Compression Rifle Progress Continues

The Star Trek Voyager compression rifle is really coming along nicely, despite the fact that I didn't really touch it this weekend. The main assembly has been completed. I guess I would say the difficult work has been done. The one key piece that remains to be put in place is the strip of material that runs horizontally between the front and rear grips. The kit came with a piece of thick styrene with beveled edges, but it was wrong in a few ways. too thick, too wide, and too short. Other than that, it's perfect! The part about it being too short is really my fault. I placed the grips slightly too far apart. No big deal though.

Long story short, I'm fabricating my own strip. I didn't have any stock on hand that was the right thickness, so I had to glue together two pieces of styrene. I used some clamps I picked up a while back to hold them together while the glue dried.



Once dry, I'll trim it to size, then hold it in place with some glue and a wood screw or two.

The main body is really nice. Here's how it looks.



You can see where I'm working on some of the finer details with red putty. I use the really strong white stuff by Evercoat when doing bigger parts, or stuff that is in high touch areas. But if it's just surface blemishes, or little tiny things, I go with the red stuff.

I'm very pleased with how well the epoxy and wood screws are holding the front and rear handles on. I applied some non-trivial pressure to them sideways today, and they did not budge. Good stuff. I guess my techniques work!

I'm not going to really dork around much more with the main body. Yes, there are a ton of places where I could spend the next five years puttying the thing all to heck, but I'm just not going to do it. I'm still aiming to have this finished by Friday of this week. Today is Tuesday, mind you.