Mangalore Nozzle

At this point, the only real remaining task left on building up the rifle is the nozzle.

Here's the piece as it came out of the mold. You can still clearly see the writing on the top of it. Tasty!



I spent a little time using putty and sand paper to flatten out the top, but it turned out great. I then drilled a big old hole in it, off center. Then hit it with some primer.



Then, all I had to do was blast it with a couple of coats of black. It's drying right this very second. As soon as it's done, I just have to epoxy it to the main body, and this baby is done.



I've decided not to whether the gun for now. I'll just leave it as is. I'll need to experiment a little with some techniques before I commit to plowing the gun under in simulated dirt and grime.

Still, the good news is that this baby is really almost done now. Too bad I was hoping to have it finished by the end of December. I'll still be maintaining my one prop per month policy, and that's all I can ask. Well, I can ALWAYS ask more of myself, but hey, why push.

Mangalore Detail Pieces

The Managalore Rifle rushes towards completion... though at a snails pace. Hey, as long as it gets done eventually, I'll be happy.

I decided to repaint the side detail piece. I had done some experimentation with whethering it, and it just didn't come out very good. So I reverted back to it's original flat black condition. Here you see it right after it was painted, hence the glossy look.



And here it is all glued into place on the body of the rifle. I used a few gobs of my favorite five minute epoxy to get it into place.



And here's the infernal little detail piece that I agonized over so much. All set and ready to mow your village down.

Knobby Bits

Please don't misinterpret the title of this post. This blog has not taken a turn for the pornographic. Nossir! I'm talking in this post about a little detail piece that goes on top of the rifle.

Readers will recall that while this piece was originally cast into the main body of the gun, I sanded it off due to the poor alignment I had gotten. Cuz that stuff ain't gonna fly. Not on my watch. So in this post, I show how I prepped the two resin pieces that I poured up previously.

I had to take the halves over to the belt sander, to clean up the back sides. I didn't to too good of a job, as there was a little unevenness to them. I straightened them out with some high grit sandpaper.



I glued the two halves together using some 2 minute epoxy. Nice!



I went in with some sand paper and my jewelers files to clean up the ribs the best I could. The two halves went together pretty well, but not perfectly. There was a bit of work to be done.



I went in with some putty to clean up the seam. I didn't really want to spend a ton of time on this little detail piece. There were far more noticeable seams on the gun, so it didn't really seem worth while to agonize over this little guy.



I put some primer on it, and did a little more sanding. It's just about done now.



After the primer had dried, I hit it with a couple of coats of krylon semi-gloss black. No picture, but I'm sure you get the point. Next up, I need to attach it to the gun.

Rifle Nozzle

As before, I've fallen behind in posting progress on my Mangalore Rifle. Progress has indeed been made, it just has not been documented.

In this post, I'll share some work I did on the nozzle. As readers will know, the molds for the rifle did not come with a nozzle tip. I have one picture of a stunt rifle that shows what the size of the tip is, and also that it appears to have some kind of nipple on it. I found a vitamin bottle cap that looked to be about the right size, and decided to use that as a base. I was still unsure how I was going to handle the nipple. I looked at some reference photos I have for a screen used HERO rifle, and found that instead of a nipple, it just has a big hole. I guess that makes sense. So I opted for the easy way out, and decided to make a hole instead.

Anyhow, here's some pics.

I started off with the cap, and took it to the belt sander to sand down the text on the top. Sadly, the cap was slightly concave, and only the text around the edges sanded smooth. I didn't feel like knocking an eigth of an inch off the cap to get to the text, so I just left it as it is, figuring I would fix it in a casting.



Which reminds me. The reason I decided to cast this in the first place is twofold. First of all, I wasn't sure if paint would stick too well to the plastic cap. Second, it's much easier to attach to the gun if it's solid resin. As it is, it's essentially hollow. I suppose I could have filled it with resin or something, but that sounds like a lot of trouble. So I cut out a red cup (remind you of any college parties you've been to lately???) and used that as my mold box.



The mold came out beautifully.



More to come on the cap shortly.

UnMasked!

No, not the KISS album, silly. I'm talking about the Mangalore Rifle. Duh.

Here's the rifle with all of that nasty blue tape removed.



All in all, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's certainly not perfect. There are a few spots where the paint crept under the masking tape, and a few spots where the masking wasn't perfect. But on something this size, it's hard to maintain a super high degree of quality control on the little details.

One remaining task is to rebuild a little detail piece on the top of the gun. Because the seam didn't match up too well on this part, I ended up grinding it from my casting. Figured I'd just replace it later. Well, that time is now!

Here's the mold, showing the piece in question. It's mirrored on both sides.



I used a trick I picked up from a friend years ago. I used metal plumbers tape on the inside of the mold to form a wall. Don't get the wrong idea; the tape does NOT stick to the inside of the mold. But because it's so good about keeping its shape, you only need to apply a tiny amount of pressure with your fingers to keep it in place.

I mixed up a tiny bit of resin, poured it in, then held the tape in place until it had kicked.



After about ten minutes, I pulled the pieces out of the molds. They came out great. Now I just need to clean them up, glue them together, paint them, and attach them.



At this point, the following tasks remain:

1. Finish aforementioned detail piece.
2. Scratch build a nozzle
3. weather
4. party

Copper All Painted

My progress tonight puts me back into one of those rare "light at the end of the tunnel" kind of moods.

With the copper assembly on top all back in place, well dried, primered, and looking quite snazzy, it's time to go in for a final coat of black paint on all the copper parts.

Here's where we stand as of right now.



Of course, this is only one side of the rifle. I still need to nail the copper tubes on the other side, and do any touch up painting that may be necessary after man-handling this piece for so long. Still, it's coming together nicely.

All that really remains is painting the other side, stripping off the masking tape, attaching the side detail piece, scratch building a nozzle, and casting up a replacement greeblie for the top. Not exactly a short list, but I'm getting there. I think if I put my mind to it, I might be able to finish by the end of the weekend.

And then I've got to weather it!!!

Oh Snap!

Just after I painted the top copper piece with primer, I went to move it and the curly bit snapped off. Turns out my copper soldering job wasn't as pro-style as I had hoped. No surprise there, I guess.



I was pretty upset, seeing as how it took me so long to get that darn piece together. To have it fall apart so easily was a bit depressing.

But now that I think back to the event, there's a bit more of a story to tell.

After the epoxy had set, and the assembly was firmly in place, I got ready to primer it. However, when I took a closer look at it, I realized it was mounted incorrectly. The part towards the emitter was closer to the body than the back part. Basically, the top pipe was angled, when it should be parallell to the barrel. Big bummer. I thought maybe the epoxy hadn't quite set fully yet, so I gave a tug on the assembly, and that's when it popped off. I was distressed, so I stepped away from the project for a week. From my R2 experience, I've learned that calamaties come in bunches. So when one hits, your best bet is to just step away to avoid the next few that are coming down the pipes. So to speak.

So I come back a week later, armed with techniques not only for fixing the angled pipe, but also for attaching the curly bit.

First was fixing the pipe. I started by whittling away as much of the epoxy as I could get to on the front. Cleaned it out pretty good, but it was still stuck firmly in place. So I whacked it with the rubber mallet until it came loose. Then I grabbed the piece that goes through the barrel with a pair of pliers, and whacked the pliers with the mallet until the top pipe was parallell with the barrel. With that all sorted out, I slopped in some more epoxy, and called it a day.

Now it was time to reattach the curly bit

I decided to use coat hanger wire to reinforce the assembly, and basically just glue the whole thing together. I didn't want to try to re-solder the thing, as I'd probably end up melting the rifle in the process. I also didn't want to have to remove the entire copper assy just to resolder it. Especially considering how weak my first solder was in the first place. Oy.

So I first clipped four lenghts of coat hanger wire. Then I bent them to approximately match the curvature of the end bit. I didn't make it a perfect fit on purpose, as I wanted there to be some tension inside the tube, keeping the hangers in place.



I then slathered in the epoxy, and shoved all four hanger wires inside.



I then used some wire cutters to help me bend the coat hanger wires at a pretty sharp angle away from the curly piece. I had to clean out some excess epoxy, as I really did manage to goop it up pretty good.



All that was left was to shove the trailing wires into the main pipe, after they were liberally slobbed with epoxy.



Good news is, it worked like a charm. I spent some time with the files and some sand paper cleaning up the joint, and it actually came out looking better than it did BEFORE I snapped it off. Now there's turning a frown upside-down for ya.

This last picture shows the assembly right before I cleaned it up, but you can tell that the original shape of the assembly has been restored. Looking good.

