The Vortex: Made of Paper, Glue and Magic

2011-12-20T18:06:00.003-06:00

Turns out I never shared instructions for my rose. After being pressured by a whopping one request, I've decided to share this abomination of red cards with the 3 of you who actually look at my blog. I actually posted this tutorial on a site that shall remain nameless, where it was equally unused and found absolutely useless. Here's aiming for 1 out of 2!

If you attempt this, please share your results. I'd like to see how they turn out and what you chose as your "most hated abundant red card".

Mobile Suit Biker Sinanju

2011-11-27T17:30:00.000-06:00

No new projects involving cards or guns. I did however finally buy something that I always wanted to have in my collection: a Master Grade MSN-06S Sinanju. Just liked the design and the color scheme. It'll make a good addition to my desk, having vacated some slots. Also, it'll finally make use of those Gundam Action Bases I've bought a while back.

No review of the kit here, since there's plenty around. I did end up breaking two parts during construction, and the fuel tank caps ruptured due to thermal expansion during painting with thinner. Had to make some repairs, but they're not noticeable. I haven't gotten around to the decals yet. Waiting for my topcoat to arrive first. In case you're interested, I opted to hand paint all the gold after painting the parts black. No stickers or water slide decals were used, nor will they be used. Going to build this with the default stuff they give me.

I found that the kit was larger than I was expecting, and the scale was a tad under 1:6. I could make Sinanju hold some 1:6 scale weapons to some extent. I did have something lying around that was much better than a 1:6 scale weapon. Something that fit perfectly.

Lego Technic set 8422! Managed to finally get some more use out of it. Color scheme matches somewhat as well. I'm rather fond of this motorcycle's styling and overall design. I could get one of the newer mototcycles, but none of them have the same appeal as this one.

Agile in space, and on the ground.

I also had the time to buy some more Obitsu stands. Somewhat wobbly for trying to do a wheelie pose.

Unfortunately, Sinanju doesn't quite fit on Fenrir. The color scheme didn't fit anyways. At least now I can have mounted combat.

J.Norad Reviews: ZYToys MGL-140

2011-11-05T11:22:00.000-06:00

Haven't had any projects in a while worth pursuing. Or ones that were physically feasible. I did miss National Build a Grenade Launcher Day this year. I did liquidate my Demoman, so I no longer have a 6 shot grenade launcher or someone appropriate to showcase it.

I've also had an interest in obtaining a Milkor M32 after browsing some reviews on onesixthwarriors.com about the ZACCA P.A.P. chase model in their 1:6 grenade launcher set. I never managed to get one. Well, I finally got a Milkor MGL after a bit of shopping around for a cheap deal.

I picked up the MGL-140 in black over all the other variants. My reasons were simple. But in general, it seems to be the least desirable model based on overall pricing and demand. As of writing this, it looks like the shorter versions are higher in demand. My reason was "get the biggest one in black". I don't care for desert color schemes either. I paid $15 shipped for mine, purchased through a moderately reputable black market dealer holed up in the South Asian seas. They MSRP for $12, so don't expect to get one for under that unless you get lucky. You'll be looking at $17 after the usual price gouging.

Straight out of the box, you get a simple plastic tray with the foregrip, scope and grenades packed separately. No hidden surprises like an insert sheet with info or a display peg board.

Every other site probably has an exploded view of the parts. Probably none as half-assed as mine. There's six metal grenades, an adjustable cloth sling, and everything else shown in lovely injection molded plastic.

Features and Flaws
I don't think anyone expected this review to be all sparkles and sunshine. The Vortex brings out the suck in everything. And my MGL has a good quantity of suck. Let's see what magnitude of suck you can expect.

The Stock

I personally encountered an issue on the stock where it swivels up and down. The U shaped fork holding the arm in place was noticeably bent outwards like a V. as a result, it was quite easy to pop out the stock. I'd like a locking pin than two stubs that will wear down with repeated dislocations. Could be an isolated incident, though.

