ronon dex's gun from stargate atlantis
Aug. 30th, 2011 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlpirei know i've said this before, but i'm cosplaying(/crossdressing) as ronon dex from stargate atlantis at dragon*con this year. (OMG IT'S IN TWO DAYS.) so remember when i posted [how i made my ronon sword]? well, this post is about how i made my ronon gun. i thought the sword was complicated, but it was nothing compared to this. here is what the gun is supposed to look like:
aaaaaaaand here is what i started with:
yeah. it took me over a month to make it look right. more pictures under the cut. (this post is image-heavy!)
so the first thing i did to make the gun is find something to start with. this is only the second time i've ever made a prop gun, and the first time was really easy - i was fray the vampire slayer, and she has a sort of futuristic ray-gun thing that's bright red, so i just found a watergun that looked like fray's and spraypainted it red. easypeasy. and it turned out really well. i thought it would be almost as easy to make ronon's gun, because his gun actually sort of looks like it could be a real weapon, so i started out looking at realistic (well, as realistic as plastic) toy guns to find a base for it. i soon found out that, while ronon's gun is one-handed like a pistol and loads cartridges in almost the same way as a pistol, it is much larger than a normal pistol and the overall shape is actually more reminiscent of a shotgun. so basically nothing i looked at seemed right. i decided that i would have to significantly modify whatever toy base i found, but this was the closest i could come to the right shape before modifications:
this bright orange toy shotgun features a real shotgun sound effect when you pull the trigger and pops open the way a real shotgun does when you press two buttons on the sides so you can load in your cartridges, of which there are four. it also comes with a bottle of smoking liquid that you pour into a hole in the barrel. the idea is that when you pull the trigger, it sounds like you've shot someone, and then you pop the gun open and the shells fall out smoking. (nothing actually shoots out of the gun, though.) i had kind of a good time playing with it before i cut it into itty bitty pieces. i shot everyone in my family.
the hard part about starting with something that doesn’t look like what you want is that you have to be able to see what you want when you look at it. when i saw this gun in the store, i had to squint at it for a long time and find most of the pieces already there, just in the wrong place (and with lots of extra parts). but once i saw what i wanted, i had to remember it the way i wanted in order to get to the pieces i needed. if that makes sense. anyway, i took the whole thing apart:
it doesn’t normally come apart into this many pieces, but it can if you have a handsaw. i also had to use a couple of different screwdrivers. this disassembly process took the longest amount of time in the whole making of the gun. i took it apart and put it back together several times before i decided exactly where i needed to cut it to get the right size for ronon’s gun. i also wanted to get all the electronic parts out of it (wires and speakers and batteries, etc.). i sawed off the butt of the gun as well as the handle so that later i could combine the two pieces into a more appropriate shape for the handle of ronon’s gun. i also removed the majority of the barrel (sawed it in half) and the plastic piece that capped the end of the barrel for use elsewhere, and i sawed off a piece of the body of the gun because it wasn’t the right shape.
this is more or less what i saw in the store when i first looked at the gun. (ignore the black part on the end – i didn’t use that.) this picture doesn’t show any of it glued together yet, just the pieces lying in the approximate places that they would need to be. you can see where i’ve combined the handle and the butt and moved it down lower. i had to saw the butt in half so that it would cover the handle. i’ve also drawn a line on it in the place that i’m going to cut it again for shaping. the white section in the middle had to be sanded down so that it no longer said “legends of the wild west” on it. the barrel cap is acting as the part of the barrel that sticks out to connect to the end section.
in this picture, i’ve again used my handy-dandy handsaw to remove the section over the trigger where the round end of the energy cartridge goes. i used part of a fishing bobber for that. you wouldn’t BELIEVE how many different round things i looked at for that piece! every kind of ball you can think of was either too big or too small or not the right shape. it was pure luck that i walked through the fishing section at wal-mart and saw those bobbers. they were cheap, too. :) of course i sawed/broke one in half so i could use it. (at first i didn’t know if i should use the white side or the red side, but i decided on white.)
