Yeah, it's always nice to be able to use leftover materials from another project. I'd feel better about the acrylic tubing except for the fact that before the screen-used rifle went up for auction, I was taking a guess at the overall length. I thought it was more like 36"-38" as opposed to 34". So even though I had a piece of the correct 2" tubing from another project, I went and bought a new piece of 2.5" tubing thinking that was correct size. So now I have THAT lying around. Hopefully it will come in handy some day.
Speaking of components I had to go out and buy, I did have to buy some ripped tubing for the inside of the cylinders. I just got a general purpose ribbed hose from the hardware store. While not 100% accurate, it's close enough and it was only $10:
Cut to length with a piece of balsa inside to keep it straight:
Painted them up. The copper paint I had on hand was Rustoleum Copper Metallic, but it wasn't really orange enough, so after I painted them, I oversprayed them with Tamiya Clear Orange and the color seems pretty close now:
Assembling the tubes was easy. I used a drywall screw through the end caps which screws right into the balsa running down the tubes. Everything is tight, so no glue was necessary. Which is good because gluing transparent acrylic to anything always looks a little messey because you can see the bonded edge:
I also painted some small acrylic domes for the light lenses. I wanted to use colored cabochons, but I didn't have any in the right size and color. So these are just painted with clear red, yellow, and orange and clearcoated:
I satin clearcoated all the blue parts. I'm starting to see how it will all come together: