Star Trek TOS Phaser Rifle

Valor

Sr Member
RPF PREMIUM MEMBER
SO I kinda fell in love with this beauty over the holidays. The phaser rifle, built as a one-off for the second TOS pilot and then never filmed again. Only to reemerge at auction to sell for a quarter million dollars.

I dove into research and measurements. It wasn't long before I came upon Ryan Nagata's build here on the RPF. I'm stealing a couple tricks from him, but mostly charting my own path.

After building R2D2 I'm pretty comfortable boxing out complex forms in styrene so the bulk of the build will be sheet styrene. One new technique I used was to get the 2" diameter curves out of my styrene sheet I created a jig from a couple sizes of PVC pipe. I heated pieces of Styrene in my oven then pressed them between the two pieces to get a perfect curve.

My new job gave me access to a 3D printer, so a couple of the small bit will be 3-D printed.
 

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Some more progress on the main forms and sone finishing on the rough 3D printed parts.
 

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This is awesome!! I love Mr. Nagata's ray guns - I'd love to do this!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Quick update, more framing out of the front housing assembly. It's a relatively simple structure, but there's alignments that matter to get it to connect well with the back assembly.
 

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Spent the weekend building out the front section of the rifle. This was a bit more challenging due to the geometry. Making sure everything stayed in alignment with the back section is critical. I'm doubling up the thickness of the styrene walls to 1/4 inch so I can sand down the corners to match some of the big radiuses show in the original.

I also began framing to the handle assembly late last night. This will be curved and contoured to match the original. This also was my first time using Milliput. It's trickier than I expected. Water definitely helps but it's stiffer to work with than I thought. But it's awesome once it's cured.
 

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Last edited:
Shaped the handle a bit more and did some paint tests. The aluminum for the barrel looks great. For the body I thought I found a decent match. But it's a bit too blue. Tried tests on various primer colors. It's the closest Duplicolor so I may have to live with it.

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Working out the bottom frame piece. I wanted this thing to be rock solid and not flex so I built it out of layers of 1/4" styrene. It's solid Styrene and this does add a bit of weight. Once the layers were glued together I took to shaping it on my sander. A little Bondo and it's smoothing out nicely.
 

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Wrapped up the handle and attached it to the bottom frame. Again, layers of Styrene welded together with Wed-on 3.
 

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All the major components are built ... I've been dry fitting everything and resolving a few last alignment things. And I found the perfect light blue/silver. Right now I'm filling in all the imperfections and repriming. Hopefully I can move to paint soon!
 

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Home stretch ... I'm finishing up all the details that will be added to the surface. Labels for the sides, targeting screen (with clear lean cover). The 3 colored domed cabochons were painted with Tamiya's clear acrylic paints. Turned out lovely. I've also been puttying, sanding, puttying, sanding ... And started the final base coat. After some color tests I decided to do a base coat of a flat aluminum silver paint, then layer the metallic blue on top ... the final color is close ... more blue that it should be ... but the best I can find locally. Next post should be a finished product :)

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