Space, guns, space, guns, robots, brooolooooo....

You know how it is you wait ages for one science fiction weapon conversion project then two come at the same time...here's how it stands so far with the two projects on my intergalactical robobench. First the continuation of the latest Blade Runner blaster project.

I've got brave...having 2 backups helps but I ot brave nonetheless. After trying out some other grips from different plastic shooters I took my trusty, thumbslicing scalpel and hacked the entire bugger off.

half  Beretta idea...mmm...nope

Hogue style grip overlay....mmmm, well, mmmm...naaah

off she comes..

so now the idea is to fabricate an inner frame and somehow, mould, carve or hand sculpt a more accurate set of grips..the inner frame will be based on something like this....

The next bold move inspired by stong black coffee and too many cigarettes was to cut out the moulded plastic barrel and replace it with some metal tubing...
First..out comes the offending section..hack..hack...

Then after a quick visit to the local garden centre and with the aid of my eagle eyed wife we found a corrct sized metal tube and after cutting of a workable length...in she goes...

I'm just waiting on a pipe cutter to be delivered to trim it to the correct length. As you can see from the above photograph whilst removing the barrel I had to also remove the bottom support detail, but with the help of an old plastic filter from an E-cigarette and some patience, that was quickly replaced.

Humble E-cig filter gives it's life for a higher purpose...

From simple earthly filter to super hi-tech blaster barrel support

So that's where things stand with that at the moment. The other project - Boba Fett's ROTJ EE-3 Blaster - has been gathering dust over the holiday period, partly due to alcohol and poultry intake and partly due to my dissatisfaction with how the work is going on the buttstock. I'm hunting for a decent sized 'real' wooden stock to replace the tiny flimsy plastic one with due to it's general poor quality. BUT...the postman came today bearing gifts...

and with a bit of fiddling around my EE-3 is now fully scoped out.

How cool is this?....

Until the next time...

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.

Blade Runner - phase 2....

Whilst spending the holidays with my family in Spain and due to my previous triumphs in the little chinese junk shops, I thought I'd see what's on offer this time...last shop, as everything is closing up ...all hope gone of uncovering any gems and lo and behold what do I find.....not the now famous and fairly easily found rip off that I previously modded here Blade Runner Toy Gun Mod

but this fabulously authentic(ish) knock off....except the obvious hand grips and the triggers/trigger guard, to my nieve eyes it's got to have been a cast from one or another of the previous "authentic(ish)" styled PKD's?

not a bad little find I reckon. This one should, in theory present a lot less trouble to mod, it's made of nice soft, easily cuttable plastic and apart from the handgrip and trigger guard I think is almost complete...or is it...

First job was to sand the rough edges cut the upper barrel out and build the wierd greeblie that's on the real deal. Using my trusty tap washer kit and the tip of a paintbrush the results are thusly..

sorry for crappy mobile phone pics..but better ones will come as the build progresses. Next job was to replace the plastic 'weaver' screw effort and add the other screw that aligns with the barrel. for the latter I used the head of a pocket led torch..it has the elements of the screw from the side and as an added bonus has a cool little lens in the tip...I also cut open the ejection port on the upper reciever ready to be filled with a real metal, or metal effect inner...

finally, for this episode I added the two screws to the mag housing and again, using the tiniest tap washers to effect the allen heads on the revolver case...

more to come....as and when...

I ARE NERD!!
Respect
P.

Happy Christmas to me! Hasbro Boba Fett EE-3 Blaster Modification

It's been a while since I spent any time in my 'workshop of dreams', partly due to indecision but mainly due to the fact I've been acting the rock and roller and recording a new album with End Of Level Boss it's gonna be a corker... some very wierd grooves and heavy riffery will be up soon for your delectation either here... www.myspace.com/endoflevelboss or here... http://www.facebook.com/endoflevelbossmusic

Meanwhile a fairly straightforward modification project has landed on my interalactic workbench. The conversion of the Hasbro Boba Fett blaster from a kids scale to MAN scale (please use husky voice here).

Seriously though...it doesn't get much cooler than this dude, and concidentally he's handling the weapon in question as well as just oozing general shit the bed badassness...

The 'off the shelf' toy is actually pretty good considering it's meant for kids..but well..we all know that Star Wars kids are usually in thier mid 30's. Not exactly screen accurate but I'm not gonna cry myself to sleep over two inches of plastic that's missing from the 'proper' version...boohooooo.....

Introducing...The Toy

Below is the comparison pic of the toy and the actual prop (originally adapted from a WW1 British army Webley Flare gun)

As you can see the Toy comes up a little bit short-scale, To better fit into 8 year old bounty hunter's mitts no doubt. But I'm no 8 year old (at least not physically..although that's also debatable) so it's onto the bench and under the knife for this baby.

So in this adult child's mind I reasoned firstly that the least sculpture heavy way to progress would be to add some inchage to the shoulder stock and secondly that the handgrip could be more comfortable for my hamfisted farmers digits.

First and easiest by far (bar almost slicing the end of my thumb off with the scalpel) was removing the handgrip from a waterpistol from my box of 'bits'

as you can see from the test fitting photo below it adds the necassary inch or so required for a comfortable grip.

Before...

After...

Just needs a bit more filler to attach seamlessly and we're good to go.
Next, the shoulder stock...

So after deciding with the help of a photoshop mockup where to cut...I cut the child sized stock into three parts.

