Yes, the image is deliberately rotated here, because currently, the painted gun is hanging on a noose in my garage.  The paint is still a little too tacky to have it sitting out, so I’m having it hanging via the tape-covered stock from my garage roof.  I didn’t make as much progress on it as I had hoped for today, but I have made some good strides regardless, and I am optimistic that I need only one or two days left to get the gold accents and shell caps in.

Admittedly, there are a few small details that may get omitted due time and inability to locate, but for the most part, I’m very optimistic on how this is turning out.  I am almost there, and I’m looking forward to wearing the costume at Dragon-Con.

Tonight was an evening of vast frustration and agitation, but this is where my gun stands after another night of solid work time.  The stock went on exactly how I had planned it to, and I was ecstatic that it went so smoothly.

Unfortunately, the front clip not so much.  Although the picture doesn’t show all the details, there were numerous cracks to my Shell Shock, and because I’m human and don’t have four arms like Goro, I made some aiming mistakes with the drill and bore more holes than necessary, leading to some structural weaknesses.  The steps necessary to begin rectifying the problems pushes me back a little bit in where I wanted to be after the night, but from a visual standpoint as a whole, I’m pleased with the general progress.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll have this bitch painted by weekend’s end, and be right on the path down the home stretch.  It does feel good to be creating shit with my own hands.

Now I’m really seeing the gun coming together.  Amidst all the apprehension of drilling through two weeks of hard worked components, it’s really beginning to take shape now, in this photo of partial construction.  The shell housings are all inserted with all pertinent cracks bondo’d and sanded, and I’ve got the primary body parts all attached together in an intricate series of screws and epoxy.

Also progress was made on the stock and the front grip, with the wood-look treatment, using wood-panel contact paper.  The process was naturally long and arduous, and made me contemplate suicide approximately twice, from all the thin-slits I had to cut in it to wrap around the curves and grooves with minimal bubbling and wrinkling.  They will need a coat of lacquer to seal everything in place.

There is still painting and the addition of a few components to figure out and add before I can say I’m completely done, but where I stand right now, I’m very optimistic.  I’m so excited.

Well, I wasn’t expecting it, but sanding this motherfucker was the worst part of this entire process so far.  But for the most part, the vast meat of the brunt work is complete, and this is what my Mafia Graves gun looks like.  It looks a lot like the last time I updated, but it’s not that gay pink colored foam, but instead hardened plastic shelled.

Now, I have the fun part of figuring out how to assemble this gun together, with a combination of epoxies, screws and hopes and dreams.

But looking at this thing now, I am optimistic.

Shell Shock is some amazing shit.  I’ve currently got all foam components of the gun slathered and covered in about three coats of Shell Shock, and they’re almost all fully cured, and ready to begin the initial sanding down of them.  If all goes according to plan, then all of them will be smooth and plastic-hard shelled, and ready for painting, and eventual assembly before finalization.

Again, I have to reiterate that it’s actually been fun to be creating shit again with my own hands, instead of years of watching on the sidelines.  Throughout the week, I had been receiving and gathering materials for my costume as a whole, and I’m actually growing excited about everything as more and more pieces come in.  I look forward to the eventual completion of this gun, and I hope it’s everything I hoped it would look like.

As far as cutting and sanding goes, I really don’t have much left.  After five straight days of working, I feel as if I’m in a pretty decent place, time-wise.

Come the weekend, I’ll delve into the world of mixing chemicals and slathering most of this shit in Shell Shock to harden up the materials, and then there will be many nights of more sanding and cleaning, before the time comes when painting happens.  I already foresee many many screws and lot of adhesive, which will ultimately be holding this gun together in the end.

By the way, this is what the final product is going to resemble, at least to the best of my ability.

But I hope to soon promise that in the end, it won’t.

I’m actually playing the dress-up game again for a night at this year’s Dragon-Con.  Okay, yeah I did Safari Chris last year, but that was something I already had.  I’m actually putting forth some effort this year in making something, so I can join my friends this year instead of standing on the sidelines.  This is the current status of the gun I’m making for a Graves costume, to take part in a League of Legends grouping.  Like every character I’ve ever dressed up as, I do in fact have an attachment to the character, as he’s my primary choice when I play LoL.

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