Halo 4 BR85HB SR (Pic heavy!) - First Major Project

More experimentation this afternoon, and I think I've had a breakthrough.

I realised that the effect will only properly work in plastic of some kind, simply due to the way it melts. But paper products are higher friction and less quickly affected by the heat, allowing more precision, a slower pace, and fewer irretrievable mistakes. So using some ancient thrift store woodburner, I grabbed a scrap piece of foamboard and set to.



Victory! The only issue being that foam, of course, doesn't really support the melting process in such close proximities, so some letters are sunken, like the R and A where the heat is affecting a broader spot underneath the line junctions. So, obviously, I need a solid plastic. No acrylic to be found lying around, and I just searched everywhere for the giant sheet of styrene, which has mysteriously disappeared. So I make my own sheet plastic by folding packing tape back on itself several times into a 4" rectangle, stick that to the back of a scrap of brown packing paper, and set to. This was the result:



Almost perfect! Next I'm going to grab a 1/8" sheet of something or other from Lowes or wherever and do the same thing again with the spray cement. I'll try some other designs too, and write the whole experiment up as a blog post, since I've heard this question asked before but never seen a viable answer.

Good luck with the melting issue.

Thanks! I think it went reasonably ok.

Things are somewhat back on track!

The styrene showed up again, but it turns out that it actually probably wasn't the best material option. Whatever clear packing tape is made from (polythene? polyethylene? Probably something like that) seems to be a better option, for future reference, but I'm sticking with the results of the styrene for now. I'm sure from any more than 3 feet away, it'll look just fine, and it's time to start focusing on completion over perfection (which has realistically already been achieved within the confines of the materials and tool options).

I've almost completed the page-long to-do list of finishing details, other than "build scope" (should only take a few hours) and the magnet hole in the stock lid. Stripped the barrel jacket, done a little filling and primer, it's down to just that and the carry rail left to do!

Got some of this stuff, it's only three bucks and it'll serve a variety of purposes:



Used a beauty dish with a random piece of this stuff lying around that I found as a makeshift lightbox:



Drew out the text, redid it several times in pencil before going over with 0.35mm G2 pen and laminating with clear tape.



Went over it with some more paper on the lightbox and stuck it to the styrene:



The first coat of primer is always disappointing, but I had enough going on not to have to redo it:



So I tried to visually line up the text as best I could and traced around the plate:



Then carved it out, in between stabbing my thumb to the bone:



Glue in, time to fill:



Later I learnt to dig a bit deeper for more adjustability:



I also learned to mask off the text so I didn't have to dig it out constantly:



General progress:



FINALLY:



I keep deciding to rearrange things!





Two days ago:



A sort of vague fake stock lid hinge:



The masking tape ruined some of the finished paint, so I decided to redo it:





It's not quite perfect, but it's not bad:





Finishings:







Today:



Super close now! Hopefully I'll get another crack at it this week. Shame I haven't been able to focus fully on it for the last two months, but I guess you can't complain.

I have to admit, your stampings came out better than I expected they would. I think you're awfully brave for freehanding the letters. I have the handwriting of a triple-doctorate after a triple-espresso, so I would have looked for some way to type and print them - frankly, I avoid freehanding anything ever if possible.

FoxtrotZero said:

I have to admit, your stampings came out better than I expected they would. I think you're awfully brave for freehanding the letters. I have the handwriting of a triple-doctorate after a triple-espresso, so I would have looked for some way to type and print them - frankly, I avoid freehanding anything ever if possible.

Click to expand...

They'd have come out better if I hadn't used styrene, it melts way too easily. They were much better on the test piece. The only alternative options I had were CNC- either laser etching or PCB milling- or letterpress stamps. All of which was far beyond my remaining budget and/or schedule. I guess that's why most people either just paint them on or raise rather than indent them. Needless to say, I'm not particularly happy with it, but realistically it's not intended for closeups, just to have the right little glints from a distance.

Freehanding is scary at first, for sure. It helps if you hone those skills doing something where mistakes don't matter, like green woodwork or impressionist sculpture or something. You get to dial the precision and confidence in, then transfer it where needed.

It's all about the transferable skills. Combined with research, it's how I can do things well the first time, rarely read manuals, etc. It's something I need to analyse some more, actually, because I thought it was relatively common, but it seems to be quite unusual. Might be able to help other people get past the "but I haven't done this before" mental hurdle.

Anyway, pontification aside, current progress:

RobTC said:

It's all about the transferable skills...Anyway, pontification aside

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hehe, I totally getcha

All in all it's lookin' great, per usual! glad to see you're not too hung up on the print/styrene results, haha, I wanna see this baby assembled!

