I got the rest of the painting done on the compass last night -- painted the trident thingy gold as well as hinge and clasp and then added a brown wash to all gold parts (take dark brown acrylic paint and dip brush in it then dip brush in water to thin out paint and then apply over dried gold painted areas ) -- this makes the gold look more worn and weathered, and allows darker paint to seep into the little notches on the circular part to bring out detail. I also applied brown/black wash to entire compass, especially the ivory inlay lines.

While the compass looks pretty good if you simply give the body a light sanding, painting the lines off-white helps make it a bit more screen accurate.

The thing to remember is to use ACRYLIC paints as they are more forgiving if you make a mistake and lend themselves more readily to the wash/weathering effect. While it does not hold up to microscopic scrutiny, it certainly looks excellent from a foot away and certainly looks better than just using the spinning compass. My two cents.

I may also add some weight to the inside to give it a little more heft and the original compass dial (that I covered with more accurate dial from Disney paper compass web site) has a metal clasp on the bottom of it which MAY be the right type of metal to react to a magnet if you wanted to somehow attach a rare earth magnet to one of your fingers to make compass spin when you wave your finger underneath the compass body...I'll test this out and let you know if it works.

More pics later -- the only thing left is to add the ring pull for the leather strap when this comes in the mail and I should be done.

The only other thing one could do is repaint the blue inner dome a darker blue and then dot it with little gold stars. I will likely leave mine as is, but for you purists out there, this would add a subtle touch to make it even more SA. 

Okay,  more pics, starting with the exterior...all white lines painted, all gold portions painted, and everything "weathered" with the brown or black "wash" I described in earlier.

Another shot showing weathering/wash affect -- also note that I took a toothpick, dabbed it in brown or black acrylic paint, and the GENTLY brushed it across the SEAMS of where the white lines come together to provide the illusion that the white "painted" lines are actually separate pieces/strips of inlaid ivory, with the blackened "seam" I painted on fostering this...

And a shot of the interior -- painted trident thingy in middle gold with brown "wash" applied to weather it...

Another shot showing how heavily I applied black "wash" to exterior of compass -- while it looks a little heavy this close up, from a foot away it looks much more realistic than if I had simply kept the white lines more clean...

Here's a shot of the bottom -- I didn't sand off the "Disney" copyright info, but if you wanted, you could sand off and/or fill with model putty -- something like SQUADRON putty sold at hobby shops, or even Milliput 2-part putty. But I don't think most people will find themselves in situations where their prop is being examined THAT closely. I added white line around bottom, but on real prop, I don't believe it had this, but it looked better to me this way.

Shot of the inner lid...I MAY paint the inner dome a darker blue and then add little gold dots for stars -- it would look more SA this way, but not sure if I wanna fuss with it. Sometimes its better to put a project on shelf for a day or three and come back to it with a fresher perspective.

Detail shot of trident thing...

Side by side comparison -- untouched toy on left next to converted toy on right... 

Same side by side comparison, but now open...

Here is Master Replica on left, converted Disney compass on right...

From left to right -- Master Replica, Disney toy conversion, Zizzle spinning toy conversion...

Original Zizzle spinning toy left, modified zizzle toy on right...

Another shot of actual toy vs. my modification -- note that on my modified version, I had to add the white inlaid strips as the toy did not have all of them painted on -- I actually cut thin strips of plastic and glued them on piece by piece on the modified spinning compass -- very painstaking work -- another reason I think the Disney toy compass is such a better toy to modify as ALL the lines are already on the toy (in gold) and you can either leave them gold (to match more of look of compass in COTBP or paint them off-white should you want to match look of compass in movies 2 and 3.

Here is a pic of the wooden kit I bought from Yordeem Creations when he was offering kits. I completely redid the inner compass dial part as his was resin and not very accurate. I show it here so you can see the d-ring ring pull I used plus the LATCH I used -- got this at Michael's Craft Shop -- I was going to put one on my Disney Store compass but not sure if I am now -- but wanted to show how I did it on Yordeem in case you wanted to pull the plastic latch off Disney Store compass and use a brass latch like I did on Yordeem.

YORDEEM COMPASS - BUILT FROM KIT:

And finally, the rubies toy compass -- not worth modifying, in my opinion, but makes for a cute collectable if you collect such things. 

Well, other than adding the round ring on back to hold leather strap that's pretty much it for the tutorial and pics of the other toy compasses available. If you like dressin' up like Captain Jack, then you should always have your trusty compass at your side -- and until something better comes along, the Disney Store toy compass makes for the easiest and cheapest conversion.

Got the ring pulls in the mail today. The screw that comes with it is too long to fit into compass so I used dremel tool to cut the screw to length that would fit in compass and then used X-Acto knife to bore hole into back for screw to go through. 

The circumference of the part that holds the ring is almost too large to fit on the back of the compass without sticking off the edge -- so I trimmed the middle portion of the hinge a bit to help, although I imagine it still would have worked okay had I not done this.

Using a dremel to cut a metal screw is tricky -- you should ALWAYS wear eye protection and know that once you've cut through the screw the pieces will be VERY HOT from the friction caused during cutting -- you must allow them to cool down before picking them up --- in fact, I held the screw with pliers -- you could not hold the screw in your bare hand and dremel it -- that's way too dangerous and the piece would get too hot to hold.

For what it's worth, you could just GLUE the ring pull to the back of compass OR go to hardware store and get a screw that is the proper size.

Here are the pics -- the ring is not an exact match to the real prop, but close enough.