Stargate Prop Build

Stargate Prop Build

A good friend of mine asked if I could make a small Stargate from the Show Stargate SG1 and I decided to take on the challenge! It needed to be light and break apart enough to fit into a car for transport.

I first found a good image of a Stargate and brought it into a program called Illustrator. I turned it into a vector image and enlarged it until it was the right size. I only printed out the symbols and a template for the chevron locks that appear around the outside.

The main structure of the Stargate is pink insulation foam, I made it two layers thick and I offset the layers so it fits together like a puzzle. I used a pen, a piece of string and a nail to make the inner and outer lines of the ring then cut it out.

Once I had the main structure I used a metal tool with a rounded end to create details by dragging the tool across the foam. It was easy to make lines on the foam because it’s so soft, after all the lines were set I went back over them with a sharpie to make them stand out. In hindsight that was an unneeded step seeing as how I was going to paint the whole thing.

Once the lines were defined the gate looked like this.

Next I cut out the chevron locks out of foam and placed them around the edges of the gate. On these pieces i used an sharp blade to cut out the designs on the face of the chevron locks to match the design in the show.

Once I had all nine made glued them to the main gate piece. I tried to make them as equally distant as I could, but I made a little allowance for having a base at the bottom.

Next I went over the foam with a white water based primer and made sure to keep the spray can away from the foam or the propellant would melt the foam. Once I got three coats down, then I painted the whole thing with a black hammered texture spray paint. I painted the center of the chevron locks red and outlined all the details using silver sharpie. I used Velcro to hold the parts together where they join, I had to add extra glue to the Velcro strips so they held.

The base is made out of 2×4 and painted black, I wanted to make it heavy so it would support the Stargate. I designed the stand so that the Stargate would fit snugly in the base. It all held up rather well, the foam did make it bend easy, but once set up it was rather stable. I later added bolts to hold the pieces together, it was much more stable after that.

The last part was to add some lights, I got some blue and red EL wire and outlined some of the symbols and chevron locks. It looks great when the lights are dark, I did not know how to do electronics back then or I could make a dialing effect.

And that is my Stargate build, if you have any questions about this build or anything else, feel free to comment below or drop me a line using the contact page.

Ben Crawford