I laugh, not derisively but in solidarity, at how long this part of the project is taking. I have a long record of underestimating how long the finish work will take. You though you were almost done in January. It just kills you to be close, but the friction of perfection holds completion just out of reach. Even good planning won't solve it. I did a full dress rehearsal of every part of my last project fully assembled and tested. It still took two months sorting after painting (and touching up cuts I had to make in painted parts that had seemed right before). Keep plugging. Its looking great.

Redshirt

m00sem4n said:

hehe, I totally getcha

All in all it's lookin' great, per usual! glad to see you're not too hung up on the print/styrene results, haha, I wanna see this baby assembled!

Click to expand...

Cool, glad it's not coming off as narcissistic self-aggrandizing, 'cause that's what it feels like when I try to describe it, but it feels like it could be an important topic to me and I've only just begun to be able to wrap words around it.

That's a decision I had to consciously make when I was carving them. "If these don't come out perfectly, am I going to do redo after redo? Or do I just accept what it is and push onward?" I chose the latter, obviously, since the former would require learning calligraphy or something. There's just no substitute for a machine. I also figure that if I'm 100% happy with this first project, where do I go from there? It would be pointless to continue if I hit the pinnacle on my first try. So things not being perfect really isn't the end of the world, as long as I'm happy with the overall quality and the product's representation of me.

Redshirt said:

I laugh, not derisively but in solidarity, at how long this part of the project is taking. I have a long record of underestimating how long the finish work will take. You though you were almost done in January. It just kills you to be close, but the friction of perfection holds completion just out of reach. Even good planning won't solve it. I did a full dress rehearsal of every part of my last project fully assembled and tested. It still took two months sorting after painting (and touching up cuts I had to make in painted parts that had seemed right before). Keep plugging. Its looking great.

Redshirt

Click to expand...

You nailed it. I keep thinking every couple of weeks, "SURELY this time I'm almost done?!" but of course I'm not, not really. Ultimately, there's no replacement for 300 hours of sanding up 7 levels of grit. Either you do it or you don't. That said, as I'm about to demonstrate, I think I'm into my final 24 hours on this project. I did do some finishing work on the scope as I went to try to speed things along while I still had more access to places.

Pics:

The rest of yesterday...











Today:



















There are 3/8" holes in the back of the rail and under the scope for attachment and alignment magnets. It's a quick and dirty build, like I said it would be, but I think it largely holds up. Hopefully the overhangs don't give me grief in moulding. Maybe if I can make some extra money off of this thing I can build the "real" version with the camera and screen, but time will tell.

So, with that given, I can hereby announce that CONSTRUCTION is 100% COMPLETE! Finishing-wise, it's just the last few passes on the barrel jacket, mostly just taking out the 60 grit gouges I put in getting the enamel off, and polishing up the scope. I'm hoping to be done by tomorrow lunchtime, but we'll see.

MASTER COMPLETE. 6 months to the day from that first blog post.



Now for the scary part...



Gonna test the foamcore, hot glue, Monster Clay and Dollar Tree vaseline in the left test chamber. If that all works out, then I'll start with the one-piece safety selector mould on the right.

Here goes!

! ! !

Victory is mine! My "coaster" was partially uncured since apparently I didn't scrape quite enough, but the actual test cube itself came out perfect. A few more bubbles than I'd like, considering I poured it ultra-thin, but nothing that affects the integrity of the surfaces.









And now for the bit that I know you're all actually waiting for. The master complete HQ update! Wheee!











Looking at these pics actually marginally concerns me. If you're planning on buying this and taking it out to events, be very careful. It looks like the real deal. I mean, obviously that's a good thing, but still. This ain't no matte-painted foam and cardboard build.

Cc/ Harri51 RiBeck FoxtrotX146 Noble 10

ok thx looks amazing

I think you're probably the only one ever to build a BR85 HBSR in anywhere near this amount of detail. You might consider contacting 343i and asking if they're interested in buying some casts from you. That is absolutely spectacular work, and it's been a hell of a journey - and I've just been watching! You poured your heart and soul into that thing, and it really shows.

Are you planning on painting the master, or reserving that for the casts? Either way, I look forward to seeing the paint and electronics. My favourite parts, honestly.

DANG!!!! Rob you did a beautiful job. If you get around to making more let me know i am planning on saving cash up to buy one off of you. Just wow. It is so beautiful.

It actually looks worse there than it really is- a lot of "bumps" and "ripples" that appear to be visible there are a trick of the light, and the actual surface is flat and smooth. It's very odd, It may be the polished primer under the clear coat that's doing it, but I've long since given up on trying to fix the appearance, as long as the actual physical shapes are right for moulding.

