt end looks like so this may be as close as it gets. I also chose to leave off the pocket clip since well, that just serves to make this look MORE like a pen light. Great thing is that this penlight is like, $10.00 USD including shipping so it's a GREAT budget model for us fans that want to have a complete set of Sonics.
Hope you all enjoyed my little presentation.
Russ at RB replicas talks a good talk, but in the end this is one of the worst customer service issues I have ever had with anyone.
The first part of the story is that I saw his Baker-era sonic screwdriver on a Youtube video. I blew the 250 bucks on it.....and it took almost 3 months to get it!!! It was a long wait and I was pretty frustrated. I was happy when it finally arrived.
Not too long after that, my son broke the damn thing. He literally scaled my shelf and pulled it down...he gave it a good twist apparently and damaged the inner workings.
Sooooo I shipped it back to England for Russ to look at. My son had caused 90 dollars worth of damage....so I bit my lip and paid the repair cost. And I have never seen it again. That was 6 months ago. Every couple of weeks I would email Russ and ask where it was...and there was always some sort of story. Waiting on a new part, decided to replace the sound-chip to a better quality piece. It was excuse after excuse. Each one sounded believable enough and caused my to just sit and wait when I really should have been filing a dispute with Paypal.
So Finally I had reached my limit. I wrote to Russ and essentially said "Look dude, it's getting near 6 months, enough is enough. Where is it." He says back, "Oh, I'm sorry I didn't tell you....I mailed it out last week!"
That was over 3 weeks ago. I emailed him again and told him that it still isn't here yet. I asked if he could either track it for me or give me the information so I could track it myself....I got no response. None. Because it is so late, I am not able to file a complaint with Paypal. I really feel like I have been played. That's 250 dollars gone.....plus 90 in repairs gone...and no sonic screwdriver to show for it. My wife was joking around saying that I paid a 250 dollar rental fee.
I feel completely duped and taken advantage of. He took my money and left me empty handed. Probably repaired and resold it to someone else. Has anybody had any bad luck with this?? Anyone have any horror stories to share about their dealings with Russ??
Anyone have any suggestions about what I can do as far as trying to recouping my losses from this "business?"
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