Looper Blunderbuss - 3D printed - Finished

[ajaxjones]

Last weekend they had Looper on TV and I fancied building a Blunderbuss, also reading on here discovering a few other builds in progress as well as lots of details about the real parts that it was made of. Searching the web it turns out there was a 3D file around which I downloaded and started on. . You can find this one on MyMiniFactory and to be honest its not too bad as a quick rendition. Initially I was going to just print this, but realised that the muzzle was a bit different, so I thought I might just start reworking that part. Then after printing out one part of the barrel, I also realised it was just using a mock-up of the picatinny rail and the overall dimensions were pretty much off as well. So I started tinkering and ended up rescaling the barrell closer to the Yankee Hill Machine 5005 and drawing up a picatinny rail based on the Wikipedia definition and some guess on the YHM version. I ended up a couple of slots over, I'm guessing a bit as i haven't actually redone the main tube. Which I guess I will have to get around to. I also removed a lot of the bits and surface details from the original and remade those and added them on. Also drew some grub screws and the like.

The muzzle after a couple of prints turned out OK, once i realised about the bevel orientation. The idea as well is to build it all on a central 40mm plastic pipe as a spine.

This was almost the first project I've done with ABS and I was using Hatchbox here on a Prusa i3 at only .2mm layer height. I just went at it with 80 grit, then 240 and 600. Sort of finished it a bit with 1500.
I used a drill bit and wrapped sandpaper around that to clean the slots up a bit.

After sanding, a bit of primer and then some more sanding.

I didnt really sand the bevels too much, I'm just going to pretend its machining marks. Eventually though I had a muzzle

I think after this pic I have given it another couple of coats and also put some model filler into the slots where the layer lines showed up a bit more than was nice.

I also had removed the hand grip from the original file , so had to make one of these up. With it all printed I checked that it fit the 40mm plastic PVC pipe.

I couldnt get the trigger to look decent as a round wire, so just did a squared version and ended up carving it and bevelling it. Total mis-use of a 3d print, but it was late and I use tinkercad and it doesnt like free form shapes, nor does it like making bevels and tubing easily..

The picatinny rails didnt actually come out as bad as it looks in the photo, the support lines are pretty flat and covered up well when painted.

Next step was to sand the hand grip and it looked pretty smooth after being sanded, much easier sanding this in fact than the PLA or PETG I've done before. I also went and got a Level P2 protection mask to wear, same one you would use for fine particulates and cutting MDF , so I think thats pretty safe enough.

I ended up with some strange supports in this one and being a gentle curve on the top there was a a few deep contour lines showing.

So I gave this some model filler and sanded and primed it again. Fake allen bolts of course built in the print.

Just lots of sanding here. At this point i realised that I should really glue it together so as to make sure the sides were smooth and aligned.

it was pretty easy as there is a PVC tube now inside that at least keeps it aligned directionally. I just used superglue and activator

I glued it together, and then just went over the joints a couple of times to build up the glue join.

after sanding it, i then did a bit of filler just to try and get it smooth. This is actually the first time I've managed to get a joint flush so felt pretty happy at this point, and the primer coat showed it looked OK too,

Sanding the handle was a bit more of laugh as it was based on the original one, but with the trigger and guard removed. I also addede the metal spine to the handle as well after looking at some of the original prop pictures that are in the gallery.

The sit was also added and modified the rings as well. I have put a groove in both here and on the muzzle as I am going to add the welding later.

The original also had a bipod swivel on the muzzle, so I drew one up and printed, sanded and primered that too,

I gave it all a coat of matt black and did another test fit. Not sure what went on at this point as the matt paint came out quite satin finish. I sprayed something else laying around and it came out Matt, so not sure if it was the smooth primer coat, the temp or something else. With another coat or two it did end up Matt.

 

[ajaxjones]

Next was to start playing around with paint finishes. Looking at the gallery pics, my thought is that the muzzle looks more rustier than the rest of the gun, so I used plenty of burnt umber acrylic wiped on and off, with some raw sienna to give a light touch for the rust.

I also washed it a couple of times as well with burnt umber and sienna mixed with water.

I painted in the barrel slots with some tamiya flat aluminium , XF-16

Then just started going over it with wiiping on burnt umber, raw sienna and the two mixed. I did actually go out and get some burnt sienna and raw umber as well just to confuse things. My understanding is that I think the umber is made up of sienna as well somehow.

I dabbed a bit on as well and stippled it with the brush to get some more surface looking rust

The hand grip for the pump I glued on and dabbed some black gloss car paint on a rag and dabbed it on. I did the trick of spraying it into the lid to get it out of the can.

I also glued the bipod swivel on and gave it a good going over with various ink straight out of the tube

I added some very light marks with a silver sharpie, i didnt want to go overboard with this as its pretty easy to do that, or end up rub n buff the whole thing. I really really wanted to do more, but held back

Likewise the sharpie was only used on a couple of places on the main barrel as well.

I wasnt too happy at this point as to how it all was hanging together paint wise, and perhaps a few light spots, so I did a very dilute black ink wash and ran that over a few places.

One of the other places that I wasnt liking was the handle as the file I had modified was OK, but it looked a bit too smooth. So i got some model railway scenery plaster cloth and cut it into strips. Soaked them in cold water and wrapped them on. This way it was going to dry nice and hard and wouldnt end up coming off in the future. Also by not smoothing it also got a better texture on the handle.

With it wrapped and dried, I think cut out the trigger slot and flattended the guard area.

I had also added the peg for the handle, and wanted it to be copper, so thats what it got.

First couple of coats here of raw sienna acrylic, then later layers darker with burnt umber and some black ink washed in.

So this is what it finally ended up like.

I think If i was going to work on it some more for a V2, i would build the barrel from scratch instead of using the original one to get it more accurate and then working on the handle. Probably draw one up without the fake wrap so I could do the same type of wrap on it as well.


Now I'm just waiting for my gold to turn up.

 

[Nicksdad]

Looks very good, loved that movie.

 

[laellee]

Nice work, I have a partial model somewhere and this makes me want to revisit it. It would look great displayed on a stand with a couple of the silver or gold bars

 

[propmainiac]

Very nice work! I too started printing that model but was unhappy with the lack of accurate details..any plans on sharing or uploading your files to thingiverse? I'm scratch building one right now but 3 d printing would save me a lot of time. The muzzle end on the original file is not accurate to the film version. Like how you modified it!

 

[ajaxjones]

Very nice work! I too started printing that model but was unhappy with the lack of accurate details..any plans on sharing or uploading your files to thingiverse? I'm scratch building one right now but 3 d printing would save me a lot of time. The muzzle end on the original file is not accurate to the film version. Like how you modified it!

Sure, drop me a PM and I'll send you the files, wasn't sure yet about putting it onto thingiverse as I think the original creator had a no derivative , but I've been trying to contact him. It was your thread that got me started on it in the first place. I've also got some picatinny parts I drew up based on the wikipedia entry on the rail standards. Makes scaling easy when you know the spacing.