BobaFiend
Active Hunter
My good friend down in Athens is finally putting some of the final nails in for his ESB costume. Things are really coming along and as I have some time on my hands these days he's asked me to finish up a few parts for him. I'll go step by step here through the process from prep to paint.
Here's how the sidearm looked after about 20 minutes of rough trimming with an X-acto blade and just a bit of drilling in the trigger area. Overall I think the cast is pretty solid. This is one of Stormrider's foam-filled light trooping sidearms. it's made of a harder outer resin and a much lighter foam filling. It is certainly much, much lighter than the rubberized dankennman blaster I have, but it's a bit fragile.
The parts that need to look good do look very good. All of the logos and maker's marks are well cast and the knurled ends have minimal seams. Since I can't really fill those that is good news. Otherwise, there are pretty deep inset seams that will need to be Bondo'd and sanded smooth before this sidearm sees any primer. The tip of the blaster is its own cast piece and screws onto the end, which I like because it avoids any seams on this part. The threads seem to work alright, and the piece fits very tightly without adhesive. Since the handle is mostly hollow I didn't want to add weight by filling the whole thing up with Bondo so I cut a matching piece of Sintra and glued it in with Zap-a-Gap to seal the handle, then went ahead and filled the seams as necessary.
Gonna sand soon and then re-assess. Hopefully I'll be ready for glazing putty without having to do any more major filling. More updates to follow!
Austin
Here's how the sidearm looked after about 20 minutes of rough trimming with an X-acto blade and just a bit of drilling in the trigger area. Overall I think the cast is pretty solid. This is one of Stormrider's foam-filled light trooping sidearms. it's made of a harder outer resin and a much lighter foam filling. It is certainly much, much lighter than the rubberized dankennman blaster I have, but it's a bit fragile.
The parts that need to look good do look very good. All of the logos and maker's marks are well cast and the knurled ends have minimal seams. Since I can't really fill those that is good news. Otherwise, there are pretty deep inset seams that will need to be Bondo'd and sanded smooth before this sidearm sees any primer. The tip of the blaster is its own cast piece and screws onto the end, which I like because it avoids any seams on this part. The threads seem to work alright, and the piece fits very tightly without adhesive. Since the handle is mostly hollow I didn't want to add weight by filling the whole thing up with Bondo so I cut a matching piece of Sintra and glued it in with Zap-a-Gap to seal the handle, then went ahead and filled the seams as necessary.
Gonna sand soon and then re-assess. Hopefully I'll be ready for glazing putty without having to do any more major filling. More updates to follow!
Austin