Bits of Progress, Here and There

It was kind of an "all over the place" day here at the shop. Er, I mean, in my garage. I'm still pretty sick, but I find the strength in the evenings to head down to get a few more little things done.

Fortunately for me, I moved the rifle itself up to the living room, so I can work on it in the comfort of my home. I have finished masking off one half off the gun. The other half is probably about half way done. So I'm making progress. Here's a picture of the right side of the gun. This is the side that is finished.



After the fiasco with the incompatible paint types on the Vulcan Phaser, I finally got that first little dome re-primered, and painted it the correct copper color. Here's how it looks with the masking tape removed.



I'm plenty happy with the results. I think it's close enough to the original that only the makers would know for sure. I also did some tests with the paint, and have determined that as long as I spray a coat of primer over the silver paint, the copper paint should stick fine. Which is cool. Means I don't have to strip it down and start again. Now it's just a matter of masking off all the parts that need to be painted copper. And you KNOW how much I love doing that type of work.

I also did some work on that alien padd. Here's a shot of where I used the super putty to fill in bubbles along seam lines. The spot glazing putty that I use on flat surfaces does not work well in these types of places. Because it doesn't bond very tightly, it tends to snap out of those little crannies when sanding. So I switch to "the good stuff" for these types of problem areas. It's coming along really nicely.



After that putty was all sanded and smoothed, I zapped it with a coat of primer. I may make one more pass with the glazing putty, but that will be it. It's getting very close to being finished.



I also managed to pick up the paints for this padd today on my lunch break. I don't think I got the colors exact, but that's OK. I'm just going for a "flavor" approach on this one. Because they probably made a number of variations of this padd, I'm not too concerned about matching the colors perfectly. I think it will look cool just being finished.

That's it for today. Thanks again for reading.

Primer Good, Primer Bad

Couple of news items on the primer front. I'll start with the easy one.

I've blasted the new alien padd with primer. Nothing much else to report. The good thing about grey primer is that it helps reveal any tiny flaw in the casting. I suppose that's also the bad news.



But I ran into a problem with the Vulcan phaser. I had it all masked off and ready to apply the bronze/copper paint. However, when i sprayed it on, it went all "orange peel" on me. Basically, the paint reacted violently with the paint underneath it. The two types are incompatible. Lacqer vs. Enamel. Classic struggle. So I had to knock the paint down with sand paper, and put down a few coats of primer. Hopefully, the copper paint won't struggle with the primer. If it does, I'll just pick up a can of tamiya copper, and give that a try. I don't want to spend the rest of eternity sanding and primering hard to reach places on that gun.



That's it for now.

We're Ready to Pump You Up!

A bit of work got accomplished today. Still no movement on the Mangalore Rifle, which is a tad ironic, as this blog is supposed to be dedicated to its build. I'm thinking of re-branding this blog as a general purpose "bulding blog", instead of focusing on the rifle. After all, what would happen once the rifle is finished? Will it simply go the way of my R2 blog?? Unclear.

The first thing I did was cut out the padd screen template that I had drawn up last night. I expected to use my coping saw, but it was going too slowly. I deferred to my fiberglass cutting wheel for my dremel tool. It made short work of the thing. I ended up using a set of coarse files to get it down to shape, but it ended up fitting quite snugly inside the padd body.



I expect I'll need to do a little more work on the screen once I paint the padd body. The paint will add a bit of thickness to it, which will necessitate some further sanding. NBD.

But next it was time to do some molding. I poured up a batch of silicone, and let the vacuum pump work its magic.



Turns out I didn't need to do those silicone repairs I did last night. The force of the vacuump pulled that ring into whatever position it wanted it to be in, stripping it straight off the glue. NBD. (That stands for No Big Deal, BTW. [That stands for By The Way]) At the end of the day, the pump worked great, and did a darn fine job of sucking all the air out of the silicone.