The slider part of the stock slides quite freely. There's not much of an end stop for the slider, so expect it to completely come off as you adjust it. Due to the way the parts are molded, it's not practical to rig a solid end stop like HotToys did for their M-4's for the Modern Firearms Collection. I can feel a little bump inside the stock where the stop mechanism is, but you can overpower it with little resistance. I'll try thickening the material inside the stock to make the fit tighter so it doesn't slide too easily.

The Scope
The scope is great. Great if you never want to move it to an angle other than horizontal. There's basic detail on the scope; no fake amber lenses or see-through light pipe. Just a solid block, but that's fine. The optic is loose, and there's no ideal way of making it hold mid position without making some frictional modification to the hinge. The scope base is molded from two pieces with a shared mounting pin, resulting in a pin that isn't snug due to an undersize. The scope fell off enough times during photos that I've thickened the pin with some super glue so it stays on better. Suggest checking your scope mount and making this the first priority modification.

One of the details I liked was the elevation numbers printed onto the side of the sight. From a distance, you'd think it's just a bunch of white lines. It's tough to get a good photo with a crappy camera, but you can see it. The numbers are a bit crisper than my photo shows it to be.

The Chamber and Grenades

The revolver chamber comes marked with the current grenade position on all six chambers in crisp detail. Mine seems to be molded not quite perfectly cylindrical. It has binding spots in certain areas when spun. The cylinder isn't loose enough to do Russian Roulette. As a plus, it stays in place where you want it for photos. If you push the chamber into the front frame, it fits snug so you can hold the MGL by the chamber and not have the rest of it slide away. I don't recommend modifying the chamber to spin freely because of this benefit.

While on the subject of the revolver chamber, I should cover the grenades. They're metal with a fairly thick coat of paint. Part of the grenade tends to hang on a lip in each chamber, so they don't all immediately slide out when you tilt it downwards. Great if you don't like fishing out 1:6 scale grenades in the grass in your backyard. The firing cap is painted on and not molded, so if you do wear that part down for some reason, be prepared to repaint that. Over time, the grenade rims will chip paint.

The Frame

The frame is a two piece construction, held together by a swivel pin joint. This is perhaps where most of these models will break over time. It's a mere 0.06" diameter plastic pin holding it together. Normally, this would be fine, but from handling the model and opening it a few times, I noticed that it's a fairly stressed component. When you open the grenade launcher to swivel it out, the revolver chamber has a pin that normally locks into a little detente in the rear frame. You need to either slide the rear frame back until the revolver chamber pin disengages, or bend the frame outwards like most people will do. Bending the pin repeatedly will eventually stress the plastic and cause it to snap. A suggested modification would be to drill out a hole in the pin, and reinforce it with a metal rod (or in my case, a paper clip). This will provide stiffness and keep it from snapping off prematurely.

Overall Impressions

You may be asking "Should I buy one?"

You have no choice if you want an MGL, honestly. You have the illusion of choice between the six variants ZYToys has to offer. That's about it. You're not going to find the ZACCA M32 for a price under $30. You either want one or you don't. Now, if someone would build an RG-6 in 1:6 scale...

My suggestion is to buy the one you like the most, hope QC wasn't asleep/busy whipping the slave labor, and be mindful of the weak points. I don't see any reason to buy the whole set. You don't need all six MGL variants unless you're a ham fisted giant who breaks things by merely touching them.

Horse Bridle and Wear Tests

2011-08-06T20:09:00.000-06:00

I've spent the past two weeks letting people examine the horse in person. So far, it's holding up well. No visible signs of damage to the hull, and minimal wear. Only issue so far is a sheared wire attachment support in the neck which was quickly repaired. Survived some handling by some children. Only problems presented so far is the potential for solar radiation discoloring the hide. I'll need a phase-out plan for the horse when it reaches that stage. Until then, I've taken precaution to limit the amount of sunlight exposure on the horse.

One of the current ideas is to add horse armor, or at the minimum, a saddle and stirrups. However, I did end up needing to make a bridle for the horse. After examination of how a bridle was constructed, I had a small problem: my horse has no mouth to put the mouthpiece in. X-acto knife to the rescue!

First, some reinforcement parts were added to the mouth, which also helped define the mouth region. Afterwards, I added a slot along the mouth line, about 1mm thick, to allow for a paper clip to slide through. The cut surfaces were coated with loc-tite glue to help control material wear and to seal the edges to the effects of water. Of course, this does render my original horse head template semi obsolete as it does not account for a mouth slot.

The bridle was built with the following (use at your own risk):

You'll need some paper clips or wire, and some needle nose pliers to form the mouthpiece. It'll also require an array of belt buckles, last covered in a previous post.

Strap width is whatever you find handy. I ended up with 4-5mm thick ribbon to use. The original plan was to use fake leather from salvaged wallets, but the length was too short. I ended up using the same method from Aelia's armor straps and laminating two strips of brown ribbon together using fabric glue. Fabric glue holds fairly well compared to hot glue, and there's low potential of delamination due to high temperature. The result is a low cost and fairly stiff set of straps, adjustable for all your equestrian needs. Some sewing was required to hold the straps in the right directions. I wasn't going to trust glue to do the whole job.

For the low price of $2 for brown ribbon and $4 for glue, it's not a bad result. Especially considering it's adjustable and doesn't look horribly off, and I know very little about the actual construction. Looks acceptable to the untrained eye and that's all that matters for me.

Now with some reins, we can properly ride the horse! The horse has always been meant for Aelia to use. She's gotten few presents the past two years, and now she gets the biggest of them all, despite never having a horse in Valkyrie Profile. I always liked the idea of a mounted lancer, especially after playing Mount and Blade: Warband. Now I can terrorize the countryside and impale at leisure.

Finishing A Horse

2011-07-17T19:01:00.000-06:00

Nearly three months after initiating building the first components for the horse, and nearly five months after deciding to build this, I've reached the end. Last time on the Vortex'o'suck, I had finished the entirety of the horse's neck, with means to conceal the largest gaps resulting from neck articulation. All the pre-planning and well-documented work ended there. Now it's time to throw that all away and free-hand everything. Why? Because I have no plan from here on out!

With the neck mechanism built, I can figure out the envelope for the chest cavity to conceal the sections. This involved cutting away the chest cavity and replacing the scaffolding with some nice solid walls. Most of the thin strips of cardstock will remain to keep the structure, but thin areas like the chest were removed entirely. They have served their purpose.

Using an old technique of "build a pinata", by gluing strips of paper until a hollow shell is formed, I completed the chest cavity that houses the neck assembly and hides the gaps. This technique will be used for the rest of the horse from here on out, and was the single cause for the delay in completing the horse, since it's an unexact method and tedious to do.

The upper assembly required a new cover. I peeled the previously built scaffolding away and formed a new cover. I opted for a double layer of card to ensure structural stiffness and to conceal join seams on the other side by hiding them between two layers.

Here is the new cover, with the old scaffolding in place over it. The fore legs have been fleshed out with 110lb cardstock internally, and a single layer of magic card over it.

Building all the leg cover plates was annoying. I could wrap the entire body around with a layer of card like I did with the camel, but there were some sections that it wasn't feasible with due to the hinges. So, I decided to go with sets of mirrored cover plates to reduce the number of unique parts and to allow for somewhat easy assembly.

Once the wireframe support was constructed, more pinata building was in order. The opening on the side of the rear leg was added to account for the supports holding the rear legs in place. The rear leg assembly itself was a balance of form and function, as I could either go for a structural column between the legs, or remove it entirely and let the legs complete the shape themselves.

Some trimming later, and I built a dividing column for the rear legs. Some pillars were added to maintain strength, even though there should be zero interaction in the direction of the plates during normal operation. Figured it's a better option to do this now than deal with depressions in the card face later.

