.45 Long Colt Trigun

[Strode]

Hello RPF. Been working on this a while so i thought I'd post it up. First i must apologise for the absolutely horrendous picture quality, i work mostly at night after getting home from work and my workbench does not have the best light and my phone camera sucks. sorry :unsure

I read the manga ages ago and loved it. Years later, i finally got the time and bandwith to download the anime and watch it and decided it would be really cool if i could recreate the Long Colt Vash uses. I decided to trawl the interwebs for reference pictures and came across a pretty decent papermodel of the thing. Wildly inaccurate though it may be, (the manga has a different version and the anime version was a little....different) i decided to build it (also mostly because i am useless with plans and blueprints). I built the paper model one first, mostly as a mock-up/reference so i would know how to fit the main thing together. here it is (sorry, it's a little crushed. i may have sat on it at one point. also the paper was standard printer paper...to damn thin to work out properly but it is a mock-up so what the hey...

i didn't bother building smaller parts as there was not much point really. they were not really complicated for me to spend time on. and this is where i am now. just to give you an idea of where i am with this build. needs a lot of finishing, paint and weathering which i will be doing for the first time so i am a little freaked. Build pics to follow soon!

thanks for looking!

 

[Strode]

pictures!

I started this by building the thingy that goes above the barrel and holds the barrel and cylinder in place. left is the paper mockup and right the actual.

Next up came the upper part of the barrel. Started with strips of sunboard like so:

giving this:

i've left it intentionally hollow. I wanted to fill it with something so as to make the whole thing one solid piece and not some hollow flimsy bendy thing. this comes later. next i made the frame:

and edged it like so. the hard edges will be sanded so it will be more natural and rounded:

more later!

 

[Strode]

sup!

next-up, barrel heatsink. made a small box and lined it with thin strips of balsa like so:

to give this:

then made the rod holder, this is where the cylinder would rest and rotate. i estimated the cylinder to be decently heavy and thus this part would be reinforced. as before, paper version to the left, actual to the right.

and i use a pen body for the rod. can't help it, used whatever i had...works very well though....also it is hollow as once again, i wanted to fill it and make the part strong and stiff.

modified the catch and epoxied 2 nails to it as these nails would be driven in with the part into the upper barrel and epoxied to really lock it in place and make it solid and strong.

next up, reinforced the frame a bit so as to again not make it one large hollow empty body. also to be filled. also, attached two sawed off screws to the place where the entire barrel section would hinge, all in the name of strength and reinforcement.

next, upper barrel detail. made two of these, one for each side and then filled the edges with a two part epoxy.

grip detail:

started work on the lower barrel. the paper model version was very large. didn't like it much and revised it quite a bit to be more accurate.

and here are most of the parts, ready for filler.

 

[Reyzek]

Dude that is looking awesome.

 

[Strode]

thanks man.

update

did the filling. used plaster of paris. oooo yeah. solid pieces all around.

filled the remaining parts.

and waited for them to set. here i did a mistake. apparently i should have done all the remaining work like priming, filling and painting and then glued all of them together...well now i've learned something...anyway, grip detail...

 

[Strode]

next up is the hinge. a very important piece seeing that the entire gun would swivel at this one point. it had to be strong. i hacked long screws and incorporated it into the pieces like so:

this is the barrel hinge

The idea being that i would make the whole piece, including the screws, solid as hell using a combination of two part epoxy resin and plaster of paris mixed together to give me a solid filler. i didn't want to use just epoxy seeing that it would take a lot so i tried this method to scrimp a bit on very expensive epoxy. i didn't know how it would turn out so i tried it out on a test piece.

and holy hell it is frikkin solid. i tried with two pliers to get it out but it hasn't budged. brilliant!

here is the whole thing. please excuse the roughness, everything has been trimmed and sanded to make it a very smooth piece where it is now.

and so we reach here.

