I am making some acrylic gun stands for myself and wonder if anyone else would like one? Here’s some background;
In April 2022 I decided I wanted some display stands for my collection of Blade Runner guns. I know there are some good gun stands out there already but I don’t need lighting and I can’t afford hundreds of pounds each. Laser-cut acrylic is really good but the clear acrylic Tomenosuke stands are out of production at the moment plus they cost over £70 each. I thought I could have custom stands cut from acrylic for less money than that (I trained as a designer so I can design my own stands and thought I would have them cut by an online service). I wanted them to be compact/discreet but also easily identifiable as Blade Runner inspired and hold guns of any make, possibly with just a swap of the upright barrel support for height adjustment. As much as I like the stands made by Tomenosuke I would prefer it if they had design features which echoed the place of the prop within the movie, thematically, by which I mean only imagery which relates to the gun on display so no references directly to Deckard or his apartment and definitely no unicorns!
To that end I designed a new gun stand which uses as it's base the design of the 'Sector 8' symbol on the police badges in the film originally created by legendary graphic designer Tom Southwell. I was very pleased with my design because it used the slight 'gap' at the top of the '8' as a functional recess to hold the grip plate centrally so I don't have to make a separate part to hold the the back of the gun. The stand can be made in opaque coloured acrylic to echo the police badges accurately (see my avatar) or could be translucent. I could even add a genuine red 'amberlith' stripe across the yellow symbol to more accurately copy the Police ID badges seen on screen.
Here’s my original design;
I printed out a paper template and this gave me a very good size comparison with the real prop. I decided not to cut a hole in the yellow part at the front for the muzzle-rest but now have the upright part emerging from the black triangle recess at the front end, opposite the triangle the grip plate sits in. Symmetry is a beautiful thing.
If the muzzle rest now emerges from the triangular recess it only has one layer of acrylic to hold it upright so I have decided to make the base layer 5mm thick instead of 3mm and the upright will need to be be clear to give an un-obstructed view of the magazine. I got a scroll saw for Christmas 2021 so I had a go at cutting a prototype for the stand myself to check the fit before spending money. To say that it's a lot harder than you think is an understatement because unless the blade goes quite slowly the plastic melts and seals iteself behind the blade as it passes through so you get to the end of your cut and the sheet is still in one piece but just really messed up, like a badly ploughed field. I went back and had another go with a hand-held 'coping' saw;
At this point I rotated the design 180 degrees so the 'open' ends of the design are at the barrel-end and the front edge of the grip plate sits in the small cutout triangle at the 'base' of the 8. This works well, keeps the gun nicely centred and I can adjust the overall size down a bit and still have room for the clear upright to emerge ‘above’ the 8. This first hand-made prototype still wasn't quite what I had hoped for. The scale seems to have crept up again against my paper template (not sure why, maybe I forgot to save after changing it) so the proportions were still off in comparison to the actual gun.
In April 2022 I decided I wanted some display stands for my collection of Blade Runner guns. I know there are some good gun stands out there already but I don’t need lighting and I can’t afford hundreds of pounds each. Laser-cut acrylic is really good but the clear acrylic Tomenosuke stands are out of production at the moment plus they cost over £70 each. I thought I could have custom stands cut from acrylic for less money than that (I trained as a designer so I can design my own stands and thought I would have them cut by an online service). I wanted them to be compact/discreet but also easily identifiable as Blade Runner inspired and hold guns of any make, possibly with just a swap of the upright barrel support for height adjustment. As much as I like the stands made by Tomenosuke I would prefer it if they had design features which echoed the place of the prop within the movie, thematically, by which I mean only imagery which relates to the gun on display so no references directly to Deckard or his apartment and definitely no unicorns!
To that end I designed a new gun stand which uses as it's base the design of the 'Sector 8' symbol on the police badges in the film originally created by legendary graphic designer Tom Southwell. I was very pleased with my design because it used the slight 'gap' at the top of the '8' as a functional recess to hold the grip plate centrally so I don't have to make a separate part to hold the the back of the gun. The stand can be made in opaque coloured acrylic to echo the police badges accurately (see my avatar) or could be translucent. I could even add a genuine red 'amberlith' stripe across the yellow symbol to more accurately copy the Police ID badges seen on screen.
Here’s my original design;
I printed out a paper template and this gave me a very good size comparison with the real prop. I decided not to cut a hole in the yellow part at the front for the muzzle-rest but now have the upright part emerging from the black triangle recess at the front end, opposite the triangle the grip plate sits in. Symmetry is a beautiful thing.
If the muzzle rest now emerges from the triangular recess it only has one layer of acrylic to hold it upright so I have decided to make the base layer 5mm thick instead of 3mm and the upright will need to be be clear to give an un-obstructed view of the magazine. I got a scroll saw for Christmas 2021 so I had a go at cutting a prototype for the stand myself to check the fit before spending money. To say that it's a lot harder than you think is an understatement because unless the blade goes quite slowly the plastic melts and seals iteself behind the blade as it passes through so you get to the end of your cut and the sheet is still in one piece but just really messed up, like a badly ploughed field. I went back and had another go with a hand-held 'coping' saw;
At this point I rotated the design 180 degrees so the 'open' ends of the design are at the barrel-end and the front edge of the grip plate sits in the small cutout triangle at the 'base' of the 8. This works well, keeps the gun nicely centred and I can adjust the overall size down a bit and still have room for the clear upright to emerge ‘above’ the 8. This first hand-made prototype still wasn't quite what I had hoped for. The scale seems to have crept up again against my paper template (not sure why, maybe I forgot to save after changing it) so the proportions were still off in comparison to the actual gun.
Last edited:
