That looks about six different kinds of insane mate! Cannot even imagine the amount of hours that would be poured into a project like that, or how satisfying it must have been to put the finishing touches on the work. Shame I live on a different continent, I'll never get too see it in the flesh! Plenty of inspiration though.
Thanks man! Oh, I don't even know at this point. It must be in the four figures by now, I'm sure. It's super satisfying so put the last coat of clear on something and know I don't have to come back to it ever again, for sure. Ha, yeah, I'll never be approaching Aussie customs with anything approaching the appearance of a firearm, that's for sure!
You have the word "master" written all over you.
Oh, far from it, though I'm on my way. I'm only a fifth or a tenth of the way through my ten thousand hours! There are many improvements that could be made, shortcuts that could have been taken... It's certainly been a learning experience though. Nothing like taking on a ludicrously ambitious project with little experience to go on to push you way out of your comfort zone.
Holy ****ity ****ing ****, Rob. I disappear for a while to focus on the burden that is my schooling, and you go and prove yourself the Aetherial Grand Master of all Forms and Functions of Propbuilding.
Lololol. Funny you should show up today, I was just thinking about you and
m00sem4n this morning.
I'm rather at a loss for words.
Followed by four paragraphs of text. A man after my own heart.
First of all, bollocks that thing is massive. Like, I knew the BR-series were large rifles firing large bullets carried by large men, but that's still pretty insane to me. Maybe I'd have to see it in real life, or maybe I'm just not used enough to holding actual firearms, because it almost seems unwieldy. The internal mechanics of a lot of the UNSC rifles always confused me (that makes sense, these guys are artists, not engineers). I haven't bothered to look where exactly the bolt and the ejection port are, but the travel distance seems pretty crazy (I thought, for some reason, that the BR's Mammoth rounds were caseless, but that's unique to the M7). Assuming the stock is as short as I think it is, it feels like the entire bolt carriage doesn't have enough room to actuate, but that might not be the case.
Yeah, it's insanely huge. Within a few mm of a G36 or M16 though, so it has plenty of precedent. And yeah, don't even bother trying to make sense of the mechanics of this thing, there's absolutely no sense to be made. It's completely impossible to operate with its given dimensions. Maybe if it was converted to 5.56, the barrel moved up and the receiver shortened.
Your attention to detail is amazing. I'm certain I would have given up on that degree of detail. I'm certain I wouldn't have the wherewithal to maintain this project. And I'm exceptionally certain I couldn't have done this as quickly as you have. But if I'm not mistaken, you've made this your profession? And I'm a full time student. Just the process of sanding and polishing and sanding and polishing ad nauseum sounds like something that would deter me. The sheer amount of things you've had to freeform and freehand is crazy to me - the fact that it's a number of individual, custom interlocking parts, and is probably about half bondo, makes it seem to me like your brain is capable of operating in four dimensions and you fabricated this thing from thin air. Verily you are the master when it comes to shaping wood.
Thanks! Yeah, it's been quite a task. Herculean though, not Sisyphean, fortunately.
I've made it my profession inasmuch as I've dedicated the vast majority of my working hours to it over the last few months, and I'm really hoping that people like it enough to fund another project or two! Hopefully it takes off, we'll have to see. But it'll never amount to anything if I don't go for it.
Yeah, the interminable wet sanding is incredibly tedious, though the result is probably worth it. When it's done, it gleams. Well, I dunno about free-forming, necessarily, I mean, I'm working from design drawings that I'm transcribing from measurements of the 3D model. The compound curves are freehanded though, yeah. Unless you mean that it's all done by hand and not CNC'd, in which case, yeah, not yet, sadly.
Well, you know, in England when we graduate with Physics degrees we get given access to an extra couple of dimensions to work with.
I think part of it is that I've done both standard woodwork, back in high school, and also green woodwork, where you have to be able to visualise the final product before touching the wood, and then all you have to work with is an axe and a knife or two. The Bondo thing turned out pretty well considering I've never really been much of one for clay or sculpting, and yeah, I dunno. I'm a designer and photographer too, so combined with the science background and the manual ability, it's like an extreme attention to detail with an artistic bent. I dunno how to describe it, really. It's something I've been honing semi-deliberately for decades though.
As an engineer (technical disclaimer: engineering student, but I maintain it's a way of life) my favourite parts are, of course, the one that make it light up and move, and I can't wait until you get into that part proper. Having the bolt assembly move back and forth in under a second is going to be a fun and interesting proposition. I wonder if you could put any mass on that and give the rifle some actual recoil. I also don't actually understand how you're making the ammunition display, given that you can't get any sort of LCD display in there.
No, you're exactly right, it is a way of life. I think of myself as an engineer, not a physicist- I like applying science to problems. I'm prone to overthinking, though, so sometimes it's nice when a real engineer comes in and suggests a far simpler approach or an alternate angle of looking at something.
The bolt should be a challenge, though I'm now considering that a brushless motor (precise speed control) combined with some timing belt and some other bits and pieces might be the way to go. A bit like the previous suggestions of an airsoft gearbox, but I can make it smaller, more powerful, and custom shaped for installation. Assuming that a brushless motor can accelerate fast enough, of course. That's my issue there, I don't want to have to keep it constantly spun up like an airsoft AEG. I doubt any mass could be part of that system, since keeping it as light as humanly possible is a requirement for the speed of operation, but it might be doable somehow. It's not something I'm looking at, since I think I've already bitten off quite enough to be chewing on for now, but I'd be interested to see someone tackle it.
Current plan for the ammo counter, assuming I can't cheat and just use an OLED for half of the display, is to build a laser projector that fits inside. Getting the right lenses in low order quantities seems to be the tricky part. It would be nice if I can convince Smooth-On to send me some Crystal Clear, since it's apparently not available to residential customers (Pretty sure Kamui's shipped it to a German residence though, so...)
Anyway, I know I disappeared for a while, and I knew yours is the sort of reason that I'd have to come back. That, and I recently cleaned off my workbench again and I have a bunch of things I bought and started working on staring at me with shame. It would appear my tools are guilt tripping me.
Ha, cool. Speaking of reasons to come back,
LilTyrant just started a new build, which I assume will be magnificent and inspirational, and
Black Underdog5's doing some pretty impressive stuff too. Ah, empty workbench guilt, I know it well. Well, not that well, since I'm terrible at tidying up. But occasionally!
---
PIC DUMP
Clear coat pooled on the barrel while I was spraying the inside, so it had to be trimmed off, feathered and smoothed out again, and re-sprayed.
Was getting sick of the stock and its weirdness, so some drastic action was taken. Cut out the mag well (which I didn't actually need to do, in retrospect, but I didn't have an exact plan at the time):
Filled the end:
Filled the outside:
And accidentally chewed up my completed side with the Dremel router bit, since it's impossible to use those things without damaging or destroying something. To be fair, they're not intended to be freehanded:
Chopped off the now-surplus-to-requirements rail plug, since it would add unnecessary complexity to the moulding process.
More little pieces are done:
Got bored of filling and started using superglue for auto-levelling and wick-sealing:
Attempted to start the stamps:
...Which went badly:
Smoothed the rail and reassigned the rear of the barrel jacket:
Discovered that I was an idiot for finalising the barrel jacket so early in the process before I had the fine grit sandpaper and spot putty:
Continued to engrave, this time with just an Xacto #11 with the tip snapped off (which happens within my first ten cuts with them), and it went better. Maybe no power tools this time:
Tried a version with a wood burner on some card, which went remarkably well, I may combine these techniques somehow:
I'd originally wanted to do it on plastic, but it melts too quickly and doesn't provide enough resistance to get good lines:
So yeah, that's where I'm up to as of this afternoon. Still coming along nicely, but with the rebuilds it's been a little slow-going. Still, I think it's worth spending and extra day or two to get right at this point rather than continuing to rush through and regret it during moulding or casting.
