Somehow I messed up the electronics I was putting into the EE3. No idea how. I messed with it for a few hours and finally declared it deceased and had to move on. I'm putting the EE3 on hold until I can figure out whether the electronics I took from the Hasbro will still work, or whether I need to come up with another solution. Putting an Arduino blaster core into it would cost about the same as buying another Hasbro and taking the electronics out of that. Tougher, as I really don't know what I'm doing, but it's always nice to have projects.
Moving along, I got the girth belt last week and it needed to be dyed. After reading a lot of stuff, I decided on Behr Barn Red stain to do the trick.
Here is my painter's pan, the belt and the can of stain. You actually need 2 cans. The other can isn't pictured.
At Home Depot you need to ask the paint person to mix it up. I used barn red as per other tutorials. Don't spend 15 minutes looking for it before asking, just ask. I thought it was something you could buy off the shelf. Nope. The sampler stain costs less than $4 and you need two cans. So about $8. Make sure you wear disposable gloves. Just pour the stain into the pan, soak the belt with the stain, and squeeze it out. Soak and squeeze, soak and squeeze, until the entire belt doesn't have any white in it. Hang it up to dry and take paper towels and dab the stain out of it. Keep going until, at the very least, there isn't any stain on surface showing.
Don't worry about getting stain on the buckles, it'll just scrape off. Set the belt to hang for a few days (I am guessing from what I read).
Here it is hanging in my garage. The color in the pic is not right as the lights are showing directly on the belt. It is much darker in person.
Lastly for the girth belt, what is accurate? To keep it closed, are the straps a black nylon or were they black leather? Or something else? I imagine I'll end up going with whatever I have on hand, as this is a "semi-accurate" build, but I have a lot of material on hand, so using accurate material will likely not cost me anything. Might as well be accurate when it is free to do so.
As always, thanks for the help.