How to Make a Geth Pulse Rifle out of EVA Foam:Part 2 - Foam Sandwiches

Wow! Where does all the time go?!

As usual, this little project seemed to drag on a bit. The problem is that I have neither spare time nor money to do half of the things I want to. Yes! That includes strippers. Be it guns, or strippers, Mrs V likes to keep me occupied around the house so I don't have time for other stuff.

But with the arrival of ComicCon at Port Solent, Portsmouth recently, I had an incentive to get this finished in time for the big day. This was my first "deadlined" project and to honest, this did not sit well with my no budget, no time life. I ended up cutting a lot of corners and adopting an "it will have to do" attitude as the build progressed. That being said, I ended up 74.8% happy with how it eventually turned out.

So.

Without further comment, just HOW did this build progress from where we left off?

My first step was to produce a thin MDF template from something like a 3mm sheet. Onto this, I offered up a number of layers of EVA foam to build up the basic shape. The idea was then to stick all this together and shape as required by sanding and filing down.

Sandwiched EVA Foam Mockup
This at least gave me an idea of the finished dimensions and proportions.
It quickly became apparent that this was going to be a real pain to shape if attached to an MDF core. I decided that I would need to break up all the individual elements, make them seperately and then rejoin them much a like a kit build.

I started by sandwiching EVA foam and then using my new bench mounted sanding disk, formed the curves. The problem here was that the foam kept getting caught at narrow points and ripping or mangling up. I then considered using lighter foam insulation boards from B+Q which would be quicker to form and lighter.

So I moved on to try this new material that I've not tried before....

Insulation Foam Test
This stuff is so much easier to make a mockup up shape with!

This stuff was a JOY to shape into an initial form. But...make sure you wear protection as the particles are horrendously bad. You'll see from the image above that it is far from perfect and the places where the sheets have been glued together during manufacture are awkward to smooth out. I was left with a basic shape that was pretty good but extremely susceptible to damage so I would need to harden it up somehow.

I chose....Bondo. Or car body filler in plain English.

Front Stock coated with filler
Filler Test
Lesson #1 : Make sure you coat the foam in something like fibreglass resin first.

Lesson #2 : If you don't the filler will continually just detach itself when you start sanding.

It quickly became apparent to me that this would end up HEAVY by the time it was finished if I made all the elements this way. Also, because I had only made a BASIC shape, all the detail would need to be etched in or Dremeled out afterwards.

So.

Plan C.

By this stage I was a bit annoyed with myself and the front section so I changed tack and attacked the stock piece.

This resorted back to the Plan A option of sandwiching EVA foam and sanding, shaping afterwards.





This made me happy.

As you can see from the above images, I chose to change the design by getting rid of the delicate ridges in blue craft foam and chose to just groove into the stock directly. In hindsight, I think this was the right decision and keeps the overall design more streamlined.

There are MANY things I would have done differently but overall, I was pretty happy with how this part turned out.

Hopefully, this same technique would work with all the other parts!


All good so far!

And then I changed my mind...

Next I decided to use the insulation foam/car filler combo piece to use as a former for a pattern to then make a hollow EVA shell for the other parts with the result below....





As you can see, this allowed me to use the space inside to house some LED's that I wanted to include and also a beautifully placed little switch where the left thumb would rest on the front muzzle housing.

All it needed was a little shaping to add some smooth curves between the planes of foam.


Not 100% perfect but it turned out pretty good.
Note the wires sticking out of the lower section that I will later connect with the ones coming out of the bottom of the upper section when I eventually put it all together! And my lovely little switch. Genius!

As you can see in the image above, I have also made a barrel section from 22mm plumbing pipe. In hindsight, I should have painted it differently with some heated metal effect but at the time I hadn't seen the YouTube video of PunishedProps that showed how to do it!








































At about the same time, I got into the painting mood and did a bit of spraying on the Butt (love that word).


Again. I am pretty happy with this section as well despite some errors in Not sanding the blue section properly first and the overall metal effect of the silver parts but it's all part of the learning curve.

From this point on, it became a panic to get this thing finished.

Catch my next update to see how it ended up!









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