FoxtrotZero said:

I think you're probably the only one ever to build a BR85 HBSR in anywhere near this amount of detail. You might consider contacting 343i and asking if they're interested in buying some casts from you. That is absolutely spectacular work, and it's been a hell of a journey - and I've just been watching! You poured your heart and soul into that thing, and it really shows.

Are you planning on painting the master, or reserving that for the casts? Either way, I look forward to seeing the paint and electronics. My favourite parts, honestly.

Click to expand...

Pretty sure, yeah. At least the only one without access to CNC technology of some kind. I think I saw a nice 3D printed one recently, but it's easy to get it right then. If you think that's an idea, I'll look into it. I figured that only really happened when studios happened to see a build online somewhere, but there can't be any harm in enquiring. Not sure who I'd need to contact for that, I'm sure there's a way to find out. Yeah it has! Thanks man, that's why I picked the BR for my first project... Anything else that hadn't been such a large part of my formative years and I might not have cared enough to get it done.

I'm only going to be painting casts, the master is just going to get archived in foam on a dark shelf somewhere, in case I ever need to remould something. Sometimes paint comes off when moulding, and it doesn't even fit together now thanks to the thickness of the primer and clear coat layers. So yeah, I'm looking forward to getting cast #1 done so I can paint it up and get to advertising this thing. The electronics is more breathing-room-dependent. If I sell a bunch of these things, then it'll probably happen. If I don't, it may not, at least not for a long time. So every time someone buys one, they're helping make the electronics happen! (Or someone could just commission the electronics, I guess)

Harri51 said:

DANG!!!! Rob you did a beautiful job. If you get around to making more let me know i am planning on saving cash up to buy one off of you. Just wow. It is so beautiful.

Click to expand...

Thanks man! I'm not sure how many I'll be doing of the run without downpayments, but I should certainly be making at least a second, and since you're now first in the list I'll let you know when it's done. I'm assuming by the end of this month, maybe into May though. This other project I have is eating time like there's no tomorrow for no particular reason.

In other news, the safety selector mould came out perfect. Just gotta grab some more hot glue before I can continue.

Moldmaking is going smoothly, if a little slowly. I'm gradually getting faster at claying, but the whole process requires a lot of focus and mental checklisting to avoid wasting any silicone, something I can't afford to do! It's surprisingly tiring.

I started cleaning and rearranging the basement for better productivity, though there's still a way to go there. Good to give yourself the room to spread out and keep things clean and organised if you can.



The general setup at the beginning of mouldmaking. Keeping the master in the background lets me know how I'm progressing, a sort of physical checklist.



First moldboxes done! At this point I hadn't learned not to seal up the bottom to the inside, since that doubles the amount of glue you have to rip up afterward.



For the first one I tried the technique of laying down a flat bed of clay, then tracing the parts and cutting out the bed.



It worked ok, but it didn't really seem to be significantly better and definitely not faster than laying down a thinner bed and then building up around the edges of the parts.



Cutting registration marks with a drill bit is super easy, definitely better than adding hex bolts or whatever it is people usually do.



After the experience claying up the barrel, I learned to put the walls on AFTER, not before!



Lookin' all professional and stuff!



There was much terror, early on in the process. Now I'm not so concerned- just don't skimp or half-ass your release layer, and don't be lazy when mixing.



Test the release before applying it to large quantities of silicone! Cute little lego bricks ensued.





First de-clay, I was super worried about pulling up the parts, but the silicone has plenty of grip and the clay not so much.



I was enjoying the new workspace so I kept taking pics of it. This was after I replaced the crock pot with a microwave for heating the Monster Clay. It's just easier, especially if you're working erratically with it. Cheap 600W or something, 3 minutes, done.



By my standards (of not being able to afford to replace it)... That's a scary amount of silicone.



Not scary enough to not risk an in-progress semi-selfie, apparently.



The really scary part. First big piece, first second mould half!



Nothing to worry about, came out perfect! (I'll cut the resin pour channels separately)



That's why you go to 2000 grit:



Completions thus far... Looking good!



First tricksy part. Getting into the barrel to de-clay.



The only way to do it! Kinda scratched it up, raking around inside, only to realise that I'm not even going to mold release it, so it'll stay stuck in perfect registration. So I ruined the inside of half the barrel for absolutely no reason. Lesson learned!



The little rivet holes and stuff here were harder to deal with than you'd think, but hours of fiddling about later, this is where I'm up to right now. Ready for the second half on the barrel and mag.



Going nicely! I'm sure it'll speed up a little over time, I'm hoping to be done in about two weeks. I think that sounds reasonable. Casting shouldn't take too long assuming I can put a rotocaster together pretty quickly, but I'm sure I can, I have an idea to keep it cheap and simple- probably a YouTube video in that, actually. I'm keeping to quite close tolerances here to minimise silicone usage, I'll probably have to build support boxes of some kind for some of them, maybe even paint resin on over the outside. I should probably have gone with rebound 25, but at least this way I don't have to worry about parts like the chamber, since Shore 15A silicone will extricate itself from anything, really.

