Realist Weight

My friend, Paula, brought up an interesting point when I was talking to her about steampunking the plastic dart gun that I have.  She wanted to know what I was going to do to make the gun feel more realistic.  It was a good question which I had not really considered.  After all, even with some paint and a few extra items glued on here and there there would still be a fake sort of lightness to it when you wielded it.  Thus my next find was going inside the gun to make it feel a little heavier.  I went to the Harbor Freight and bought a pack of wheel weights.

These weights have their own self adhesive backing that I tried to use to adhere them to the inside of the gun halves but eventually I ended up having to use the 5 minute epoxy to secure them.  Enough of the 1/4 oz bits of metal and you start to get a real heft to the gun.  I also had to be careful not to block any internal moving parts that I still wanted to work like the trigger.  The next pic shows the first set of weights that I put in the gun but I did add some more later.

Dials for Gun Settings

I recently found out that there is a huge collection of random spare parts that might serve to provide the next essential pieces of my steampunk artwork.  One of the local junk yards, specifically Pull-A-Part here in Charlotte, turned out to be a great place to discover raw materials for conversion.

The sheer number of different cars, trucks and various other vehicles opened up all sorts of possibilites as what I might find that I could use.  Of course, you have to pay a small fee just to get in to look through the derelict transports and then once you find what you want you have to pay for the individual items themselves.  So I tried to focus on things that I could tell were broken or just really small because intact larger car parts might cost more than you really want to pay just to take it home and destroy it for art.  This is how I found the horn assembly that I wrote about before that got treated to a good coat of rub n buff.  I also got an old dash instrument cluster which included the speedometer, tachometer and a few other things that I thought might look good once disassembled.  In fact, the numbers that you normally see scrolling to show how far your car has traveled turned out to be very cool looking on their own.

They very much appeared to be like dials that you could use adjust the seetings on something so I used one of these for my gun.  I picked a spot on the housing of the gun and drilled a very small hole through to the inside.  Plastic is pretty easy to drill so this didn't take very much effort.  Then I bought a tiny screw with matching self locking nut from the hardware store and just put the screw through the middle of my new dial then put the nut on the inside to hold it in place.  The dial still turns and gives the impression that you can adjust a setting on the gun before firing.

I think the effect turned out really well and the dial isn't going anywhere since the locking nut will hold it in place. 

Let The Painting Begin

Now the dart gun and my set of goggles have been dissasembled and made ready for the great painting.  This was pretty easy on the goggles since it mostly just meant taking off the elastic head band and then unscrewing the locking rings that hold the lenses in place. 

The gun on the other hand was a little more complicated than that.  I thought it would just be a matter of about eight phillips head screws but it turns out that the orange plastic ends on the barrels were glued in place and it made it impossible to seperate the two halves without breaking something first.  I finally took a metal exacto knife and completely cut the ends off of the barrels and shaved these areas smooth once the pieces were removed.  This was only about 1/8th of an inch of plastic and if need be I can always glue something else on the ends to give a different effect anyway.  There was also a long orange plastic piece that fit into the back of the gun that you had to pull back to get it ready to fire a dart.  I was able to take this apart for painting but with it being bright orange I may have to do a few more coats to get it completely covered.

What is pictured below is the gun with only the first coat of black paint and the goggles have two coats.  I am using Krylon Fusion which is made specifically to stick to plastic.  If you start with regular spray paint first there is a good chance of it not sticking or flaking off over time.  Interestingly though, the flexible part of the goggles that presses against your face is still sticky to the touch even after drying almost 24 hours.  This will most likely mean that I will have to treat the goggles to a couple of coates of clear sealant even before adding any steampunk stuff.

Foam Dart Guns Are Alright By Me

So, this is proof that my partner, James, is just amazing. After lunch today he brings me his find from the local Dollar General store, a brand new Ultra Shot Extreme Foam Dart Blaster. I guess the operative question here would be "why care about a foam dart gun?" The reason is because it can be a great starting point for creating a unique steampunk weapon. Maybe something that hurls bolt of energetic plasma at targets or maybe emits deadly beams of Radiant Matter. Either way, the gun was only three dollars so very little initial investment there.

The next step for this project will be to disassemble the gun for painting and start changing the overall color to copper for a distinct look. I already have some various pieces that I can add for different effects like gauges or piping. I'll keep track of the steps so I can show the entire process and maybe even work out some ideas that I haven't tried before as far as painting techniques go. I'll update again on this as soon as I have some of the steps down.