i superglued the handle and butt pieces together to make them stay, and then used epoxy putty to smooth over the places where they were joined. in this picture, i still hadn’t cut off the end corner yet. you can see my handsaw in the left of the picture. the little white curlicues and dust are from the inside of the butt of the gun. there was a lot of extra plastic going on in that part because it housed the battery compartment and speaker and wires, so i used a boxcutter to cut that stuff out so that it wouldn’t be in the way of joining that piece with the handle. this took forrrrrrreeeeeeevvvvvveeeerrrr.
when i sawed off the corner for shaping, i covered the hole with epoxy putty. the good thing about putty is that it can be sanded after it dries. and it dries quickly! it also added some weight to the gun, which makes it feel more real. the orange thing in the background is part of a prescription bottle which i also used for this prop.
this is what the finished gun handle looks like (before painting). you can also see where i’ve superglued parts of the prescription bottle to the sides of the gun to be the cylinder of the energy cartridge. it was luck again that the bottle and the bobber fit together so perfectly. in this picture, i’ve also glued the barrel topper into place to act as the barrel and filled in the space below it with epoxy putty to make it solid.
i superglued the handle onto the back of the gun in this position and then filled in the hole with more putty. i went through several tubes of putty to make this thing.
to make the box thing on the end of the gun, i started by cutting out the side shapes from a thin piece of balsa wood using a boxcutter.
i couldn’t find ANYTHING the right size and shape to go between these pieces, so i finally bought some of that green styrofoam stuff that you stick fake flowers into and cut a block of it the right size. but since i didn’t want the styrofoam to show through the holes in the balsa wood, i glued the wood to some thin plastic lids and then cut out the shapes with a boxcutter.
here’s what it looks like with the green stuff in the middle. kind of like an icecream sandwich. you can’t tell here, but i’ve also cut a notch out of the green stuff for the barrel of the gun to slot into.
i also cut balsa wood panels to go in the top, bottom, and front sides of the box thingy, and then sanded them into a more rounded shape around and beveled at the end. then i glued the box onto the gun by slotting the barrel into the box-notch and puttying around it.
i spraypainted the black parts shiny black.
i painted the handle a matte brown.
then i superglued the bobber to the back and formed the piece that goes over it out of epoxy putty. i am not a very good sculptor, so it kind of looks like a little kid did it, but it’s the best i could do! the three red buttons are the going on the end of the gun so the energy can blast out of them. :D
i used more putty to form the tip of the gun. before it dried, i pressed the backs of the buttons into it so there would be a place to glue them after it was painted.
painted and glued! (my mom is sitting in the background sewing part of my actual ronon costume, which shall go in a different post.)
i had to paint the putty over the bobber by hand because i didn’t want spraypaint to get on the bobber (obviously). but the black paint i used was matte instead of shiny, so i put on a topcoat of clear fingernail polish.
front angle!
back angle!
soooo... i know ronon sometimes had a wraith braid around his gun handle, but his looked way better than this. i’m not sure how to attach it so it’s just tied on right now. i might not use the braid on the gun, but if i do, i’ll probably add more so it will go around a few more times.
and there you have my ronon gun! like the [sword i made], i know it is not exactly screen-accurate, but i think that as long as you can look at it and tell what it is, then it’s the thought that counts. and i’m pretty sure anyone who watches SGA will be able to look at it and tell what it is. (at least i hope so!) this is more work than i haver EVER put into a prop before (did i say that about the sword too? this was harder) and i’m really excited about carrying it around with me at dragon*con in a couple of days!
aaaaaaaand here is what i started with:
yeah. it took me over a month to make it look right. more pictures under the cut. (this post is image-heavy!)
