Stargate Leg Painting
When I first got my Stargate, the back legs were 32" and the front were
28". The proper way to level a System3 machine is to have all legs the
same size and unscrew the back leg levellers 7 threads. Obviously I had
a little too much slope.
Being very "thrifty", I managed to dig up a set of legs that matched
but were fairly rusty.
I had painted another set of legs (for my Williams Suspense) with
some rustoleum hammertone black and really liked the end result, so I
went ahead and painted this set the same way. Stargate is such a pretty
machine that plain black legs seemed kind of dull - so I came up with
something else.
First I dug around on the internet and found a heiroglyphics font. Then
I figured out what keys produced the simple symbols, and found about 10
that weren't very intricate. I sized the font so that the letters would
be about 1 inch wide and arranged them into a vertical column. Then I
printed them out on 8.5"x11" transparencies.
From here it was easy, just set them on some cardboard and used a
razor blade to carve them out. Then I did a test run with some gold
spray paint on top of a cardboard box. I practiced with various amounts
of paint, how flush the stencil was to the surface, and how far away
the spray can was from the stencil.
I decided I liked what I saw, and painted the legs. I taped some
paper at the top of the stencil to protect from overspray, and laid the
stencil on top of the leg. I found that one quick but thorough shot of
paint from about 1 foot away moving from one end of the stencil to the
other gave the best results. I didn't bother holding down the stencil
flat because I was going for a slightly "faded" look. I also wanted the
artwork to be a little understated, so I only did the front side of the
front legs, and the outfacing sides of the back legs.
Here's the end result, excuse the mess under the machine!
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