Copper Tube In Place

These photos and this information are actually about a week old. I did this work before I left for Seattle, which was late last week. But I digress.

I drilled out the holes earlier for this, the top most copper assembly. A little epoxy and five minutes later, and it's in place.



Then it was just a matter of blasting it with some grey primer, and it's ready for painting.



OR SO I THOUGHT! Next episode: Tragedy Strikes!!!

Butane Torch Frenzy

Late on Sunday, I wrapped up the last of the butane torch work. And I managed to do it all without burning the garage down. That's cool.

Here you see the fully assembled piece that goes on top of the rifle, and the smaller circular piece that goes on the front underside.

You'll notice that one of the legs is not soldered on. That is on purpose, as full assembly would make it impossible to attach to the body of the gun. So one of those joints will be held in place by epoxy. I'm not going to attempt to butane the thing while it's on the rifle, as that will no doubt cause trouble. I just don't see that scenario ending well for anyone.



Fire. Pretty.



Only three real remaining tasks on the rifle as I see it. I need to attach all of the copper assemblies, fabricate a barrel tip, and do the little detail piece on the top of the thing that I dremelled off a while ago.

I'd say there's a decent chance that this could get finished by the end of the month.

Bendy Copper

This post focuses on the copper tubing assembly that gets attached to the stock end of the rifle. I managed to get that all finished up this weekend.

Which reminds me that I'm finally making headway on this project. I beleive the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter and brighter. But the journey has not been free of peril.

I have to say that I was TERRIFIED at the prospect of using a butane torch to solder the copper tubes together. I've logged many miles with a soldering iron, but never a butane torch. Knowing how I am when I'm in my shop, and how I tend to always be knocking things over, bumping into things, and dropping things, I had my worries about the thought of deploying a tool that shoots a blue flame out of it. Know what I mean??

I'll flash forward and let you, dear reader, continue in comfort with the full knowledge that no Munsons or animals were harmed in the making of the copper tubing assemblies. It all went well.

In fact, from this first picture, you can see that I've already formed the first joint.



It's hard enough getting the copper to bend the way you want it to. It's actually quite tricky, especially at this thickness. You'd think it would be easy, but there's a lot of subtle work to it. Took me a while to get it right, and even then, I wouldn't say it's perfect. It's good enough for me though. But things get even more complicated when you start trying to join pieces together. Though I did my best to make sure all the tube sections were straight, lining them up on a flat surface always revealed little problems. Trying to fix those little problems usually created more. So it got to a point where it was really all just about compromise. I just wanted to get it "good enough", so that I could move on.

I would lay the pieces down on the concrete, and then tape them into place so that they wouldn't slip during the soldering process. That process is also something that is very trial and error. It wasn't until about my third joint that I finally got a feel for it. (and yes, I'm referring to the points where the copper tubes meet, not an illegal substance you smoke)

Here's the curly assembly all finished and ready to attach to the rifle.



Next, I drilled holes in the back side of the rifle where the copper pieces would go. Not a big deal really. The good news is that there was a drill bit with the exact same diameter as the copper I'm using. Snug fit!



I used some five minute epoxy in the holes to get the thing into place. Worked out pretty well. I'm happy with it.

Once it was in, I blasted it with some primer.



and then finished it off with some krylon. Looks great!



Like many of my projects, I did this in the wrong order. I probably should have drilled ALL the holes before attaching the tubing, as I'm now in a position where I not only need to be really careful when moving the rifle around to drill the other holes, but I also need to be delicate with it in general. Oh well. This is nothing new to me though. I'm a big believer in sacrificing long term benefits for short term results, when it comes to my projects. Of course.

Still, I don't really think it will pose a serious problem. Onward and upward!

More Primer, Putty, Paint

I only found about an hour and a half to work on projects today, but still got some solid work done. I'm focused on three items at the moment, which regular readers of this blog will know is an unusually low quantity.

The rifle is coming along nicely, but I've noticed a few places where the Krlyon black seems to be repelled. It's another case of mis-matched paints. So I went in with some primer and blasted the problematic parts.



Once that had dried, I went back over it with the Krylon and got all of the hard to reach places. It didn't work perfectly, but it's good enough. I plan on weathering the heck out of this piece once the paint dries, so it shouldn't matter all that much.