so the first thing i did to make the gun is find something to start with. this is only the second time i've ever made a prop gun, and the first time was really easy - i was fray the vampire slayer, and she has a sort of futuristic ray-gun thing that's bright red, so i just found a watergun that looked like fray's and spraypainted it red. easypeasy. and it turned out really well. i thought it would be almost as easy to make ronon's gun, because his gun actually sort of looks like it could be a real weapon, so i started out looking at realistic (well, as realistic as plastic) toy guns to find a base for it. i soon found out that, while ronon's gun is one-handed like a pistol and loads cartridges in almost the same way as a pistol, it is much larger than a normal pistol and the overall shape is actually more reminiscent of a shotgun. so basically nothing i looked at seemed right. i decided that i would have to significantly modify whatever toy base i found, but this was the closest i could come to the right shape before modifications:
this bright orange toy shotgun features a real shotgun sound effect when you pull the trigger and pops open the way a real shotgun does when you press two buttons on the sides so you can load in your cartridges, of which there are four. it also comes with a bottle of smoking liquid that you pour into a hole in the barrel. the idea is that when you pull the trigger, it sounds like you've shot someone, and then you pop the gun open and the shells fall out smoking. (nothing actually shoots out of the gun, though.) i had kind of a good time playing with it before i cut it into itty bitty pieces. i shot everyone in my family.
the hard part about starting with something that doesn’t look like what you want is that you have to be able to see what you want when you look at it. when i saw this gun in the store, i had to squint at it for a long time and find most of the pieces already there, just in the wrong place (and with lots of extra parts). but once i saw what i wanted, i had to remember it the way i wanted in order to get to the pieces i needed. if that makes sense. anyway, i took the whole thing apart:
it doesn’t normally come apart into this many pieces, but it can if you have a handsaw. i also had to use a couple of different screwdrivers. this disassembly process took the longest amount of time in the whole making of the gun. i took it apart and put it back together several times before i decided exactly where i needed to cut it to get the right size for ronon’s gun. i also wanted to get all the electronic parts out of it (wires and speakers and batteries, etc.). i sawed off the butt of the gun as well as the handle so that later i could combine the two pieces into a more appropriate shape for the handle of ronon’s gun. i also removed the majority of the barrel (sawed it in half) and the plastic piece that capped the end of the barrel for use elsewhere, and i sawed off a piece of the body of the gun because it wasn’t the right shape.
this is more or less what i saw in the store when i first looked at the gun. (ignore the black part on the end – i didn’t use that.) this picture doesn’t show any of it glued together yet, just the pieces lying in the approximate places that they would need to be. you can see where i’ve combined the handle and the butt and moved it down lower. i had to saw the butt in half so that it would cover the handle. i’ve also drawn a line on it in the place that i’m going to cut it again for shaping. the white section in the middle had to be sanded down so that it no longer said “legends of the wild west” on it. the barrel cap is acting as the part of the barrel that sticks out to connect to the end section.
in this picture, i’ve again used my handy-dandy handsaw to remove the section over the trigger where the round end of the energy cartridge goes. i used part of a fishing bobber for that. you wouldn’t BELIEVE how many different round things i looked at for that piece! every kind of ball you can think of was either too big or too small or not the right shape. it was pure luck that i walked through the fishing section at wal-mart and saw those bobbers. they were cheap, too. :) of course i sawed/broke one in half so i could use it. (at first i didn’t know if i should use the white side or the red side, but i decided on white.)
i superglued the handle and butt pieces together to make them stay, and then used epoxy putty to smooth over the places where they were joined. in this picture, i still hadn’t cut off the end corner yet. you can see my handsaw in the left of the picture. the little white curlicues and dust are from the inside of the butt of the gun. there was a lot of extra plastic going on in that part because it housed the battery compartment and speaker and wires, so i used a boxcutter to cut that stuff out so that it wouldn’t be in the way of joining that piece with the handle. this took forrrrrrreeeeeeevvvvvveeeerrrr.
when i sawed off the corner for shaping, i covered the hole with epoxy putty. the good thing about putty is that it can be sanded after it dries. and it dries quickly! it also added some weight to the gun, which makes it feel more real. the orange thing in the background is part of a prescription bottle which i also used for this prop.
this is what the finished gun handle looks like (before painting). you can also see where i’ve superglued parts of the prescription bottle to the sides of the gun to be the cylinder of the energy cartridge. it was luck again that the bottle and the bobber fit together so perfectly. in this picture, i’ve also glued the barrel topper into place to act as the barrel and filled in the space below it with epoxy putty to make it solid.
