I’ve been a bad builder what with my lack of any sort of updates in regards to current prop projects. Chalk it up to a combination of the coming and going of Comic-Con, family-related matters that needed to be tended to, my own apathy of not wanting to work on things after work, and my own productivity that couldn’t find the breaks or time necessary to take photographs and make notations on each and every step of what I’ve been doing.
Needless to say, I’ve recently gotten back to work on the construction of the Riot Graves gun, because, Dragon Con is now like three weeks away, and aside from the gun, I’ve got a few other things I need to make, and not nearly as much time as I’d like to have in order to do such.
Pictured above is the progress of the back “half” of the gun. All the pieces have been coated with three layers of Shell Shock, and sanded down to a pretty smooth finish. I do feel as if I made some substantial improvements to my procedure compared to last year, but the truth of the matter is that I still feel like I’m falling behind. Ideally, if it were up to me, I would have had the entire back half of the gun completely assembled by the time I’m writing this. Despite the fact that I’m working with the fast-casting Shell Shock, it still feels like it takes longer than I hope for it to cure and be ready for sanding.
But anyway, if there’s anything that’s worth mentioning in this kind of fluffy status post is one of the things that I knew going into this that I wish I knew in the past – planning where drill holes and screws were going to go. That being said, despite a little bit of a pain in the ass from the start as it is working around pre-determined drill holes, I think when it comes time to assemble everything, it will be a little easier, and less tense, worrying about cracking or breaking any pieces.
As you can see, these are all the screws and plates that are going to be holding everything together in the back half. If all goes right, minimal epoxy and bondo will be needed to patch and reinforce things in place.
The biggest challenge I’m facing with this gun is simply the sequence in which things are going to be put together. I’m constantly worried that assembling things in an incorrect order will make other parts harder and more precarious to assemble, and it’s like that for every single piece, it seems.
The next part will be the clip of the gun, which I honestly am anticipating as being the hardest part. Thankfully, as intangible as it appears, I have given it a good bit of though, and started on some of the base groundwork that puts me in a good position to accomplish my goals.