 

[Strode]

here's the frame hinge. the mix on the right is the plaster of paris with epoxy resin.

turns out, the upper barrel detail came out longer than the actual barrel. god knows how that happened but i hacksawed it down to size...

next up, how i made the grip. the whole gun would rest on the grip once it was completed so i figured i'd strengthen this as much as i could. i made two channels, which again would be filled with the epoxy-plaster mixture to really solidify that part and the rest filled with normal filler like so:

and it was duly filled. unfortunately have no pictures but i'm guessing you get the idea...

next up, attached the barrel hinge to the barrel and i got this....

 

[Strode]

hello

cylinder yo

cut out the cylinder from the foam board and made the bullet holders by cutting and rolling strips of aluminium sourced from.....a beer can.

and then rolled the whole thing with a nice large piece of a beer can and filled it with plaster of paris to give a me a nice, solid cylinder. love how it came out.

and so we reach here...

 

[Strode]

started work on shaping the grips...

filled in the gaps with more p.o.p

shaped and sanded it all down to get it nice and rounded

next up the trigger guard

and so...

 

[Strode]

hellew! not much of an update. been busy being employed and such and looking for suitable painting equipment. the gun meanwhile has progressed along and has been primered. As thenylongag says, "mmmmm....primer'. my god this thing is magical. seriously. everything is now one uniform colour and it is looking seriously cool. sorry, you guys must be used to primering things and such but this is my first time and i can't believe how good it looks. i have also discovered the magic of wet-sanding and IT IS AWESOME!. so smooooottthh.....i love it! unfortunately i have no pictures as my SD card shat itself so i offer this pitiful update with the promise of more later (as i discover more things and try them out!).

was trying to decide how to make the two half moon things behind the cylinder and came up with this.

filled it with POP and sanded. the covered it with body filler and sanded to give this.

this process has been repeated quite a few times till i was satisfied. i literally put the second coat of primer on today and it is so smooth an uniform i am beside myself. never had something come out so good before. but as i stated, no pics yet. just waiting for the next weekend, wet-sand and final coat of primer and some PICTURES!


cheers!

 

[leejinwen]

that turned out pretty good. looking forward to seeing it finish

 

[Bigdaddy]

Looking great Strode, I love animated guns coming to life! thumbsup

 

[Strode]

hey thanks guys. should be finished soon just gotta run to the store for some more primer and paint and should be done. i should have some pics of it primered over the weekend or so. the job is taking up all of my time and can't really primer it at night :/ thanks for stopping by

 

[Zendragon]

Wow, that's got a lot of time and effort into it. Looking good!

 

[Knowone251]

Looking real good! I love the use of common materials. Never seen anyone mix epoxy and plaster before. How much stronger does it make the final compound?

 

[Strode]

Wow, that's got a lot of time and effort into it. Looking good!

Yeah definitely trying to reach a new point here, what with all the learning about new materials and so on. thanks for looking in!

Looking real good! I love the use of common materials. Never seen anyone mix epoxy and plaster before. How much stronger does it make the final compound?

thanks man! i don't have an official way of checking but as i mentioned previously, i tried to pry the screw and the glue away from each other using two giant pliers and it would not budge at all. so far, it seems incredibly strong and the plaster helps it set like a solid rock. liking it so far.

some progress:

should have the picture of the full thing primed soon.

cheers!

 

[Strode]

here are the primed pieces. Mmmmmm...chocolaty goodness yum!

since this was the first time i ever primed anything, that too with the wrong equipment, i've very happy how it came out. Of course there are still a lot of errors that have come to light simply because i was lazy and failed to do the job properly (such as paint runs, some places where filler was required and so on), those are currently being fixed and now it should be ready for paint!

cheers!

 

[gunnerk19]

Looking good!

FYI, the "half moon thingies" are called Recoil Shields

 

[Strode]

Looking good!

FYI, the "half moon thingies" are called Recoil Shields

haha. thanks would you believe i looked up revolver parts on the internet for the terminology and still didn't find it. must not have looked hard enough :facepalm

 

[Strode]

have some more pictures of the beast primed. oh yeah. chocolate death yo

muahaha more later!

edit:

sorry. does anyone know how i can go about putting ".45 longcolt AGL eagle arms factory" on the side of the barrel? some tips would be great. i have no idea how to approach that now that i have to do it :facepalm any suggestions welcome and thanks in advance