The End of Blarg Props?!

Hey friend,

Thanks for visiting this stupid blog of mine. As you can see it's been a long time since I've updated this page. Sadly i no longer have the time, space and resources to continue making props on commission. On rare occasion get the opportunity to I work on personal projects but those opportunities are few and far between. In essence, I am a failed prop maker.

So what does this mean for this thoroughly ignored blog? Well i'll post what little projects i get done over time, which may include costumes, and props, but other wise it'll continued to be ignored as I venture back to the world of academics. It'll be at least 4 years before I can divert my focus back to prop making on a more serious level.

But is this the end? No. I enjoy prop making too much to call it quits. One day I might come back to wreak havoc with my fake weaponry abound. But for now, we will have to put this adventure on pause.

Thanks for joining me on this very short blip of a ride. It's been fun.

Team Fortress 2: Force -a- Nature

So this is an old build that i finally got around to finishing. Again, as one of my earlier projects, this was based on Volpin's version of the same thing, but with slight (and i mean very slight) modifications.

starting off with the basic shapes for the gun, i cut 1/4" MDF board into the corresponding shapes and started to glue them together. Basic stuff really.

Once all the pieces were in their basic shapes, i started in on the barrels of the guns. I originally thought of using PVC pipe and what not, but after seeing the frustrating work that volpin used to taper the barrels of his gun, I decided to do something a little different. I cut out a smaller circle for the front of the barrel, then a slightly larger circle for the back of the barrel, and joined the two circles with a tube of card stock that ran down the center of each.

from here i wrapped the out side of each barrel with more card stock, and drilled a couple of holes in the top of the larger circle

then being the ultra imaginative wiener that i am I injected some pre mixed resin down into the space between the layers of card stock to create the actual barrel, rather than have these paper mockups.

it ended up working out surprisingly well i'd have to say. After running these newly formed barrels on the lathe with some sand paper to smooth them out, one side of the barrels were sanded so that they could line up with each other.

this may seem like a long process, but all in all this took maybe four hours at most.
then the next step was to get the back domes on the trigger box ( i have no idea what that part is actually called, so i started calling it that. I decided on Balsa wood for the back dome cause it was super easy to carve down to the basic shape, then sand. although it was very difficult to get it super smooth, and took a lot of bondo.

after lining the barrels up with the trigger box, i had to make some minor adjustments, do some quick patches with bondo, all in all it was starting to shape up.

the next couple bunch of stuff i did without taking any photos, so it jumps around a lot, but essentially, i fixed up the embedded some rare earth magnets into the barrels and trigger box so that they would stay connected but also come apart. I also made the trigger so that it had a simple spring mechanism so that it looks functional. I sculpted the sight on the barrels using some air dry modeling clay, and once everything was nice and smooth and primed i began painting.

at the moment, this project is unfinished. i no longer have space or time to continue this project.