Hi all! I'm new here but wanted to share this old post with you....Some of you may be wondering what I have been up to these past few weeks and I'd have to say not much in the dept. of the DC-17...I'm still waiting for my electronics guy to come through. Meanwhile, I've had some down time, and it just so happened that a friend approached me about building a static blaster prop for her Aurra Sing and 'enlisted' my help (yeah right...more like forced me to do this under pain of death...lol J/K!!) I originally was just going to build her two handles and let her finish the rest. Well, after building the first one, I discovered that this was going to be quite a time consuming thing just to make another handle, sooooo ...being the anal person that I am, I decided to build the whole thing once and then make a mold for some copies. It is basically the same gun for the left and right holsters for the costume (one for each side) except for the blaster tips (for some unknown reason..probably just to make my life more difficult). Unfortunately, I do not have a lathe so she contacted another friend down in Las Cruces and he very kindly obliged to help us out. He only asked that he be given credit (and rightly so) for those pieces and a cast of each, which I am more than happy to oblige him on. Plus, I have seen Jason's stuff up close and I must say that it really is top notch work...so thanks to Jason in advance. I have not gotten the patterns to him yet but will by the end of the week. Nevertheless, I'm getting off track here, but I had to fill everyone in on the backstory at some point so I figured I would just do it now. Anyway, on to the gun itself. Well, I'd have to say that there could not be a more obscure weird gun to go with this costume, but the more I started to get into this project, the more I really like this gun. On the downside, there is little to no reference material to go on, other than this:

There is also the Hasbro version that came with the 12" figure which I compared very carefully to the above picture and it seemed that they got all the points correct on the left side (the right side is different...of course <groan>) which led me to believe that they had their hands on the original so I went with their interpretation on the right side (also because there are no pics of the right side). There was also a few pics that my friend tracked down of a fan made one, but I was not satisfied with their version and I didn't think it was an acceptable model to go off of for accuracy. I also have NO blueprints of this thing, so I have no idea how thick it is supposed to be (but fairly thick from what I can tell from the toy... if it is accurate) not to mention that Aurra's fingers are really long so it would make sense that this thing is thicker than a normal blaster. Also, all the other pics of this in the Aurra book that came with the figure are all so small and pixelated that you can't really tell what's what as it all blurs together. All that being said, take it for what it is...this thing is probably not 100% accurate but pretty damn close for what little material I had to work from. I don't think my friend would have any trouble getting it Legion approved, but you never know. Enough talk, here are the pics!
Copies were scaled to size for her hand

Then multiple pieces were cut and welded together for the base



Bondoed and sanded

I screwed up and had to cut the top sight off because the toy version had it as a separate piece, but that was an easy fix


Two different pieces for the outer sides




Top sight detail (crappy camera=bad pic- sorry :duimomlaag: )

left side detail

then I moved on to the hammer assembly


This part (above) will get molded separately because of the undercut cracks between it and the pistol

some shots with the barrel


A little balancing act with the finished barrel and hammer as I take a pic with the wrong hand :icon_biggrin: ...the barrel will probably get molded separately as well, but I have to check first..but for now it is not attached either

This next part was....shall we say 'difficult'?? All I have to say, is that symmetry sucks when you are sculpting something and this is not nearly as complicated as what other people here are working on right now, so I totally respect what they are doing! I had to make two opposite yet symmetrical molds of the grips for vacuumforming...not fun and very time consuming but worth it in the end





Next I bondoed the grip where needed..while that was curing, I whipped out the triggers..also to be molded separately

Some quick comparison shots


And the other side


And that's basically about it. Tomorrow (today rather lol) I need to sand down the bondo and smooth it all out then add some detail to the bottom (you know...the part that you pistol whip people with...yeah that part!). Then, I'll finish drawing out the patterns for the pistol tips and get those sent off to Jason. In the meantime, I'll be working on the molds for this and getting it ready for casting. That's it for now!

Quick update for today...if you have this indention on your forehead, then ...you, sir, have been pistol whipped!

Got the tips drawn up today and I will hand them off to Colleen next week to be sent off to Jason down in Cruces along with the other patterns that she is going to be sending him for the other parts of her costume. Here's a look at the patterns:

Well, I finally finished the last of the molds today ...well, it finished curing that is (long story...don't ask). Anyway, the molds came out great but I'd have to say that I'm leaning more towards the silicon rubber as opposed to the poly-urethane - the silicon is so much easier to work with and doesn't stick to your casts as bad as the urethane and from what I can tell so far, the silicon might even have a longer pull life, but that remains to be seen. Nevertheless, on to the pics:

Here's the main body mold

and here are the molds for the barrel and the rear hammer assembly


So after filling up the main body mold with water, I was able to determine how much volume of liquid plastic I needed to pour without wasting any of it (that stuff is ridiculously expensive) and then got to stepping with my first pour...it came out ok and I had to make a few sprue adjustments, then I did my second pour and was very happy with the results. Here's the crappy quality pics




Update: I learned that Urethane plastic and rubbers don't go well together lol hence you go opposite with silicone molds and urethane plastic and vice versa.

Just wanted to update with some hi rez pics ...thanks again to Ryan for taking these :duim:

Quick update, made a little progress these last 2 weeks so I thought I'd share


And that's about where I'm at...I hope to have some assembled pics by the end of next week!