With the rear structure completed and the front skin done, it was time to make the rest of the body. First off, I ended up breaking my personal rule of not using lands for construction. You can see the outer shell made of some swamps. They came in some free intro packs and I was actually dwindling on chaff cards. Not like anyone's going to care if I use some Tenth Edition swamps. People already assume I'm using lands anyways. I need to save the most horrible of cards for other projects. The skin was reinforced in some areas with two or three layers of card. Damage was a concern, and repair would be difficult. I am keeping the templates for all the free-handed sections in the event I need to redo sections, but I'm hoping I won't need to.

After assembling the last remaining parts of the horse, I added a tail (which I had never made provisions for in the first place) by putting two twisted strands of black electrical wire flanked by some black wig hair. I probably need more hair. The wire's there so I can attempt to put the tail in dynamic poses, which so far doesn't work.

Adding all the skin and remaining sections used up a total of 69 cards. With the previous sum of 246 cards, I'm slightly over the original budget with 315 cards. Still not bad. Is it worth building a 1:6 scale horse out of cards? Totally not. I'd recommend buying an artist's reference model if you want it as a reference, and I'd recommend buying a professional made one for $99-300 that isn't made of flammables and cellulose. Although neither of those lets you have silly poses with 1:6 scale figures.

If you're interested in the plans for the horse, drop a comment or send a message. Otherwise, I won't bother posting them. They need some clean up anyways.

This Weekend's Project: 1:6 Scale Violin

2011-07-04T11:41:00.000-06:00

This weekend's side project is severely lacking in the explosives department.

Tried my hand at #2 in Stringed Instruments Series, a Violin. The guitar was a fast project, and quite fun to do. This project however, was anything but quick, and mildly annoying to develop.

A quick search for violins yielded a blurry resized image of professional violin plans. The image was about the size I needed, and mildly blurry that I could still read it. After some resizing and quick drafting of some plans, I formed the basis of my violin body, in the same way I built the guitar.

This looks nice and simple, with tape holding the frame to the template, but the image lies! Taping a 5mm wide strip of Magic card and trying to get those pointed parts right was painful. Took a lot of time to get the laminations to stay in place while the rest of the frame dried.

Making the two faces was interesting as well. A violin has a contoured front and back, whereas the guitar I could slap on a solid face and call it a day. I took the contour map, made a model of it, then used it to form the pattern for my violin. Both sides differed in curvature, so I got to do this twice. Went through a good amount of cards trying to get the shape right.

After forming the sheet for the face, it was a good time to start cutting out the F-holes. Cutting them after being fully assembled would prevent me from cleaning up the other side of the holes. Unfortunately, the size of a violin prevents me from strategically placing the card back in interesting ways on the sides. What you see now will be obscured by clutter and will look less interesting.

Building the neck was much more difficult than the guitar. Here's a side view of how the inside was constructed. A hollow curve for the scroll, and lots of cobbled together laminations for the neck support. Peg holes were made using a 1/16" bit on a hand drill, same as with the guitar.

The main issue was trying to get the scroll shape, while keeping the side profile as a single card.I chose the more elegant route than the quick and dirty route of rolling up paper or shaving down the face to achieve the effect. It's a barely noticeable effect, especially at a distance, but I like knowing that it's there.

Stringing the violin was the same as the guitar. Stick white sewing thread into holes, stretch, wrap around pegs, repeat multiple times. I toyed with the idea of making the pegs capable of tightening the strings, then decided that was the stupidest idea ever. I jammed some knots into the pegbox and retained them with paper clips, then called it a night.

I have never played the violin. I can only guess that the chin rest is there to prevent your facial acne from creating a circular spot on the violin from contacting it for hours. Decided to try to make it removable for the sake of being able to. Worked out fine by using a bent paper clip anchored to a 4-card stack. The chin rest gets held in place as well by the spike I rammed into the tailpiece to hold it in place. I figured since there's some metal thing holding it in a real violin, I can jam one in mine to prevent mine from flying off after a slight nudge.

The bow used a large paper clip to provide support. I had underestimated the size of a violin bow. I always thought they'd be shorter than the violin. Seems like some are longer than the violin themselves. I opted for a 4/4 size violin and bow, so it's quite monstrous. The bow just uses paper to thicken the paper clip, and to provide an attachment point for the two bits that hold the string. