eidylon
Active Member
Okay, finally getting around to writing up this build, even though I finished it months ago.
This was my very first build (other than a couple measly attempts back in high school). Yeah, I know this gun has been done a million times, but the drawings were readily available (I'm not up to doing my own drawings yet) and it is nice and small and fairly simple, so it seemed like a good learning project.
If any others just starting out should find their way here after me, I hope it helps. I realized I could make a decent attempt at this after watching this amazing video by Chinbeard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU3Fgi-Kr5A . He really shows how awesomely easy it is to get started making decent props!
Anyway, on to the show... :cool
Being my Very First Build! I was a little over-excited and exuberant in my photo taking, and so I had to record the 2 x 4 sheets of MDF from Home Depot fresh off the shelves!
After tracing out the basic shaped, I cut the corner out of the MDF.
The center layer is 3/4", the next layer up (cut out to expose the little bracer at the bottom) is 1/4".
Going from the drawings, and a sense of the piece as it came together, I didn't want to use another piece of 1/4" for the final body layer. It would've been too thick, but - at least in the Home Depot's around here - they don't have 3/16" MDF, unless you buy it with either blackboard or whiteboard coating on one side. So I opted to go with hardboard (aka HDF) for the final layer.
The hardboard is a VERY different material. It is MUCH more fibrous (where as the MDF is more of a homogenous texture). So when you cut it, the edges get a bit "fuzzy". Easy enough to deal with by sanding, but it threw me a bit at first, and I almost wasn't going to use the pieces, and was going to try sanding the "blackboard" off a piece of MDF.
The other thing with HDF is that it is VERY, well, hard on saw blades! HDF will dull down scroll saw blades insanely fast compared to the MDF.
For the final layer of the grip, i wanted something much thinner than the upper body. To get this, I went with what has since become one of my favorite materials for thin layers... a plain old wooden clipboard from Staples. You just cut the clip off the top, and you've got yourself a nice, svelte piece of 1/8" wood, that is more solid than MDF, but not as hard as HDF. It holds edges and shapings very nicely! Only problem with it is I've never seen a clipboard around larger than a sheet of legal paper! LOL
The barrels are standard... PVC. The lower one is a plain piece of white PVC. The upper one is a connector piece for lawn-sprinkler plumbing. SLIGHTLY larger diameter, and has a very nice finished end that gives the barrel a nice shape.
In the shot above, I actually gouged out the front of the curved MDF to inset the "under-barrel-thingy".
I later mixed up a small batch of Apoxie which I used to reshape the curve around the PVC pipe.
(as an aside, I love the smell of Apoxie... it reminds me of something I can't quite place.....)
I added all the little details on the side. I did take a little artistic license here from the drawings.
The slidey-looking switch, just looked "fake" the way it was on the drawings/reference images. So I made it a more physical slider, with grooves in the surface for texture.
The flip switch, I was initially going to stop at my local gun shop, and see if they had any old flip safetys from a dead gun or something I could buy cheap, but they were never open by the time I got off work. So I made one, just by cutting out a little disc and a little half disc, and notch mounting the half one into the full one. I put two little dimples under where it would flip that the switch would catch on to hold it in place from accidental switching. I actually really like the way it came.
The trigger I should've done differently. It is just flush-mounted to the bottom of the body. So the second person I showed it to pulled a little hard on it and it popped right off. From now on... all triggers shall be notch-mounted into the body of the piece! But this one, I repaired by drilling some small holes in both the trigger and the body, and pin-mounting it with a couple small brads with the heads cut off.
The button on the back is just a hand-grooved short bit of dowel. No presses or anything, so the hole it is mounted in is just gouged out by hand with the dremel.
For smoothing out the surface of the piece, I used vinyl spackle. Not the most solid stuff, but there were no big holes, just little texture holes in the surface of the HDF. Smeared that on and it was so thin it dried almost instantly, then sanded.
The under-the-barrel thing is supposed to have a diamond-pattern texture, but I realized it would've been inSANEly hard to put that on after having already glued the PVC in place. So to add an interesting texture to it, I just cut out a small piece of stair-tread traction tape. You can also see here I opted to use actual socket-head hex screws on the sides of the body, to give a little more "real" look.
The painting went pretty easy. Used the Rustoleum two-color textured paint for the lower, grip sections as recommended by Chinbeard. The top body I found a very nice, dark gun-metal metallic paint, also from Rustoleum.
It is amazing how much better it looks once you start painting on all the small detailing, labeling and decaling, such as the red areas.
I made a nice little carry case for it out of an 11$ art supply case from Michael's and one of those cheap wavey-foam mattress toppers from target.
And the final piece! I skipped some of the lettering (such as "CAUTION" below the barrels) because I couldn't figure yet a good way to stencil them, and rathered to leave them off than have them come out badly and ruin the whole piece.
But here it is, all worn and weathered. Used silver rub-and-buff to scuff up the edges, and an acrylic paint wash of various shades of brown and little deep red and black mixed in for visual texture.
All in all, I was insanely happy with how it came out for a first piece! Lines and cuts could be a lot straighter... that's my main complaint with this piece. But from a distance you can't even tell. The whole piece, end-to-end was about 30 hours of work, not including wait/dry time on the paint.