Since these are my first two-part moulds, I'll do a short update to assure everyone that I didn't weld my parts inside expensive rubber bricks, and a good brushing of naptha/Vaseline works wonders if you don't feel like spending $20 on Ease Release 200 (and probably lasts infinitely longer even at half the price). As long as you've got a good brush hand, of course- slopping it on probably isn't going to result in either a good mould or cast.

This seemed like common sense to me, but apparently is a handy trick. I didn't mold release one end so the rubber would weld into a split one-part mold whilst still having the clean part line and registration marks of a proper two parter:



Started claying up the carry rail while I waited on the mag to finish curing. This was my initial genius plan for bevelling the mould, but I'm just going to do it a different way which is easier to clay up:



Should've done the barrel trick on the magazine too, but didn't think about it until I'd already brushed around the top of it. Still, it came out nice:





What I've got so far! Not too concerned about keeping the outsides pretty, I'll get to that later if I need to.



The mag mold is a little too loose on the tolerances for my liking, it's a lot of silicone for the size of part- which is probably still going to need some kind of support anyway. I have a devious scheme for keeping the tolerances tight on the rest of the molds, like you see for the carry rail. I don't want to have to buy more rubber to finish off this build!

...Yeah, I should probably have just gone with Rebound, but I think my hypothetical way might actually be slightly cheaper and easier. Should be good.

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (10 days later)
THAT"S AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (another ten days, jeez, have i got power lungs or what?)
COOLEST GUN EV- (Sorry, had to catch my breath.) -ER!!!!!
That is cool.
OVER 9000 thumbs up!

This is a crazy amount of work. I am truly impressed. Great job

Darktemplar ErMaC Heheheh. Thanks guys!

Been busy the last week, blowing through all the silicone. It makes less than those giant tubs make it look like, that's for sure. Wish I'd known from the start it'd take two gallons, I'd have skimped less on the walls. But I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.

Picdump time!

Getting the claying process tighter. Each part now takes about 5 hours instead of 2-3 days. I'm also being more bold in my seamline routing, choosing it more deliberately for ease of finishing, rather than just chopping everything right in half and being done with it.



Trying to get a bit of a production line going, doing one thing at a time.









Keeping on top of the leftovers, and trimming where I can. At $200 a gallon, silicone isn't something you can play fast and loose with (unless you're a professional prop house, I guess).





Try to remember where your fragile bits of master are, or you'll rip 'em out when declaying or leave them embedded in silicone. This is a bit of the scope magnet hole.



The results of my improved claying process:



Cold clay is mean. If you can warm it up in the sun, it gets a little nicer.



Foregrip: check.



Carry rail: check.



Time to start prepping to cast! Cutting a pour spout and making the walls. I like that method of pouring in the resin in the mold walls, but I don't want to waste resin until I know how far it stretches. Meanwhile, I have MDF lying around.



First pour. Barrel, trigger and safety selector poured.



I'm running a test cup where I'm measuring and marking the heights I need for a quick back-to-back part A-B pour. I was super good in AP chemistry labs back in the day, you guys. Meniscii fear me! Hahahah. But seriously, if you can afford to buy a ton of cups, just do it, I don't recommend this method. I'm trying to tighten the budget, and it's way easier to pour resin in one go than silicone.



I decided on six drops of SO-Strong black pigment per 80-90ml of total resin (ie. mixed into 40-45ml of part B), which turned out to be exactly right for the tone of grey I was going for. I have some Onyx SLOW that I might use for triggers... Maybe.



Had to have a quick and reliable method of closing this up and fastening it in short order for rotocasting- 65D has a much shorter pot life and cure time than the Smoothcast 305(?) that I'm using for the solid stuff. Hot glued the bars on after sanding down the MDF a little. Holding very nicely.



How to kill 15 minutes of boring gyroscopic turning (until I build the rotocaster, anyway):



Ooooh, pretty! Needs thicker walls. I haven't yet decided whether to build it up in layers (gotta get the timing down to avoid delamination) or simply cast the sides first, then close it up to finish off the middle. I may also seal up a significant portion of the mould so I can fill it more initially before closing... Not sure yet.



Looks like the barrel jacket came out nicely, though I'm a little nervous about the width of that side wall. I may have to add reinforcement.



Total results so far... A bunch of moulds done, and some castings done. Going well! I have to buy more silicone, which'll put me slightly behind schedule, but not significantly (Smooth-On ship crazy fast to here, it's only a state or two over). Meanwhile I'll keep working on the casts!