Rooney's Armoury thread (styrofoam weapons builds)

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Rooney

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With a successful armour build under my belt and the first HCUK con visit done, I felt it was time to look at Spartan V-84’s armoury. Looking at the pictures of us that came out of MCM Expo, I couldn’t help but feel that the plasma pistol/M6G dual wield combo I was packing (my partner in this endeavour, Spartan S-24 had dual plasma pistols) were somewhat upstaged by the rifles – and in one case a rotating machine-gun turret! – carried by our comrades. So the search was on to find a method we could reliably use to make our own weapons.

Even before the armour was finished I’d looked at a sliced MA5c, but for what it was it looked horrendously complex. Then one day, a video popped up on my Facebook feed from the Page of Da Frontline Trooper, showing the progress on his latest project, the Promethean Binary Rifle. And just like that a little light switched on inside my head.
So after a few months of searching DIY stores, I finally spoke to a guy who had bought and carved a couple of weapons from some stuff at Wickes. I got the details, toddled off there one evening with S-24, and we came back with two sheets of polystyrene loft insulation in a rather fetching peach colour.

This isn’t the same stuff as Da Frontline Trooper uses, primarily because we haven’t been able to find the Styrofoam stuff he uses unless we want to buy it in job lots for a couple quid!
Anyway, enough chatter, on to the pictures!

Not the most exciting of pictures, but here’s the sheet of insulation that I started with

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Here’s the template I used. It’s from Da Frontline Trooper’s Facebook page, scaled to life-size proportions by S-24 and printed out on a large-format printer (courtesy of his company and a quiet Friday afternoon in the office). I made shallow cuts around the outline, then peeled off the template and made the proper cuts.

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Which left me with this:

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I then started marking up where details needed to be added. For reference I used the template from DFT’s page, various images via Google, and the assault rifle from one of my action figures.

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After several hours of careful cutting, carving, and referring to my references, I ended up with this! (excuse the poor photo, my phone died, so this was quickly snapped with my tablet which managed to capture almost nothing but glare)

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Now that was where I planned to leave things. S-24 was planning on doing a battle rifle, and had started the same afternoon as me. But since he was jetting off on holiday the following morning, he had to shelve his build pretty early on. Which left his template just sitting there on the side, begging for some attention….
 
Since the Saturday working on the assault rifle had gone so well, I was keen to try my hand at something else to make sure that the first one wasn’t a fluke. I also knew that I’d need two rifle-sized weapons for our next event, one for myself, and one for my girlfriend who I’m building a H3 Marine costume for. And with S-24’s battle rifle template already cut out and sat on the side looking neglected, I gave in and scurried up to the workshop with some fresh knives…

Since the template had already been cut out this time, I had to do it slightly differently to start with. I drew around the edge (something I’ve had a lot of practice at whilst doing my suit build) and then cut those lines.

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The triangles along the side were a lot easier to do than I expected – at least, after I messed-up the first one they were! The hardest part was carving out the recessed area in the stock, since there was no room to manoeuvre the knife blade.

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Which brings me to where I am now. Got some details to add, such as the grip on the AR (which will be done with craft foam), barrels to source and fit, then seal it all (looking at Plasti Dip for that), and finally paint them up before LFCC in July!

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Looks sweet! I like how innovative you were with the guns and I love how your progress looks so far, please keep us posted on your progress!
 
A quick update! Doesn't look like I've been up to much, but I've been layering the foam with PVA, since my test pieces revealed that spraying straight onto the foam yielded terrible results, and Plasti Dip melts the foam!

Added a couple of details to the assault rifle with craft foam, and then added a dash of blue acrylic to the PVA so that I can make sure everywhere is getting covered properly.

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Hoping to have them sprayed by next weekend.
 
Apologies for the double post folks, but I have quite a big update - the assault rifle is finished!

After 4 layers of PVA glue, I finally undercoated the assault rifle (the BR is on hold untill after London Film and Comic Con since it's for my girlfriends Marine, and she's not wearing it at LFCC).

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All went pretty well, except for a section that either had bubbles in the PVA or hadn't quite filled the bubbles in the foam...

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But yet another coat of PVA on that section solved the issue, and after drying and another coat of primer it was time to get some colours on there!

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And since today I was "too unwell" *cough*oversleptandcalledinsick*cough* to work, I got to work on the detailing, weathering, and generally making my nice clean rifle look filthy! I also added a hand-painted display which will do until I can get something with LED's in it! The under-barrel flashlight works, too!

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