But along the way, I've really started kicking around the build up of my Mangalore Rifle, which I would like to document also.
Here's an old reference picture I have of a finished rifle. This one probably came from the exact same mold I'll be using
I'll do a little more background info later on, but for tonight, I'll jump right in.
A few days ago, I poured a couple of resin pulls of one of the detail pieces on the rifle. It's a bit warped, as the mold is almost dead. The piece came out of the mold looking like this.
That had to be fixed. I turned to my old friend, the heat gun. As it's name would indicate, this thing gets REALLY hot. I blasted the resin piece for a few minutes to soften it up.
Then I plopped a nice, heavy R2-D2 battery on top of it to keep it straight as the resin cools.
About a half an hour later, it was all cool. There were still a few lumps in it, caused by a break in the mold. Now that the thing is flat, it was easy to file out the lumps, and also re-create one of the flanges that was worn down a bit by the filing.
Though I only spent about 30 minutes on this project tonight, it was a great start. I'm really very happy with how this piece turned out, and it was the state of this piece that had me the most concerned about this project.
I believe the only other piece of progress I have to report today is that I ordered some resin to use casting up the main body. I decided to go with a BJB product, TC-1630. The stuff cures pretty quickly, has a freindly mix ratio, and best of all, has almost no shrinkage. Because I'll be brushing it in to a pretty big two part mold, I'm not too worried about shrinkage. But if it's something you can control, you should.
For reference, I ordered my stuff from Burman Foam, at www.burmanfoam.com
Since yesterday was my birthday, I thought it only fair that I show off some of my loot. This is a very dapper shirt and tie combo that I wore with pride today.
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