Ord Mantell
Well-Known Hunter
In light of the fact the original Webley flare gun used for the EE3 from the Empire Strikes Back recently resurfaced, and Prop Store published such beautiful photos of it for its auction, I'm joining everyone else in doing a finalizing touch up job to my EE3. My EE3 is the resin kit by Sidewinder with a wood stock by Field Marshall (which of course, ironically, was modeled after the stock of the original 1915 Webley I owned and sold to him).
The stock needed the most work. The original oil I put on all but disappeared. I had put it on too light, worried I would make the stock too dark.
No more. I decided to not be shy this time.
This is with a generous amount of Tru Oil applied. Now, of course, my grain doesn't match the original at all, but I did try to match some of it by painting some of it with tints mixed with the Tru Oil. I wanted to do a bunch of the scratches, bruises and dents that seemed like were on the stock at the time of filming, but not match everything on the now 110 year old flare gun.
I'm using E6000 to apply the stock greeblies. Keeps them easy to get off if I ever need to redo this thing again. These are original found parts, including the unimax switch with the extra tab discovered by ConvergenceProp.
I also put some more effort to improve the tone of the barrel and 'blued' surfaces of the gun. This required many many layers of different paints and weathering tints in a narrow range of color tones. I did not airbrush it as that would be too even. Instead, I did a wet brush and dry brush combo of different layers using a rather chaotic brush technique.
I did try to refine the gouge in the back of the stock based on the excellent new references, but there was only so much I could do, since I could not undo what was already done. It's not close to perfect, but it's not terrible.
Here are pictures which I posted on IG but in their original uncropped aspect ratios, and some I didn't post there:
The stock needed the most work. The original oil I put on all but disappeared. I had put it on too light, worried I would make the stock too dark.
No more. I decided to not be shy this time.
This is with a generous amount of Tru Oil applied. Now, of course, my grain doesn't match the original at all, but I did try to match some of it by painting some of it with tints mixed with the Tru Oil. I wanted to do a bunch of the scratches, bruises and dents that seemed like were on the stock at the time of filming, but not match everything on the now 110 year old flare gun.
I'm using E6000 to apply the stock greeblies. Keeps them easy to get off if I ever need to redo this thing again. These are original found parts, including the unimax switch with the extra tab discovered by ConvergenceProp.
I also put some more effort to improve the tone of the barrel and 'blued' surfaces of the gun. This required many many layers of different paints and weathering tints in a narrow range of color tones. I did not airbrush it as that would be too even. Instead, I did a wet brush and dry brush combo of different layers using a rather chaotic brush technique.
I did try to refine the gouge in the back of the stock based on the excellent new references, but there was only so much I could do, since I could not undo what was already done. It's not close to perfect, but it's not terrible.
Here are pictures which I posted on IG but in their original uncropped aspect ratios, and some I didn't post there:
