New Ray Gun

Hard to believe that more than a year has passed since my last entry. Work and a move into a new house has made it difficult to finish any projects, but I have a new work shop and the mad sciencery has resumed.

This is a slightly more ambitious project than the previous ray guns, as it is not a mod of an existing gun toy. Now that I can spread out and have a place for the power tools, I was able to cut a custom handle as the base for the gun. Two important things here, not using a toy gun means that this handle is cut for bigger adult hands, which means the ray gun itself is a great deal larger than the other projects. Also, it is a really comfortable grip.

It was more convenient to use my phone for these picks, but I'm not super happy with the way they came out. I may add some better quality shots later, but these will do for now.

Here are the basic parts laid out. Still using some of my favorite tricks and pieces, but a few new moves as well. I love the shape of these craft bottles and they come in a variety of sizes and are pretty cheap. I also love being able to toy with transparency, so I masked the spot between the muzzle and body to create a see-though cylinder. In the cylinder, I placed a bundle of tubing and wires to make it look kind of weird and high tech.

 

 

Now, I did experiment with a few different techniques. First was the hanlde, but I also covered the body of the bottle with strips of electrical tape to give the impression that it was made of metal plates. I punched holes through the tape and bottle to insert small metal brads. Once the spray paint was applied, it looked like metal plates and rivets.

 

One interesting thing about electrical tape is that the coating does not appear to like spray paint too much, and the paint never really dried. It was tacky for days, so I eventually opted to dry brush on some acryllic silver metallic paint. Problem solved.

 



I added some interesting flair pieces on the muzzle, and dry brushed gold paint on some of the accent pieces. So far, one of my favorite pieces. I'm working on a similar gun now, with a few variations in the details. I will definitely be cutting my own grips from now on, though I will still have to use up my rediculously large stock of toy guns at some time, or another.