Watching the build of the Barbarella rifle actually made me realise that I could do this...albeit without several thousand $ worth of cool lathes and drill presses to do the really fancy stuff.

Right - so here's an update chaps...
So I printed out my Illustrator mockup and sketched the outline onto a sheet of 6mm MDF - the stock was about 1cm too long to fit on the whole sheet, so I had to tweak that back...

Then it was glue and clamps to a second piece of 6mm MDF and a few strategically placed drill holes so I could bolt the two halves together and guarantee no risk of shearing while cutting (also the middle hole would serve as a place to start cutting the centre hole between the stock and the grip)

Some time with the jigsaw got me the first profile at 12mm thick...

Pleased to say that hand fits around the grip nicely, thumb goes easily around the back of the grip and the stock at the shoulder feels right. Also, with my arm down by my side the gun isn't too big in that it doesn't drag on the ground...
(I had contemplated making a card mockup as I had with my first project -
the Westars, but I double-checked my measurements and with the paper template I was confident that it would work.)
Then, after that I spent time with the physical piece working out what layers I would need and how I'd be making the barrel out of PVC pipe - 36mm and 43mm pipe.
The two trickiest challenges would be:
- How to cut the MDF and barrel pipes together so that the MDF frame would remain as strong as possible, while allowing me to keep as much of the barrel as a complete cylinder so that it would retain its strength and illusion that it was a single piece from the back to the front of the gun
- How to layer up the MDF so that it fit around the barrel and looked like the 2D concept image (which looks super cool but being only a 2D concept is not guaranteed to actually work in 3D)
Much jigsawing and hacksawing saw me opt to cut 12mm wide slots in the barrel pipes, cut slots down the barrel end of the MDF main body and a big chunk out of the centre of the main body to make the barrel work.
I also cut various strips of MDF to layer above and below the barrel to create the shape of the rest of the gun...

The two outer layers of the stock I cut to fit what I'd intended to be the original size for it so with a little bit of fill-in, I'm able to create the stock to the original size/proportions of the template.
Roughly layered up everything now looks like this: (I will trim the barrel back to meet the end of the MDF but only when I'm confident everything works - a barrel that long
does drag on the floor...)

Since I'm working through this organically I do need to do a bit more work...
The piece that cradles the bottom of the barrel is made up of two pieces....the first sits right under the barrel:

The second is slightly taller and sits on top of it...

Unfortunately this isn't quite enough to accomodate the barrel at its maximum width so this top plate sits diagonally...
So I'm planning to cut another slice to sit inbetween to complete the cradle...

The worst side-effect of this I see is that the gun is only going to look meatier and more baddass as a result.
I think I can live with that...

Right, that's me done for the weekend.
Unfortunately I have to work away this week so I won't be able to do any more prop work/post any updates for at least 5 days.
So I'm going off to the Outer Rim Territories for a short while and will meet you, my friends at the rendez-vous point next week.
May the Force be with You!
