The Secret Lair

WARNING: Slightly Steampunk

So last time, in Building a Raygun, we assembled some components to build our raygun. This week, we’ll assemble the barrel of the pistol.

So from our parts list of last week, you’ll need the following.

• 1 – Handheld, battery powered, plasma globe
• 1 – set of cheap plastic venetian blinds
• Loctite No Mess Adhesive
• Masking tape or painter’s tape
• 1 – hole punch – 1/8″ or 1/4″ size, depending on how big you like your rivets

The plasma globe is the core of our barrel for this build. It’s handhold is a great shape for the barrel of our brass or iron (your choice) raygun.

It’s lines are too sleek and machined to make a really good steampunk or dieselpunk weapon however. We need to break those up, and add some gew gaws to make it more interesting.

So here is what it looks like out of the box. I bought two of these, since it was only going to be a little more effort to make a pair than to just make one.

Once you have the plasma ball unpacked, now it’s time to get out the venetian blinds. I had a broken set laying around that I kept for the plastic, but they were $5.00 originally, so not a big cost there.

The plastic in the blinds is supple and fairly thin, which makes it great for modeling and other uses such as this. The curve of it however, doesn’t always work for us. For this use though, it’s perfect.

So, cut a strip of blind so that you have multiple strips that are just about the length of the handgrip. Using scissors is going to be easier than a knife, because of the curved shape. Round the edges slightly, so they look rougher, more hand shaped and machined. You’ll need a fair amount of these, so you will need at least two slats from the blinds.

At this point, dry fit them around the handle, see how things line up. If your globe is like mine, the power switch is on the side of the handle. You will want to use a knife or hole punch to make a hole for the switch. I also used this piece as the first glued piece.

After your dry fit, it’s time for the No Mess Adhesive. I won’t tell you how to apply glue, hopefully you can do that. If not, then you’ll need to report to Minion Reclamation for… training.

Glue the power switch plate on first, making sure not to get glue into the switch. Then with a slight overlap, lay down the next one. When I did this, I put on about three at a time before I needed to stop and secure them. I used velcro bands to do this, but you can also use tape.

Allow these to dry for a while. I waited overnight, since I wasn’t in a hurry. If you are currently under alien or robot attack, you can go faster. If it’s zombies, then you have the time to wait and do it right. After you are done it should look something like this image.

Gew Gaws and Rivets

So it looks pretty cool now, but it’s missing something. Bits and bobs! Gew gaws! Rivets! Now is the time to rummage through junk drawers, bits boxes, and even old pens from your desk.

Get all sorts of bits that you can find, and while you think about them start punching out rivets. To do this, I had a 1/8″ hole punch and took the same plastic slats from earlier, and punched out circles. A lot of them. Once that was done, I started gluing them on places where it looked natural where the rivets would go.

At this time, you can also check how well the plates were glued down. If there are gaps like mine had, you can use a toothpick to apply some more adhesive and secure it again until dry.

If you look at the end of the globe closely, you can see that there is something sticking 0ut of the end that wasn’t there before. That’s actually a pen cap, but you should call it an Ionic Concentrator. It just sounds better when you explain it.

Feel free to add fins, veins, piping, whatever looks cool to you, to add to the barrel. Save some of those bits that don’t seem to fit, since you will be doing similar things to the main body of the gun.

When you add things to the barrel end of the gun though, take care you don’t glue or weld the battery door shut. You’ll always want to make sure you have fresh batteries with which to fire.

Now as tempting as it is to start painting, wait. Ok, don’t, I didn’t. Make sure you have the ball itself well taped so paint doesn’t get on it, and start with a coat of black primer.

Once that’s done and dry, you can pick your color(s) and go for it. One thing to keep in mind. You will want the rest of the pistol to look like part of the same gun, so make sure you have enough of the same paint, and that you paint all the parts in a similar fashion.

If you don’t think you can do this, then wait until closer to the end before painting. Though you can still do the black primer now, since you’ll need it anyway.

I’m not going to show you my paint job yet, since that would ruin some of the surprise of the later parts. For now, you have enough to do for a week. So get to it!

If you’ve followed along, I want comments and pictures.

Next week, the main body of the raygun. So get out that hacksaw or Dremel multitool.

Tags: David Moore, Directed-energy weapon, minion, Raygun, steampunk

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 21st, 2011 at 10:00 am and is filed under Memoranda, Official Henchmen Bulletins, Villainy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.