On the padd front, work continues on the two small TNG style padds. Here's the large window padd after I had done some sanding on the putty. This type of clean up is an iterative process. You clean up one set of problems, then address the next. This is after I had sanded down the first putty attack.



And here it is a few minutes later after a coat of primer. Grey primer really goes a long way in revealing the flaws in a piece. I've learned over time that natural lighting also helps a lot. You cannot just look at a piece in artifical lighting, especially when that lighting is either single source, or not the best.



While that was drying, I spent a little time on the other TNG padd. Just more putty clean up. I'm also trying to clean out the side railing. It's pretty dirty, and not very uniform. Here it is after another coat of primer.



Going back to the part about this being an iterative process, once the primer dried on the large-window padd, I went back in and put putty on the newly revealed problems. This is really meticulous work, which would probably be totally skipped were this a prop for screen use. But since this is something that I want to look good under closer scrutiny, I'm taking the time to get it nice and smooth. I try to limit myself to three of these iterations, as you could just go on forever if you wanted to.



Lastly, a little update on the Zorg remote project. My roll of reflective yellow tape showed up yesterday. It is PERFECT. It looks exactly like the stuff that was used on the screen used one, so I'm stoked.



The remote itself is half way under rubber. I'm still waiting for the mold release spray to show up so I can pour the second half of the mold.

Rifle, Padds, Lions, oh my!

Early this morning, I finished up the final little piece of masking work on the Mangalore Rifle. Yahoo! It's now ready for painting.



So this evening, I blasted down the first couple coats of krylon semi-gloss black. Lookin' good so far. I'm still on the fence about how I'm going to attack the attaching the brass detail bits, but I'll worry about that later.



I also did some minor putty work on the two TNG PADDs that I've got cooking. Nothing spectacular to report really. I'm just cleaning up little pock marks and dents and stuff. I'm not trying to get them perfect, just taking out the major imperfections.



And lastly, here's the next padd I'll be working on. This one was featured heavily in the fourth season episode "The Drumhead". It's painted red with white buttons. This is a very oddball little padd that didn't see much screen time. But I still think it's pretty nifty.



Overall, a pretty productive day. I only put in a little over an hour of work tonight, but seeing that rifle getting painted is a big step. A big psychological "win" for me too, as that's been idle for a long time now.

Almost There: Stay On Target

It's really hard to stay motivated to finish up that Mangalore Rifle. As much as I love the prop, and want a finished one in my collection, it's just SUCH a pain in the butt doing all that masking! The good news is that I've only got one tiny little piece remaining to be masked off, and then I'll be ready to blast away with the Krylon Semi-Gloss black. Nice!

Here's where the rifle stands as of tonight.



I did some clean up work on the TNG PADD, and also started in on a new one. This new one is one of those oddball padds. Not a super "primary" padd, but one that was featured in a number of episodes. Tonight I cleaned up the flash from the casting process, and blasted it with its first coat of primer.



Big-up to a fellow trek-head and prop collector named SurferGeek who provided me with some excellent screen captures of the first TNG era padd I'm working on.





Magic!

Tonight I also dumped rubber on a couple of pieces. One is the Zorg remote that will go with the ZF-1. The other is another oddball TNG era Padd. What can I say? I'm on a roll.



And just to make sure my apartment is still a big draw for the ladies, I hung up my recently framed Time Bandits map the other day. Looks pretty stellar over my couch, n'est ce pas??



I managed to do a bunch of online shopping tonight, to round up some supplies. I got my 1" yellow reflective tape for the Zorg remotes, some mold separator for the Zorg remote mold, and I also ordered an Estes Phoenix rocket kit, which happens to have a set of decals I need for another tiny Fifth Element project that is still far on the back burner.

Oh, and to my absolute shock and horror, I actually had a successful trip to Michaels today. This is a store I absolutely hate. 10 times out of 10, they do not have what I am looking for. WITHOUT FAIL, EVERY time I got there, I leave empty handed and upset. Upset because I just wasted my time. But today was different. But only because I knew as a fact they would have what I was looking for. Then again, knowing them, it's a surprise they were not out of stock of the items I was seeking. I needed some glue for my hot glue gun, and some popsicle sticks. They had both! The glue I use when making boxes for my molds. The sticks come in handy for all kinds of stuff, though I mostly use them to mix up putty.

Anyhow, that's all she wrote for today. Well, that's all *I* wrote for today.