This thread is just going to be an area for me to place descriptions and photos of my Blade Runner (2019) prop replica builds. I'm not trying to start a convo, that's for other threads. I'm just listing my own stuff as I research, source, build, upgrade and replace it, so it's all in one place and I can refer back to it. The posts in this thread will also NOT be in chronological order because I love to go back and edit my old descriptions or replace old pictures in posts so things at the end of the thread may actually be older than things near the beginning because I've been fiddling. Sorry.
I've always loved science-fiction movies. I love to imagine a future filled with space travel and flying cars and intelligent machines where I may one day live. Part of the fascination has always been the 'hardware', especially guns (plenty of these out there since most sf movies are American). As a teenager I was lucky enough to live in a town with two good cinemas; a little independent theatre and a large town-centre 'palais'. Myself and my school friends would gather in town for the Saturday afternoon matinee and watching movies on a big screen became an important part of my life. Usually the movies were low-budget pulp science-fiction flicks with lots of clunky ray guns and dodgy special effects. Superman and Star Wars raised the bar for effects (if not acting) but it was still mostly brightly coloured pulp sci-fi on offer. Then one weekend in 1982, at the age of 17, I saw a new sf picture, in the independent, that changed everything. The effect it had on me was profound. I went to see it again the following Monday, and again on Tuesday and again on Wednesday. It didn't have a long run. The last time I went I remember it was just the theatre manager and me in the place and we discussed the themes and issues of the story during the presentation (don't you just hate it when people talk during the film?). The movie in question was Blade Runner and it has stayed with me throughout adulthood (and all the revised versions) as the best science fiction movie ever made. I've also owned it on home taped Beta-Max video, commercial VHS tape, DVD and blu-ray, and I've seen it so many times I can recite every word of the script by heart. If memory serves it was first broadcast on British TV around 1985 and not a single year has passed since then where I haven't watched it at least once. Today I'm in my 50's and my hobby is building screen-accurate movie prop replica guns so it seems natural that Blade Runner pistols will form the heart of my display.
Things you won't see in this thread? Well, I don't like replicas which don't display the functionality of a 'real' alternative. I don't like painted 'faux' finishes or resin casts or 3D printed plastic. I make guns based on real guns (deactivated here in the UK of course) or functional metal replicas, such as airsoft or plug-fire, or metal replica castings like the ones you will read about below.
I have high standards and I make things for ME. I am not a 'completist' and I really don't understand the collectors who simply have to find and buy every single item 'just because it's in the movie'. Let's be honest, a lot of stuff in the movie was crap, background clutter, completely irrelevant to the story and of no aesthetic value whatsoever but still some collectors seem to think they just have to have it. That's not me. If you go to the trouble of reading all my long-winded 'guff' below you will see I am collecting and building the iconic Steyr pistol over and over again, and a few other iconic pieces such as the holster, wallet & whiskey bottle. I also have plans for a few other chosen high-end props eventually such as the Sebastian chess set, Vid-Phon cabinet and VK machine.
As you read the following build-logs you may notice I always refer to the Blade Runner guns as pistols, never as 'blasters'. I really wish everyone would stop calling these guns blasters. Blasters in sf literature are almost always projected-energy weapons (for instance all the Star Wars guns are called 'blasters') and the Deckard gun is an old-fashioned slug-thrower, even if some of the rounds it fires are very specialised loads. You wouldn't call 'Dirty Harry's .44 magnum a blaster, it's a a revolver, and let's not forget that under the 'dieselpunk' cladding Deckard's gun is a .44 special revolver!
Right, here we go!