Here's the molds all filled up with silicone. Notice that I put the molds on a piece of wood, on top of a box. Why? So I could level it out. You can even see my level on top of the wood. this makes sure that the molds are sitting flat as the rubber kicks. That way, when it comes time to pour up some resin, I can get better pulls. When the molds lay down perfectly flat, the resin will pour flat. Assuming I'm pouring resin on a level surface too. Oy, so many variables.



Long story short, they're all set. I can probably start pulling pieces out of them tomorrow night, but I'll probably let them go an extra night just to be sure. I'm in no rush.

Ex Post Facto

It's a bit after the fact, but I now have photos that document the stuff I was posting about yesterday. Here be they:

First up is the vacuum chamber that I am repairing. Just a little silicone glue around the bottom seal, and it should be ready to suck.



This is the Vulcan hand phaser circa Enterprise. This is the base coat, all finished. I personally am not a fan of the finish, but it seems to match the screen used piece, and that's what I'm after. next up is the bronze highlights.



And finally, here's that other alien padd that I was talking about. I drew out a template on a piece of plex. Now I just need to cut that out, and it will serve as the main viewscreen for this little gem. Once again, big thanks to "It's A Wrap Hollywood" for getting so many of these weird little pieces into circulation.

Non Rifle, But Still Progress

I'm still pretty sick, so work is limited. I've been distracted lately with other, smaller projects. Those have taken a front seat over the rifle. I'm a big fan of results, and the rifle is just moving too slowly. I figure I've got another two or three hours in masking work to be done before I can lay down the black spray paint.

I don't have any progress pics of the other things I'm working on, but I'm currently kicking around a vulcan hand phaser and another alien padd. I have some pictures of the screen used props, that I'll post here for reference. Just to give you an idea where I'm going.

First up is the padd:



Hard to visualize from this picture, but all I have is the outer ring. The back is just a piece of styrene, and there's a layer of plex in between, protecting the graphic. No work has been done on the resin, but I did mark out a cutting template for the plex this evening. I'll attack that with a coping saw later on.

Here's what the vulcan pistol looks like



The keen eye will note that this is a simple redress of the Hirojin hand phaser from Voyager, with the nose tip sawed off. I took a close look at some of the other photos I got of this prop from "It's A Wrap", and determined that the main color was a rustoleum "hammered" metal finish. What I was not sure of is if it is silver, or a very light off green. My monitor is not perfectly calibrated, so it's hard to tell. I think it's the green, but I went with the silver. Go figure. I'm a walking contradiction. I'm pretty sure I've nailed down the copper highlights paint too. It's a rustoleum rattle can.

My replica is just about done. It's been sanded and primered, and tonight I zapped it with two coats of the hammered metal silver. I'm going to let it dry overnight, and then mask it off for the copper highlights. With any luck, I'll have some photos to show soon.

In other news, I'm prepping a few items for molding. I would have poured the rubber tonight, but the lower seal on my vac chamber is shot, so I had to glue it back to the base. I used some silicone glue, but it too needs 24 hours to dry. So I'll take another look at it tomorrow.

So lots going on right now, just not a lot to show. One of the things I'm going to mold is the "Zorg Remote" from The Fifth Element. it's a little hand held game that took me about 8 months to track down. It'll be good to get that project finished.

All Taped Up With Nowhere to Go

I'm in the middle of a really nasty flu, so progress has slowed to a crawl. But given this project, that's not really unusual. With the silver paint coat all finished, I've begun the process of masking off the areas that will remain that color. The plan is to cover up the silver, then blast the whole thing with a coat of black. I suppose there's more than one way to skin this cat, this is just how I chose to do it.





How on earth they managed to crank these out for production at a rapid clip is beyond me. It's taking loads of time to get these areas masked off. What you see in these pictures is probably about two hours of work. And it's only one side of the rifle.

In other news, I've been working on another project on the side. It's an alien padd from Enterprise. This is a nifty little oddball padd that I picked up recently. With all the "Its A Wrap" auctions introducing new props into "the circuit", it was inevitable that a few goodies would fall into my hands. This piece is almost complete, save for a few little bits of perforated brass. I'm hoping to round those up within a week or so.



