Help With Roxy's Sniper Rifle?

Okay, so to keep things short, I am currently trying to get myself more into prop making. I've dabbled in it before, but I would really like to become more familiar with it as a whole.

So, I decided that I wanted to try and make a large scale gun. Roxy's Crockercorp Sniper rifle from Homestuck, to be specific.

Reference pictures:




(You might recognize the gun as a recolored .308 DKS-501 sniper rifle from Fallout.)

Now, 27teacups has posted a lovely tutorial here: Roxy Sniper Rifle Tutorial

However, I am having some issues as there are quite a few things in it that I would be unable to do. Primarily sealing the gun with resin at the end.
I'm a college student, and things like powertools and sanders aren't really available to me. Though I can use things like sandpaper, hand held saws, etc.

So here's my questions: what is a good (and preferable cheap) way to seal the gun without using resin?

And what is a good way to construct the gun so that I may both take the barrel apart for transport, as well as keep it stable as possible? I plan to do as much of the construction in various foams as possible, so something that wouldn't melt the materials would be important as well.

Any advice that you have would be greatly appreciated! Thank you for your time.

I don't quite see what you intend to make this from, I think I saw something about foam?
If you're using blue or pink styrofoam, then good ol' PVA glue works a treat to seal it. For my Portal Gun, I used a 1:2 mix of PVA and water, and saturated the whole foam piece in the solution; once that was dry (after about 48 hours) I went back over it with a 1:1 mix of PVA/water, and then once THAT was dry I went into it with straight PVA. I doubt you need to be as excessive as I was, but it worked very well, and I was able to use a variety of solvents on it with no ill effects.
Hope this helps!

I was planning on using pink Styrofoam and craft foam like in the tutorial.

And thank you, I will certainly look into that! It sounds like a very good option.

I'm painting this cheap-o Wii-mote rifle currently and it looks similar. You can get it for like $10 online I think and should be fairly easy to mod if you could invest in a cheap rotary tool and a length of pvc pipe for the long barrel.

@zodiac
The only foreseeable issue is that the convention that I would plan to bring it to will only allow guns if they are wholly fabricated by the cosplayer. I will look into that option though!

Dropkicks said:

@zodiac
The only foreseeable issue is that the convention that I would plan to bring it to will only allow guns if they are wholly fabricated by the cosplayer. I will look into that option though!

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hi, i don't know very much about these forums but i happen to have written that tutorial and i'm happy to answer questions and brainstorm alternative sealing methods, as well as discuss my materials choices and other possible alternatives!

i did receive an ask related to my tutorial, if that was you, this post is both redundant and a little bit late. but if anyone else stumbles across this thread looking for similar tips, they're here and any further questions can be sent to 27teacups.tumblr.com/ask . (i found this page by checking how people found my blog, and i've gotten some links back. so!)

my original intent was to create an epoxy resin and woven fiberglass fabric coating on the prop. this would be super strong, and especially consistent with the original Fallout rifle, which has some texture near the stock. the prop was too detailed to effectively coat with the fabric when i chose to try it, though, and i'd already mixed the resin, so i just went with that.

my long-fall boots (think portal 2) are made of craft foam, then thick, heavy duty paper mache , then fiberglass/resin. i bring them up because the paper mache created a sturdy yet somewhat flexible base for my boots, and it could similarly be applied to coat, say, the foam body of this rifle. it will be a little heavier but when sanded smooth and faired with something like bondo (or even spackling? spackling might crack if the paper mache experiences stress) and then polished off with a few coats of clear spray gloss, you would achieve a similar plastic-looking effect. the small fibers sticking out of the cardboard of the barrel would still have to be sanded off, probably between coats of gloss. the paper mache was made of cardstock and a mixture of wood glue and water with the consistency of something like heavy cream. a bit more water than 1:1, but the exact ratio doesn't matter much. build up as thick of a layer as you can (it takes a while to dry which can get boring), probably 1/8 inches at a minimum, and then sand it, sand it, sand it. you can use power tools to sand both this and bondo, such as a quarter sheet sander. for something like paper mache, you can get away with the very cheapest one your local hardware store will sell you, maybe about $20? this stuff is kind of a pain to sand by hand. i tried.

to avoid sanding, you could be reeeally careful about laying a smooth first layer of this and then call it a day? it wouldn't be as strong, but it would be smoother.

if durability isn't an issue then yeah, do a paint test on a scrap of foam to make sure it doesn't dissolve, then seal your prop with what was described above, gesso, cheap mis-mixed housepaint from the hardware store (color doesn't matter to you), the method described by the other respondent, or pretty much anything that creates a barrier between the foam and spray paint/gloss.

also, the foam i used is chemically similar to Styrofoam, but MAKE SURE not to get the kind of foam that is made up of little white balls or obvious cells. the right extruded polystyrene should be totally smooth and rigid. mine had a picture of the pink panther on it. styrofoam is pretty much impossible to sand in my experience, and much harder to get smooth.

as for making the barrel of the rifle modular and disassemblable(?), i did that as described in the link you shared a tube smaller than the inner circumference of the barrel, wrapped in a flexible foam like craft foam, holding the pieces of the barrel together with the force of tension of the foam between the inner tube and the barrel.

thank you for your interest in my prop!!