This was my very first build (other than a couple measly attempts back in high school). Yeah, I know this gun has been done a million times, but the drawings were readily available (I'm not up to doing my own drawings yet) and it is nice and small and fairly simple, so it seemed like a good learning project.
If any others just starting out should find their way here after me, I hope it helps. I realized I could make a decent attempt at this after watching this amazing video by Chinbeard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU3Fgi-Kr5A . He really shows how awesomely easy it is to get started making decent props!
Anyway, on to the show... :cool
Being my Very First Build! I was a little over-excited and exuberant in my photo taking, and so I had to record the 2 x 4 sheets of MDF from Home Depot fresh off the shelves!
After tracing out the basic shaped, I cut the corner out of the MDF.
The center layer is 3/4", the next layer up (cut out to expose the little bracer at the bottom) is 1/4".
Going from the drawings, and a sense of the piece as it came together, I didn't want to use another piece of 1/4" for the final body layer. It would've been too thick, but - at least in the Home Depot's around here - they don't have 3/16" MDF, unless you buy it with either blackboard or whiteboard coating on one side. So I opted to go with hardboard (aka HDF) for the final layer.
The hardboard is a VERY different material. It is MUCH more fibrous (where as the MDF is more of a homogenous texture). So when you cut it, the edges get a bit "fuzzy". Easy enough to deal with by sanding, but it threw me a bit at first, and I almost wasn't going to use the pieces, and was going to try sanding the "blackboard" off a piece of MDF.
The other thing with HDF is that it is VERY, well, hard on saw blades! HDF will dull down scroll saw blades insanely fast compared to the MDF.
For the final layer of the grip, i wanted something much thinner than the upper body. To get this, I went with what has since become one of my favorite materials for thin layers... a plain old wooden clipboard from Staples. You just cut the clip off the top, and you've got yourself a nice, svelte piece of 1/8" wood, that is more solid than MDF, but not as hard as HDF. It holds edges and shapings very nicely! Only problem with it is I've never seen a clipboard around larger than a sheet of legal paper!
LOLThe barrels are standard... PVC. The lower one is a plain piece of white PVC. The upper one is a connector piece for lawn-sprinkler plumbing. SLIGHTLY larger diameter, and has a very nice finished end that gives the barrel a nice shape.
In the shot above, I actually gouged out the front of the curved MDF to inset the "under-barrel-thingy".
I later mixed up a small batch of Apoxie which I used to reshape the curve around the PVC pipe.
(as an aside, I love the smell of Apoxie... it reminds me of something I can't quite place.....)
I added all the little details on the side. I did take a little artistic license here from the drawings.
The slidey-looking switch, just looked "fake" the way it was on the drawings/reference images. So I made it a more physical slider, with grooves in the surface for texture.
The flip switch, I was initially going to stop at my local gun shop, and see if they had any old flip safetys from a dead gun or something I could buy cheap, but they were never open by the time I got off work. So I made one, just by cutting out a little disc and a little half disc, and notch mounting the half one into the full one. I put two little dimples under where it would flip that the switch would catch on to hold it in place from accidental switching. I actually really like the way it came.
The trigger I should've done differently. It is just flush-mounted to the bottom of the body. So the second person I showed it to pulled a little hard on it and it popped right off. From now on... all triggers shall be notch-mounted into the body of the piece! But this one, I repaired by drilling some small holes in both the trigger and the body, and pin-mounting it with a couple small brads with the heads cut off.
The button on the back is just a hand-grooved short bit of dowel. No presses or anything, so the hole it is mounted in is just gouged out by hand with the dremel.
For smoothing out the surface of the piece, I used vinyl spackle. Not the most solid stuff, but there were no big holes, just little texture holes in the surface of the HDF. Smeared that on and it was so thin it dried almost instantly, then sanded.
The under-the-barrel thing is supposed to have a diamond-pattern texture, but I realized it would've been inSANEly hard to put that on after having already glued the PVC in place. So to add an interesting texture to it, I just cut out a small piece of stair-tread traction tape. You can also see here I opted to use actual socket-head hex screws on the sides of the body, to give a little more "real" look.
The painting went pretty easy. Used the Rustoleum two-color textured paint for the lower, grip sections as recommended by Chinbeard. The top body I found a very nice, dark gun-metal metallic paint, also from Rustoleum.
It is amazing how much better it looks once you start painting on all the small detailing, labeling and decaling, such as the red areas.
I made a nice little carry case for it out of an 11$ art supply case from Michael's and one of those cheap wavey-foam mattress toppers from target.
And the final piece! I skipped some of the lettering (such as "CAUTION" below the barrels) because I couldn't figure yet a good way to stencil them, and rathered to leave them off than have them come out badly and ruin the whole piece.
But here it is, all worn and weathered. Used silver rub-and-buff to scuff up the edges, and an acrylic paint wash of various shades of brown and little deep red and black mixed in for visual texture.
All in all, I was insanely happy with how it came out for a first piece! Lines and cuts could be a lot straighter... that's my main complaint with this piece. But from a distance you can't even tell. The whole piece, end-to-end was about 30 hours of work, not including wait/dry time on the paint.
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