Destiny Hawkmoon Exotic Hand Cannon

This orphan showed up in a basket at my doorstep in March. It began its life as a digital file which was commissioned by Eric from Impact Props.  I'm not sure who the digital modeler was. From there it was born on Eric's personal printer, and the journey began.

It was sanded, primed, and coasted with XTC-3D until something reasonable was obtained. I commend Eric for doing all of this work, as I certainly don't have the patience to. 

From there, all of the bits with the exception of the grip section were block molded. This is the fastest and most expensive way to make a mold. They are easy to work with, don't tear as fast, absorb heat better, and do not deform unlike other types of molds. 

Eric is a big fan of coating the mold in aluminum powder, which gives it a thin metallic coating that you can use to enhance the paint job on your prop. The cast part looks like this, and if you don't do much sanding or care about the seam lines that much, you can pretty much leave it as is and paint around it. 

This is a matrix mold that Eric made for the grip. I'm not sure why he opted for a matrix mold for this piece. I'm guessing he was running low on silicone and didn't have enough for a box mold. The jacket is made from a product called free form air.

Unfortunately, the mold leaks. I cant say why, as I wasn't there when the first cast was attempted. I cleaned off all the resin that was stuck to the jacket material and relocated the pour spot to the bottom of the claw. I blocked off (mostly...) the original pour spout that was more towards the sights. This made the delicate sight detail reside at the bottom of the mold and ensured they were filled first and properly. This is the first pull I got. It looks like the mold could be used again, but it had served its purpose at this point, never to be used again. 

Here are all of the parts in a test fit. All I've really done here is clean the seam lines. 

I had to decide at this point what path I wanted to take. I could either do some light clean up and then re-mold the grip area as a block mold for production casting...or I could clean up and re-work half of the gun like the deranged lunatic I am.

I chose the latter. I first re-made the circular ribbed front of the flashlight which you can actually see in the picture at this point if you look carefully. Then I cut off everything that was going to be re-made by hand, and fused the lower "flashlight" piece to the barrel section. 

This certainly isn't meant to be an insult to anyone's work. No matter how good the file was, or how good the clean up was, the reality is detail is going to be lost, sanded flat, or heavily softened unless days are spent rebuilding the problem areas in bondo or some material that makes the whole project not worth printing in the first place. Luckily, instead of sanding PLA (Which I hate, passionately) I get to sand resin, which takes sanding, glue, and paint much better than PLA and cuts the prep time into a fraction. Although, this project still took a solid week to do.

I started with the top rail. It needed some crisp detail back, some detail holes, and some important ribs that space the rear sights. The modeler made the original sights too narrow and a hair undersized. I kept the assembly tab portion intact, which is why there is a seemingly random resin section in the middle of the styrene rail. 

The sights were made by carefully cutting out layers of styrene with an exacto and laminating them together. It was tedious, but well worth the effort. I threw in a couple of rivets for detail. 

I cleaned up some of the inset detail as well, like this upside down trapezoid right under the rail. I used an exacto, steady hand, and patience. 

Theres a lot going on in this picture. First, I separated the swingarm and the cylinder into two separate parts. The modeler made them as one assembly for some reason, but who doesn't want a spinning cylinder??

Then, I finished blending those pesky flashlight sections together and added small details out of styrene and 1/8th inch MDF. I also re-made the wiring mount by the trigger area from scratch using MDF and a 1/4" dowel. Lastly, with the trigger removed I could clean up the trigger area and the trigger itself without too much hassle. 

The half domes behind the cylinder were re-made in MDF and enlarged. The hammer was re-made in MDF/styrene and made wider. I glued the hammer back in at this point after clean up. There's a little triangle bit you can see to the right of the trigger. I dremeled out the old one, re-made it in styrene, and carefully inset it into the grip and sanded it flush.

I used a graphite rubbing on paper to get the shape of the grip. Then I cut the grip out of 1/8th inch MDF. The bulge on the grip was simply another layer of MDF shaped before being glued on. I cleaned out all of the "stepping" texture around the grip. (I had already cleaned off 95% of it off the rest of the gun, which took a decent amount of time)

You can kind of see some grooves in the handle where my fingers are. These are represented as a texture in the game model, but I decided to make them a 3D feature and I think they look great. 

A test fit. I cleaned off some more texture, and re-scribed the panel lines near the front sight. 

I went back and did more shaping on the grip. I drilled holes for some nice big hex screws, and drafted out a grid for the grip bump/pimples/herpes. The round things are the smallest "pearl" details for scrapbooking I could find at Michael's. This is an old trick for fake rivets and the like that lots of prop maker use. 

The results are well worth it!

For those curious, here's a parts breakdown of the prop. The cylinder pin is simply borrowed from my other hand cannon builds.  The power cell is as well, bit doesn't fit in the cylinder and is simply a place holder since Eric never gave me the mold for his power cell. Check Impact props in the near future for a resin kit of this piece. 

Oh, I also made this doohickey at the end for the cables. 

On to the next!

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Thanks for reading!