Then using a supremely dodgy corrugated cardboard filler and some jiggery pokery (advanced technical term) I attached it all together to extend the stock by approximately 3 inches or so

aaah..much better...

lastly, at least for this update, I began to fill out the gaps with Fimo airdry sculpting clay. Leaving me with the below state of affairs. Should be ready to sand flush in 24 hours.

I've also filled in all the screw holes that reveal it as a toy and will now await the drying of the filler clay before moving to stage 2...sanding and primer undercoat! (ooh 'citin')

until the next time...which could be a while due to Christmas alcoholism...

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.

Well that didn't take long....E11 Blaster - DONE!

For the amount of time this mod took the results are, as always in my humble opinion, rather spacetastic.
All the parts pained, weathered and glued in place, the scope set and active, front and back, even the super cool curly wires added to the counter and rangefinder for that extra '77 vibe. AND the sound and lights still work!!!

It's almost a shame I've got to part with it soon....but such is commerce.

have a butchers hook at the finished jobbie, here it is (bottom) compared with my Sterling cast screen accurate resin E11 (top)

Curly wires...

Rear of the scope

Front of the scope

Weathering detail on front cooling fins

LOOK LASERS!!!

looks anything but a toy now, That's gonna make some happy trooper even more deadly looking! And now for something completely different..well, not much but..

THE CLONE TROOPER HELMET PROJECT - PHASE 1 COMPLETE

The other side of the visor add-ins is complete, it's taken a long time to accomplish this as I've been glueing it on literally inch by inch so the plasticard doesn't buckle or warp. There's a little bit of "roughness" to it but that's fine by me as it's going to be painted and weathered to look used and battle scarred .

below you can see just how much bigger the original visor was...visibility is severely reduced from the weaers point of view but hey, this is not supposed to be useful, its supposed to look COOOOOOL!

 and here she is hastily put together with the rest of the helmet elements...

Much, much, much more work to be done yet...updates as soon as..

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.

Star Wars overload....E-11 Blaster build and Clone Trooper Helmet

While I biuld up the confidence, not to mention the designs for my promised comic style version of the Judge Dredd Lawgiver (based on) I've not been lazy...It has fallen to me to convert two Hasbro Star Wars toy items to be more screen accurate and realistic the first and by far the easiest is the toy Stormtrooper Blaster that's been around since the 70's, It gave me much joy as a junior trooper and obviously still does...here's how it looks off the shelf....

pretty much the same nowadays as it did back in good old '77 except now with a funky paint job...there's worse ones out there believe me! (see below)
Now the beast way to make the best out of these less than screen accurate renderings is to get yourself a resin kit that modifies the worst elements to make them more passable...the below pic is of one such kit (not my pic or horrible blaster, but you get the idea)

I've started prepping the toy and kit parts with an undercoat of primer and a second coat of chrome/silver and it just remains to overcoat with a black, either metallic or matte (your choice) and glue it all together and then proceed to weather/age it with nice knocks and scratches.

All too easy you think? well, frankly it is fairly trouble free and needs minimal prep...but...BUT...for this baby I'm going to recreate my patented Baronial Starwarsian wonder - The realistic looking scope! HOORAY i hear you cry...

With my scope graphic painstakingly designed in Photoshop including real Aurek Besh characters (go nerds!!)...

I print it onto a sticky back transparency and sandwich it with a layer of reflective material, in this instance some Hi Spec Eroski aluminium foil, no expense spared. Then glue it to a pre-prepared mount that sits nicely inside the hacked up toy scope...

Giving it the proper distance from the little cannibalised toy telescope lens that sits on top of it, thus creating the illusion of depth... please see example B and C.

Example B.

Example C.

Cool huh? I think so too. But now I have to wait for all the paint to dry on the prepped parts before I can proceed. So what can I do in the meantime? Watch X-Factor? um..no thanks..watch Battlestar Galactica again from the beginning?..maybe...or..I could begin with project number 2..concurrent Star Wars modificationalizing...

THE CLONE TROOPER HELMET PROJECT - PHASE 1

There's a lot of Clone Trooper Helmet variants out there, costing from £30 to £300. I dunno about you but I'm not insane enough to spend the equivalent of a flight to Sweden on a dust catching relic, no matter how obsessed I am with all things Star Wars so I went for the do-it-yourself option. Again a Hasbro toy but a pretty well designed and very durable one at that. Here's the original clone bucket as seen in the movies...

Here's a very expensive prop replica...

 and here is the toy version that I picked up on ebay for about £15...

as you can see, there's not a lot in it. However, the Hasbro toy version has loads of vents, spaces and a MASSIVE oversized visor so it needs the gaps to filled, the buttons for the voice features to be sanded and glued and probably after all that a decent paint job so it doesn't look so shiny whity virgin and new.

So that's how it looks off the shelf, this is how it looks after screwdriver attack!!!!...

LOTS of bits do be modified...The first and most exciting one is the visor. I cut an overlay using a paper template onto my trusty friend plasticard...here is the first side glued so you can see the difference from the original...

Simply superglued on and trimmed with a nice razor sharp scalpel for uniformity. It makes a massive difference already!

This is just the beginning for both projects and there's a fair few man hours to go and fumes to inhale from toxic chemicals..here's to paranoid hallucinations and vomiting in the name of NERD.

stay tuned for more updates...

I ARE NERD

Respect

P.