The graphic is slightly larger than the one that was won at auction, and I've oriented it differently. Oh well. I like it better this way anyhow. Consider it a bit of "creative license" that I took with the prop. I'm quite pleased with it. It looks good, and it came together quickly. It's also a rare little piece, so that's cool too.

Silver Lining To Every Cloud

A couple more pics to show off, but these are from work I did yesterday. First is the right hand side, all primered up.



And here's the same side with the first coat of silver.



I did a bit more painting tonight also. I finished primering the detail piece for the other side. It's ready for a blast of black paint. Also nailed the other side with silver. As of this writing, it's entirely silver, though it may need a couple of touch ups here and there.

Spring forward, fall back.

Not a very catchy title, but I'm short on time today. I've got a few progress pictures, but haven't gotten them from my camera yet.

So I'll ramble about copper tubing. I was entertaining the idea of switching to acrylic or some other kind of dowel for the detail pieces. The bender I got isn't working out. Then a dude I know mentioned that he had gotten great success from using spring benders for copper tubing. The other day I stumbled onto a website that talks about the different ways to manage copper tubing.
Here's the link. I dug around on line today, and found a place that sold a set for 13 bucks, so I ordered it. I figured I'd give it a try and see how it goes. I'm always up for spending money on tools, as you get to keep them forever. I figure it's always money well spent.

I'll try to get the progress pics up later today. Long story short, I primered the other half, and laid down a coat of silver on one side. I've decided to paint the silver first, then mask off and paint the black second. I was getting mixed results with Krylon semi-gloss on top of plasti-kote primer, so I thought I would play it safe. Now, Krylon will go on top of dupli-color silver. Will it work? We shall see??

I'm finally at a point where there's a light at the end of the tunnel. With all of the boring putty and sanding stuff done, the paint and copper work should move along quickly.

Primering

I've sort of proclaimed that the puttying and sanding work is done. It is far from perfect, but it has reached a point where it is looking good, and I grow more and more disinterested in sanding. So I think that's a happy medium.

I cleaned up the side detail piece, and have hit it with two coats of primer. It's still wet in this shot. It's tough to get primer into all of those little detail pieces.



Here's one side of the main body. It's looking good. The seams around the edges have cleaned up very nicely. The barrel isn't perfect, but you only notice it upon close inspection. Still, it looks pretty slick with the primer on it. As of this writing, only one side is primered.



That's where we stand as of 1:00 on a sunday afternoon. Very nice day here in Sunny Southern California. Feels like high 70's. Clear skies, and a good wind to blow away paint fumes. Very dry too. Great for painting.

Brass Tubing

I've decided to tackle the extra detail pieces that are on the gun. My first thought is to do them as brass tubing, as I believe that is the way they were done on the originals.

First thing I did was draw up some templates. I took the best picture I have of the gun (which can be found in an earlier post, mind you) and scaled it up to the proper size in adobe illustrator. This allowed me to figure out the width of the pipe, which I pegged at 3/8". I traced the basic shapes in illustrator, then printed them out. Because I sized the pic to 1:1, the templates came out accurately sized.



Back to good old Home Depot to pick up some tubing and a butane torch to join the pieces together. I was thinking of using glue, but then I realized it would be more fun to get familiar with a butane torch. New skill and all.



Turns out, there are a lot of complications involved in bending copper tubing. It collapses if you bend the curves to sharply. After some research on the internet, I found there were some tools available to help with this problem. Back to home depot to pick up a bending tool. While I was there, I picked up a cutter, as the dremel tool was very sloppy, and required some clean up.



Even with these, bending the copper has been problematic. I've got two of the shapes done pretty well, but the one that looks like captain Hooks left hand is rough. I think I'm going to do that using an acrylic dowel. I think that will be less likely to cave in the way copper does when doing tight turns. I'm sure if I had a bending spring, I could do it better, but I don't.