Loose Ends

You know the village..it's up North, not far from Loose Chippings.

The Morrow Project CBR and Medkit are done.

I can finally put away the tools and clean up the dust and debris that's been cluttering up my work table since, well, the Wonka Robot:

Maybe it's just the paint fumes calling.  I'm feeling this odd gap now.  As I work to repair audio cables and clean up some voice-over recordings for a friend, I keep thinking I'm supposed to put another coat of Krylon Crystal Clear on, or finish sanding the latest bit of Bondo spot putty.

Well, fortunately or unfortunately, the same friend who had me build the Morrow boxes gave me a couple of other toys to play with.  There's this (a Wilco resin cast, just needs to be assembled and painted):

(If you don't recognize the prop, it is a third-party replica of THIS):

I also have a NERF "Maverick" that is wanting to get a Steampunk treatment.  But I'd love to get away from a few things that really bug me about the usual conversion -- like that ugly pistol grip.  The below is NOT a build, but is instead a PhotoShop collage -- with the base being someone else's very nice steampunk paint job (I could only hope to do one as nice):

The new grip would be carved softwood (I'm not THAT crazy), with either basswood or, perhaps, 1/4" aluminium stock as a frame.  Rebuilding the cylinder to make a hollow, Gatling-gun shape would be lovely, but I'm not sure I'm that crazy, either.

In any case, I've learned a little during the last few projects.  I can cast now, though not well, and I need very much to learn how to make glove molds with mother molds (a box mold is a waste of material for anything much larger than a pencil).

If I ever do anything like those Morrow Project boxes again, I'll remember a few things, like plan the closure in the original model, clear the lid space for controls, build insets for such things as data plates; use two-piece molds, mix pigment into the plastic...

Whatever project I try to sneak in between the cracks of the next two or three shows, though, is going to have to be simpler than the Fury Gun, my first really big prop:

(One of these days I may make an entry about the Fury Gun here.  Its got a bunch of moving parts and weighs about 20 lbs.  Involved welding steel, hot-bending mild steel with MAPP gas, 3d printing, Apoxie Sculpt, carving aluminium and brass with Dremel and files...)

All in all, I really, really want to do another project like this:

Six hours scattered over three days...and most of that was spent waiting for paint to dry!