Not updated for a while - been working pretty much every evening on the blasters but have been finishing so late that I didn't have time to post.
Suffice to say, things have come along rather well.
Looking at the back of the barrel I created the ridged end cylinder from a piece of PVC pipe that I used a mini hacksaw to cut slots into (tried a Dremel - far too easy to go off course.) To pack out the PVC pipe I used a section of the same pipe but with a slot cut into it to allow it to be squeezed inside, and then a strip of plastic from a plastic bottle to fill in the last millimeter and guarantee a snug fit.
For the back end, I found a component inside a plastic soap dispenser fit the bill perfectly, and realised that the rounded metal screws that I'd ground down earlier made good piece to finish the end with (as well as adding extra weight to the back end of the gun.)
I created middle sections of these pieces using the same methods and used the miniature hacksaw again to cut slots around the pipe since the Dremel chewed it up and was harder to control (oh, for a lathe and a drill press!)
It was then that I realised I could be really smart about how I was going to attach the grips to the barrels - one that would make the connection to the grip sturdier, but also would allow me to be able to paint the barrels separately from the grips and then assemble the parts at the end...
I cut a slot into the tab I'd created on the top of the grips so that when the barrels' two halves are slid into one another the pipe that forms the back of the barrel locks the grip into place.
I was always a concern that we might suffer from Convention Floor Barrel Droop, but with this solution the barrels will lock onto the grips and stay there without glue!
At the business end of the barrels I did a bit of creative jiggery pokery...
One great thing I've discovered of the course of this build is that lots of household objects are constructed with similar dimensions... So, the barrel tips were created using another component from a plastic soap dispenser bottle that slotted perfectly into the barrel end...
...and I discovered that the slope of the blasters in the WoF templates was the same as the slope on the neck of a plastic drinks bottle, so I cut it off at the right places, slid it onto the barrel, packed the shape out with different sized rings of Foamex (Sintra) and some hot glue.
(The really good thing is, things like plastic soap dispensers and bottles are really common in the household waste so getting two of something for both blasters was not a problem.)
I then slathered the ends with P38 (Bondo) in my biggest gamble on the project since cutting out the holes in the grips....
I don't own a lathe, so the test was, could I sand down the barrels by hand...?
I sat with a mouse sander in a fixed position, held the barrels at the correct angle and, laying them on the sander continually rolled the barrels around...
The results were rather satisfying and meant that my backup plan of cutting the ends off and coming up with a more conventional cylindrical barrel end became less likely...
Two rounds of filling, spraying with primer, wet sanding down (with 600 and then 2000 grit) yielded some pretty solid results.
I also realised that I wanted to neaten off the back of the barrel ends, so took some plastic rings (the bits that get left behind when you unscrew the cap) from some plastic bottles stuck them on and then back-filled them with P38 (Bondo)...
I have decided not to even attempt to drill the holes that go around the Westar's barrels though - I don't own a drill press so there's no point in even trying to drill 6 straight holes into such near-vertical slopes without ruining my work.
I'd been thinking about giving Nikjay's guns some individual character - a bit of backstory, if you will - it would be one thing for her to dual-wield a couple of identical blasters, but much more interesting if they were somehow different.
I decided that one of the blasters is hers, and pretty well-maintained - the other is a much older blaster taken as a trophy from a defeated enemy - a Trandoshan, for want of a more baddass race for my darling wife to mercilessly slaughter on some Outer Rim world...
To create these differences I kept the slim barrel end on one blaster, and for the other, the older blaster I cut it off, giving it a more brutish character.
I decided to add a kind of tactical rail to the blaster too - this I raided the wardrobe for, cutting off one of the arms of a plastic trouser hanger, and with a bit of sawing, Dremeling and a couple of drilled holes I glued it to the top of the barrel
Taking the idea even further, I took apart a couple of biros and created a cylindrical structure to fit along one side of the rail (and to make the blaster feel asymmetrical) - from bottom right to top left, the end of the structure is a small metal peg that holds an IKEA shelf up, pushed into the end of a cut-down pen barrel, with the push button from the top of the same pen taken out and flipped around and stuck into the barrel, and finally a piece of thick wire, bent into shape and pushed into a hole in the barrel. (I coated both bits of metal with latex masking fluid so that after painting I can strip it off to reveal real metal on the guns.
A final detail on the same side involved taking another part from the inside of the same pen, jamming into the slot on the side of the gun at an angle and using another plastic pen part to create some internal detail - I scratched up the Foamex (Sintra) behind it so that when I distress it it should look like some venting port that's been belching out heat over the years.
The piece on top of the trapezius shape was cut out of Foamex (Sintra) and aggressively sanded with 2000 grit so it came out super-smooth and angular.
So here's the state of the two guns - before the final bits of filler were sanded down on the bottoms of the barrel, with masking tape on the metal ends on the back of the barrels (again, so I can have pieces of real metal on the gun along with all the fake stuff...)
One other internal detail - I've packed the thin pipes that make the back ends of the barrels with a couple of heavy nails secured with hot gun - this will help to counterbalance the weight of the barrels as well as giving the props some weight. I read
a piece the other day on Gizmodo about Beats Headphones having deliberately heavy parts in them to make you think that they're a premium product which made me think about ways I could make these blasters feel more substantial than a few bits of MDF and PVC.
So the blasters have now been hit with two coats of Adhesion Aid, one coat of Matt Black spray...and I've now run out of Matt Black spray so it will be a few days before I can go back to them and finish them off...
METALLIC FINISH AND WEATHERING EXPERIMENTSIn parallel to this, I've also been experimenting with ways to get a decent metallic finish and practice weathering.
So I'm building myself some kind of grenade-type belt carryable accessory out of a contact lens solution bottle, some washers and bits of stuff I found in the garage and a piece of shaped Foamex (Sintra)
Far and away the best finish I've found is Matt Black paint with Rub'N'Buff silver and gold rubbed on - I tried metallic paint, and it...looked like metallic paint. Rub'N'Buff looks like METAL...
I aggressively rubbed the Rub'N'Buff to get it to cure and then hit it with a coat of spray
acrylic varnish (I understand other types of varnish cause Rub'N'Buff to lift) and found that it didn't dull the surface (the brand of spray paints I use here in the UK are made by Hycote, mainly because they're dirt cheap on Amazon.)
In the above shot, you can see I've added latex masking fluid and some salt crystals (spray with hairspray, sprinkle on rock salt) in preparation for painting the Foamex (Sintra) piece.
I've since sprayed the piece with grey primer, rubbed off the masking fluid and salt, reapplied more masking fluid and salt, and now it's sitting in the garage looking like this under a couple of coats of white paint that I'm waiting to cure before I give it a good scrub tomorrow to see if the multilayered weathering is going to work...
So that's me and my epic post.
Off to wait for my black spray paint to arrive so I can finish off the Westars, continue with my Weathering/Metallic Finish experiment and start planning for my gun - based on this design... ...with a plan to add a Boba-style extended stock to it. I foresee lots of MDF cutting and big pieces of PVC pipe!