Another Ding-Dang PKD
- Thread starter veektohr
- Start date
Buch
Sr Member
Still gotta take them to peaks, and lemme tell ya there's one hell of a learning curve to checkering. I made so many mistakes before I finally settled into a grooveThe acrylic gums up the files really quickly, and then they like to hop around.
It's getting there!
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Gorgeous, just gorgeous. What's the name of the tool? Forgive my ignorance. And the thickness of the acrylic sheet?
veektohr
Sr Member
The checkering tool I'm using is just a three piece set from Dem-Bart. It's basically v-files. One long, one short, and one with a guide rail. If you're gonna checker, you're gonna want some magnification, too.
The polishing wheel knocked the sharpness down some, which bums me out. Still happy how they're turning out overall though!
Excited to see how this turns out man! Getting in a Tomenosuke in soon that I'm heavily considering converting into a live-fire. So I'll be digging my teeth into that once I'm back from my back-to-back work trips.
Buch
Sr Member
Cool. I'll look into that. The smoke acrylic would look perfect on a police conversion. Been thinking of converting a Sid....
veektohr
Sr Member
That's exactly what I was thinking! I never liked that the police model had opaque grips. I loved the black on black look, but that transparency in the grips is such a huge part of the blaster's aesthetic. I used 2074 1/2" cast acrylic. I think 2064 would be fine, though, as the 2074 almost doesn't let enough light when the grips are on the blaster. For shaping, I have been using file bits for the rough shaping, and sanding drums to smooth things out, plus a LOT of hand sanding. Shaping with 80 grit, then moving up in grits to 500, followed by some 0000 steel wool. After than I polished on a wheel with buffing compound on my hand drill - one pass with red compound, one pass with white - and that brings them up to that glassy shine.
There are also a lot of cool colors besides smoked, it makes me want to just start making grips lol.
Thanks! We're just paying our dues until the maker gods bestow us with workshops full of beltsanders and bandsaws
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Buch
Sr Member
EXACTLY!! Man... I need to try this... thanks for the tips about the material and tools. Valuable knowledge. That'll go straight to the builder's log!
Btw you really nailed this... a huge inspiration!
veektohr
Sr Member
Thanks, Anders. I picked this project because I knew I would have to learn a whole lot of new skills to finish it. One thing that made the sculpting much easier was using transfer screws to get the registration right. I screwed them into the grip frame, lined up the acrylic, and then whacked it with a hammer - perfectly aligned center-punches. The Sid metal is a lot softer than the Tomen grip frame, but I bet you could still use the same technique (just be a little more gentle with the hammer). When all's said and done I'm hoping to to have a 100% Victor-made frame, buttplate (both from 6160 aluminum), and acrylic grips set for converting bulldogs with. I bet they'll fit a Coyle too, since his is cast directly off the Charter Arms. They might work on a Sid too with a little modification, though. I know people have fit his grip frames to their SidKits for ghost builds & stuff. I still have a lot of kinks to iron out in my process before I get there, though.
Buch
Sr Member
The more I think about it the more just want to make the Coyle kit I'm working on into a police conversion with smoke colored grips..... the frame is pretty sturdy and flexible, much more than the Sid-metal, which is a lot more brittle (as you mention)... I bet the Coyle frame could take the hammering... especially if I fit the bulldog handle inside first... that will make it more robust... I might just change lanes on that project!
veektohr
Sr Member
Took a break from working on the baster... to work on the blaster. Like I've said, I don't want to use any pre-existing kit parts by the end of the project, so today I started modeling some stuff. I took one of the restoration photos and corrected for distortion / perspective as best I could in Photoshop. Then I brought it into Fusion as a reference canvas, knowing I could calibrate the scale to those one inch squares on the work-man beneath it.
A little bit later:
I'm not sure how far I want to take the model. I think it will still be better to leave some things to finish by hand for fitting's sake (like the end taper of the butt plate with the grips), so I'm kind of thinking of this like you would an 80% receiver. It'll take some more work, but I like the idea of basing my dimensions off the actual prop vs. other kits.
A little bit later:
I'm not sure how far I want to take the model. I think it will still be better to leave some things to finish by hand for fitting's sake (like the end taper of the butt plate with the grips), so I'm kind of thinking of this like you would an 80% receiver. It'll take some more work, but I like the idea of basing my dimensions off the actual prop vs. other kits.
I can't believe how good these came out. The manual labor involved in this is just draw dropping, but not half as much as the finished product!
I bought Karl's police version when he had it up on the junkyard a while back. The matte finish was pretty banged up so I've been (slowly) stripping it down to the bare metal and polishing it with the intention of re-bluing it as darkly as possible to match what a real police revolver finish used to look like. After seeing this comment now I'm never going to feel like it's incomplete until it has a set of smoked acrylic grips, too...
I bought Karl's police version when he had it up on the junkyard a while back. The matte finish was pretty banged up so I've been (slowly) stripping it down to the bare metal and polishing it with the intention of re-bluing it as darkly as possible to match what a real police revolver finish used to look like. After seeing this comment now I'm never going to feel like it's incomplete until it has a set of smoked acrylic grips, too...
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Very nice idea to model your own gun from the pictures. If I may, I just think you might have done things out of order there, if you model and build your own grip frame, maybe you should have waited for it to be finished before doing the grips themselves, no?
veektohr
Sr Member
Very nice idea to model your own gun from the pictures. If I may, I just think you might have done things out of order there, if you model and build your own grip frame, maybe you should have waited for it to be finished before doing the grips themselves, no?
Lol, very true very true. The last pair really started as just me seeing if I could make a decent pair at all. Now I'll just keep those one as placeholders until I get these parts ready. I think I want to make them out of a lighter tiny anyway. Let more light in!
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