Festive Force A' Nature (V1.5)

I had a revisit with my old Force A' Nature when my client sent it back for a repaint after taking it to a few conventions. This was a huge opportunity, because I was able to mold the parts I needed while it was disassembled and sanded before the repaint. This was also one of my first props ever made, and is still one of my favorites.

I molded the more accurate parts, (The barrels, receiver, foregrip, lever) and decided to re-make the stock and trigger guard. The trigger guard on the previous version was too thick. (Even for a TF2 prop) The grip on the stock was too thin, as it was designed this way for the client who had smaller hands. The previous stock was also a bit more bulky on the corners and the overall shape was too slim/elegant for a TF2 prop.

The changes would be ever so slight to a "normal" person, so I decided to christen the new parts with something more.........well, you decide.

I got started on the new stock asap, as I needed to get this thing molded and cast too (So that I could not only make reproductions, but also have a hollow stock for weight and electronics)  I shaped it relative to the cast of the receiver I made based off of the previous gun.

 

 The stock was rounded out quite a bit more, and came out quite nicely.

 Last time, I did this insert completely by hand with a Dremel. No idea how I did that, so I made a plastic insert, Dremeled it out, and sanded/filled it flush afterwards.

I got the finished stock and trigger guard (No pictures, rushed build. Sorry!) under silicone and focused on the front end. I did the magnet thing blatantly stolen from Volpin Props, just like last time. Getting these perfectly aligned before drilling the holes can be a bit tricky.

 

I popped a stock cast out of the new mold, and very very carefully sawed off the buttplate. I glued this switch/battery back to it, so it can slide in and out of the hollow stock. (The buttplate is held on by tiny drops of glue) You can also see here, I cut out the button switch assembly and integrated it into the buttplate. I secured everything with hot glue. I got this portable LED strand from Home Depot for around 10 bucks. I shortened it by about 4 LEDs and it works perfectly.

(Like everything) I cut the button space out with a scroll saw and filled the voids with styrene and suerglue.

Got the rear end all painted and good to go! I strung the rest of the lights around the prop and stapled the last LED in under the receiver. There are two tiny brass pins that keep the wiring on high spots where the wires want to slide out of place. Here it is before that, where I'm just happy to have lights on a TF2 thingie.

The front end paint job was just simple painting with the white red of the barrels painted first, then the white. This enabled me to just mask the two winding strips on each side, paint, and un-mask. The foregrip is a green color with a carefully sharpied panel line. (This is supposed to represent green wrapping paper on the models) The tape is scotch tape over packing tape. Doing just one or the other was too glossy and less pronounced, or too flat and too bright. This balanced the two. I take my tape details pretty seriously.

Special thanks to Impact Props for the great photos!

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Want one of your own or something similar? Here is a good place to start.

Bonk!

Gundam 0083 90mm GM Rifle

I had some major surgery at the beginning of the year and decided I needed to make something during my recovery. It had to relate to my other projects, and be relatively easy. I needed to be able to do most of the work from home, as I wasn't supposed to be driving much. I settled on a Gundam rifle.

Some Gundam rifles, especially from the Universal Century timeline, are based loosely on real weapons. In this case, I chose one based on the L85. I love bullpups, but the L85 is ugly as sin. The Gundam rendition is pretty cool though! Luckily, I scored a Chinese made airsoft springer on ebay that was broken and didn't have a magazine or any accessories or about 15 bucks. Perfect.

Since anime guns vary in look between drawings and screenshots, I settled on the Master Grade Rifle that came with the GM Custom. It was my favorite take on the rifle, and resembles the L85 most closely.

Basically, I had to merge these two rifles.






 The stock had to be hacked down, with the "wedge" shape eliminated. The cheek guard was not salvageable on the airsoft version, as it was far too flat and rounded. The entire sight and carrying handle assembly had to be scratch built, as well as the top and bottom of the foregrip. The magazine would have to me custom made, and the magwell moved back further. Lastly, the grip had to be relocated and the misc. plates and details made.


I stripped out all of the internals, and the "weights" (some are lead bars, some are compressed sand wrapped in a rectangular wrapping. The cheap airsoft springers are notorious for having these.) I hacked off the top of the foregrip first and scratch built the receiver extension out of styrene. The vent holes were covered as well.

I got sidetracked and made some hand armor while I was at it. As I said, I was making this from home, so here's a progress shot in my workshop (The kitchen)

I continued by wrapping styrene around the edges of the carrying handle frame. I also covered up some sections in the front of the foregrip that got hacked off. You can see the tons of screw holes that will need to be filled in later.

I visited the shop (against my doctors advice) and cut out a few MDF parts all at once. The buttpad was one of the first. here it is installed with the now wedge-less receiver. The magazine was made out of styrene, and the misc. detail bits molded into the receiver were cut out or relocated.

Some more MDF and styrene details on top of the foregrip being blocked out.

Some tedious styrene wrapping.

I wanted this thing as light as possible, so I even made the cheek guard parts layered for minimum weight.

The grip was lowered and all the odds and ends started getting filled in.

A few more details, screw holes, and gaps before paint!

These were taken my my friend Eric from the ever popular Impact Props!

 

I painted the rear sights and some inserts black to give it a more modern look.

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