MooMooEgg
Sr Member
I was one of the lucky few to pick up one of Volpin's Mass Effect 3 rifles that he made for BioWare. http://www.therpf.com/f9/mass-effect-3-n7-rifle-pic-heavy-122078/ It seems like a pretty mid-level build, but it's a massive piece of work for me since I've never tackled something this complicated.
I didn't take any photos to track the early progress (since sanding and bondoing is pretty boring), so I'll just post one of Volpin's from his for sale thread:
And here's what I have so far:
The craftsmanship of the pieces, as clearly shown in Volpin's threads, is fantastic. The problem is my lack of skill and tools (I've been only sanding with sandpaper by hand since I don't have a dremel
), so it's taken me a LOT longer than expected to smooth things down and out. The two barrels required the least amount of work. Just some smoothing and filling of small bubbles.
There's almost no clean up on the sides of the main body. The details are great. It's the seams that needed almost all the work.
I never realized how time consuming it was to use bondo. The sheer amount of time it takes for it to dry before I could sand was killing me. It doesn't help that I'm severely OCD and it made it that much more difficult to keep things moving at a moderately quick pace since I had to rebondo and try to smooth things out perfectly. Especially the circle where the thumb rests :angry
The lower grip was actually the first part I worked on, and dealing with all those ridges was quite time consuming. Luckily, the cast was so good that it wasn't too much of an issue. More difficult was working on the stock...
A pic before any work done
And my stab at it:
It definitely was time consuming. Had to do some major sanding in the ridges to try and even things out before doing even more touching up with the bondo. But everything is pretty smooth and even, and you can't tell that the mold was a little off unless you're really looking at specific areas.
Now, the trigger was probably the biggest pain in the ***** for me...
Yeah, It's looking pretty decent, but it didn't start that way. I kinda wish I took a picture of it before i started working on it. But this is what it kinda looked like:
The trigger was a separate piece, and there was extra resin going out from the trigger to the blue lines. Also, by not having a dremel or other tool to grind it down, I used an X-acto knife and sandpaper to get rid of the excess. That definitely wasn't fun at all. After it was sanded down, there was some space between the trigger and the main body, so I had to bondo the spaces between after it was glued in (you can see the thick line of bondo. I think the other side was much worse :lol)
But I'm pretty close to being satisfied with the work I'm putting into it. I just need to do a little more bondoing and apply some heat to the rear stock to bend it and fit the main body perfectly, but it should be ready for priming and painting soon. Further updates will be coming as more stuff happens :cool
I didn't take any photos to track the early progress (since sanding and bondoing is pretty boring), so I'll just post one of Volpin's from his for sale thread:
And here's what I have so far:
The craftsmanship of the pieces, as clearly shown in Volpin's threads, is fantastic. The problem is my lack of skill and tools (I've been only sanding with sandpaper by hand since I don't have a dremel
), so it's taken me a LOT longer than expected to smooth things down and out. The two barrels required the least amount of work. Just some smoothing and filling of small bubbles.
There's almost no clean up on the sides of the main body. The details are great. It's the seams that needed almost all the work.
I never realized how time consuming it was to use bondo. The sheer amount of time it takes for it to dry before I could sand was killing me. It doesn't help that I'm severely OCD and it made it that much more difficult to keep things moving at a moderately quick pace since I had to rebondo and try to smooth things out perfectly. Especially the circle where the thumb rests :angry
The lower grip was actually the first part I worked on, and dealing with all those ridges was quite time consuming. Luckily, the cast was so good that it wasn't too much of an issue. More difficult was working on the stock...
A pic before any work done
And my stab at it:
It definitely was time consuming. Had to do some major sanding in the ridges to try and even things out before doing even more touching up with the bondo. But everything is pretty smooth and even, and you can't tell that the mold was a little off unless you're really looking at specific areas.
Now, the trigger was probably the biggest pain in the ***** for me...
Yeah, It's looking pretty decent, but it didn't start that way. I kinda wish I took a picture of it before i started working on it. But this is what it kinda looked like:
The trigger was a separate piece, and there was extra resin going out from the trigger to the blue lines. Also, by not having a dremel or other tool to grind it down, I used an X-acto knife and sandpaper to get rid of the excess. That definitely wasn't fun at all. After it was sanded down, there was some space between the trigger and the main body, so I had to bondo the spaces between after it was glued in (you can see the thick line of bondo. I think the other side was much worse :lol)
But I'm pretty close to being satisfied with the work I'm putting into it. I just need to do a little more bondoing and apply some heat to the rear stock to bend it and fit the main body perfectly, but it should be ready for priming and painting soon.
Further updates will be coming as more stuff happens :cool
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