Dr. Horrible Lab Coat and Freeze Ray

Dr. Horrible, our favorite musical madman, looks (and sings) great. You, too, may look great, but it will take some work. I'll describe how to make your very own freeze ray with a flashbulb to blind your arch-anti-villains with, and as a bonus you'll get a head start on making a knee-length, side-buttoning, mad-surgeon-style lab coat!

Materials:

An assortment of tubing from the plumbing section of your favorite hardware store.
Cans of spray paint in your favorite mad-sciency colors. I used matte black and metallic silver.
Some boxes. I used a pair of cardboard boxes I had lying around. If you want to make a more durable freeze ray I'd suggest trying to find a plastic or metal box.
A cheap disposable camera
A few lengths of wire, some hot glue, and duct tape.

Tools:

Soldering iron
Wire strippers / cutters
Knife / scissors
Saw (anything capable of cutting through the pipe you bought).

Remove these ads by Signing Up

Step 1: Assemble Your Housing

Decide what you want your freeze ray to look like. There aren't many good shots of Dr. Horrible's freeze ray in the film, so I let my imagination go where it would.

My process, using cardboard boxes and tape for my housing, was to cut into the cardboard with (what else?) a box cutter, being sure to keep as much built-in structural integrity as possible.
Once you have several box segments, attach them in your chosen configuration with duct tape.
Arrange and cut, if necessary, the plumbing segments and cut holes in your box to place them into. Be careful not to cut the holes too big or you'll have to do it all over again because they won't hold the pipes.
Put the entire assembly together to make sure you like the effect before committing to it.
Take care that you put your tape down as smoothly as possible and cover any strange edges and textures; we're going to paint this, but a bit of spray paint won't hide much by way of blemishes.
You'll want to be able to get to the inside of the box, so leave a door of some kind. I had the large side simply taped down along one edge and loose along the others.