Mr Handy - Punished Props print

[AL Wyvern]

Long time reader first time posting my own thread So I used to make model kits when I was a kid, and watching the likes of Adam Savage on Tested and Bill Doran on Punished props I started collecting a few tools and bits and pieces that would help me start my model making journey. When I got my new house I was able to actually dedicate space to them, so I made a little crafting/model making space and treated myself to some 3d printers! Yeah, this is a whole thing!

Anyways, I have a bunch of model kits I want to make, mostly Star Trek related (so much inspiration on these boards!) but I also wanted to test out my 3d printers (Creality Ender 3 and Anycubic Mono M7 Pro). I was browsing stuff to print and it was coming up to Christmas when I came across Bill Doran's Mr Handy and thought that would make an awesome present for one of my closest friends who's been a fallout fan since the first came out way back when.

So I downloaded it and printed it on my Ender 3 and got to work. I took photos along the way and shared them with some friends, excited by the process, which I mostly followed from Bill's video and she made a google folder of all the photos and sent it to me at the end of the project and told me I should post about it. Seeing the quality of everything here I've been fairly reticent about it but thought what the hell, why not. So I'll post a bunch of pictures of my first ever 3d printed model build and how I got on with it. There were a few firsts along the way, I'll be sure to highlight them so you know why this model isn't perhaps everything it could be, but nonetheless it still came out pretty good

 

[AL Wyvern]

so, first things first, I got all the part printed, and it more or less at the standard settings since I've not printed much before so plenty of print lines on view! So of course I got to sanding.I printed with 50% infill on the body and jet, and 100% on the rest of the smaller parts. Here's the body as I got cracking on it

 

[AL Wyvern]

Ok, just realised I can resize these Anyways, filler primer in my little spray both and followed up with yet more sanding!

 

[AL Wyvern]

Got some filler primer going, parts looked a little rough and ready, tho the body looked fab, I thought that was good enough for something I was going to weather to look 200 years old

 

[AL Wyvern]

I tried a few different ways to print out the backplate but I couldn't get it looking right on the FDM printer, so I ended up reprinting it in resin and it looked great, I don't have any photos of that before it was painting but when you see the resin printed one on the painted model, you'll see it looks great

 

[AL Wyvern]

Once I had the primers down and dry, I base coated in Tamiya fine black and I think you can agree the parts looked great. I found it kinda funny that I can gone through so much work only to end up with the parts being black again. Here they are, all laid out ready for me to get a metallic coat on

 

[AL Wyvern]

I did some assembly before I got on to airbrushing, something I've also never done before. A friend of mine has a cricut machine so he cut me iris leafs from styrene so I could have an actual iris effect in the eye pods which turned out looking super good, we so happy with it, though the where really fiddly to glue into place, but with some determination I got there.

 

[AL Wyvern]

So, first time airbrushing and I was really intimidated by it. Most of the time it went very well indeed and I was impressed by how good it made the parts look. However for some reason the paint kept splitting, or having some weird effect on this on particular piece and I have no idea why, the other who I sprayed in exactly the same way came out just fine (If you have any idea why please let me know!). But I sanded it down and took my time and got it right in the end

 

[AL Wyvern]

Next up was accent colouring which was an enjoyable process, just took my time with it and built up layers of colour until they were nice and bright, just using a paintbrush, no airbrushing here. I was getting excited because it felt like I was getting close to the end, but still had a bit of work left ahead of me but did a final assembly and I think it came out great, so did a few coats of varnish with the airbrush, which broke so everything went on hold while I ordered a new one. It was a cheap one I got on sale so I didn't mind to much, spent a little more and a still cheap but better branded one and it worked out great, no problems with the new one and got back on it

 

[AL Wyvern]

So with a few layers of varnish on I got to putting on some nice decals, using micro set and sol, also a new process to me and I really enjoyed it, makes putting on decals so much easier! I bought generic decal sheets online that looked like they might have some useful stuff on them and I wasn't disappointed, I think you'll agree they look pretty good and have a good fallout feel to Old Ironsides! Also you can see her the painted resin printed backplate, which looks pretty damn good

 

[AL Wyvern]

So once the decals where well and truly in place and cured/dried on whatever you call it, I gave them a couple layers of varnish and then it was one to weathering, and wow, what a great process that is! Ya'll weren't kidding about how fun it is. I just used a few greens/browns/red watered down acrylic paint to tint and stain the body and pulled it back with paper towels, and when that was dry I had black and umber water mixable oil paints and went into the crevasses and pulled that back with paper towels too, the different it made was like night and day, had a lot of fun with it, trying not to go too overboard, I think I hit a good balance in the end.

Also shown here is my streaming set up, I wasn't streaming live, I have a friend who lives abroad and we craft together, so I used this set up streaming from my PC via discord so he could watch me work on Mr Handy while he worked on a styrene scratch build of a mayan temple, which is very cool and ongoing.

 

[AL Wyvern]

Then it was time to glue on the tools, which took a little fiddling and removing of some material, then weathered the jointed to hide them and worked a treat, then a few more layers of varnish and that was it, all done. And so proud of this Christmas present that took from October to April/May for me to make. So uh, yeah, it was a bit late.

 

[AL Wyvern]

But wait, there's more. I couldn't leave well enough alone and I wanted a way for it to look a little like it was hovering in mid air, so a stand was in order. I ordered an 18mm by 150mm clear acrylic bar and then design some legs for it and printed them, and then did all the above steps on the legs as well to make them look similar. The design was supposed to both fit in with the aesthetic, without calling too much attention to itself. I didn't take any photos of that build, but I have some final photos I took with my DSLR which didn't turn out great because I've not used it in years and am a bit rust, but give a decent enough view on what those look like

The almost final product, as it were. I bet you can all guess what happened next? Yep, I had it on a table, brushed against the table a little and it fell of the stand, snapping of the rear pincer and the left eyepod! That was furstrating let me tell you! The pincer was a very clean snap, both on the pincer arms and the pincer body, so it went back on and you'd have to look real close to see the glue line. The eye pod snapped mid armature though and wouldn't glue back together. In the end I drilled a tiny hole in both sides of the armature and used some PLA filament, the same thing it was printed from, as a pin and it glued back just fine after that. I wasn't overly worried, I think it added a little to the story of the model and fit the fallout aesthetic for it to have a patch repair like that. I also hollowed out the top of the stand and the bottom of the jet and put in some strong magnets which helped with stability. It's not perfect but a light knock on the table isn't going to make it fall

And in June, the day before my friends birthday, I have him Old Ironsides. It was really hard to part with after all that work, but I knew it was going to a good home. My friend loves it, and has taken it to work to show of on his work desk, which I think is very cool. I should have signed the stand at least, but I know for next time.

Anyways, thanks for reading this far and I hope you enjoyed or got something from this amateur build. I certainly did. I think my next project will be a stupidly ambitious Star Trek ship with lighting (another thing I've never done!)