i superglued the handle onto the back of the gun in this position and then filled in the hole with more putty. i went through several tubes of putty to make this thing.
to make the box thing on the end of the gun, i started by cutting out the side shapes from a thin piece of balsa wood using a boxcutter.
i couldn’t find ANYTHING the right size and shape to go between these pieces, so i finally bought some of that green styrofoam stuff that you stick fake flowers into and cut a block of it the right size. but since i didn’t want the styrofoam to show through the holes in the balsa wood, i glued the wood to some thin plastic lids and then cut out the shapes with a boxcutter.
here’s what it looks like with the green stuff in the middle. kind of like an icecream sandwich. you can’t tell here, but i’ve also cut a notch out of the green stuff for the barrel of the gun to slot into.
i also cut balsa wood panels to go in the top, bottom, and front sides of the box thingy, and then sanded them into a more rounded shape around and beveled at the end. then i glued the box onto the gun by slotting the barrel into the box-notch and puttying around it.
i spraypainted the black parts shiny black.
i painted the handle a matte brown.
then i superglued the bobber to the back and formed the piece that goes over it out of epoxy putty. i am not a very good sculptor, so it kind of looks like a little kid did it, but it’s the best i could do! the three red buttons are the going on the end of the gun so the energy can blast out of them. :D
i used more putty to form the tip of the gun. before it dried, i pressed the backs of the buttons into it so there would be a place to glue them after it was painted.
painted and glued! (my mom is sitting in the background sewing part of my actual ronon costume, which shall go in a different post.)
i had to paint the putty over the bobber by hand because i didn’t want spraypaint to get on the bobber (obviously). but the black paint i used was matte instead of shiny, so i put on a topcoat of clear fingernail polish.
front angle!
back angle!
soooo... i know ronon sometimes had a wraith braid around his gun handle, but his looked way better than this. i’m not sure how to attach it so it’s just tied on right now. i might not use the braid on the gun, but if i do, i’ll probably add more so it will go around a few more times.
and there you have my ronon gun! like the [sword i made], i know it is not exactly screen-accurate, but i think that as long as you can look at it and tell what it is, then it’s the thought that counts. and i’m pretty sure anyone who watches SGA will be able to look at it and tell what it is. (at least i hope so!) this is more work than i haver EVER put into a prop before (did i say that about the sword too? this was harder) and i’m really excited about carrying it around with me at dragon*con in a couple of days!
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Date: 2011-08-30 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 04:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-31 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-01 01:10 am (UTC)And re-reading my comment, it *does* seem like I meant what you thought. My bad, lol.
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Date: 2011-08-30 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-31 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-31 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-31 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 01:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 07:32 pm (UTC)Anyways, great job! Speaking as a fan who started going to cons in the 70s, you have every right to be very proud of your creations.
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Date: 2011-09-08 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-30 08:08 pm (UTC)Also, because I think I forgot to squee over your Data, I shall do so here, and point an accusing finger at you. I found myself looking at 'teach yourself to crochet' kits at JoAnn's the other day. My inner knitter was scandalized. I had to rush home and turn the heel on the sock I'm knitting to recover. But the crochet kit, it haunts me.
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Date: 2011-09-08 01:49 am (UTC)DUDE you should totally crochet! it's super easy and everyone thinks it's hard. which means they admire you way more than you deserve when you make something. it's perfect! :D knitting, however, is quite ridiculous. although i'm kind of proud of the two-inch scarf i made once.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-08 02:00 am (UTC)If I did learn how to crochet, I would most likely not abandon knitting. I have too much fun playing with pointy sticks. I would just have something yarn-ish to do when my knitting attention span ran out.
My one attempt at crochet did not result in a cute scarf, but rather a monstrosity so bad my niece had to struggle not to badmouth it. The only compliment she could manage was 'it's probably better than something I could do.'
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Date: 2011-09-08 01:50 am (UTC)you're supposed to "peace bond" your weapons at con, but i figure mine don't look anywhere close to real enough to be scary. i appreciate the implication, though. :)
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Date: 2011-08-30 10:28 pm (UTC)*is impressed*
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Date: 2011-09-08 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 03:19 am (UTC)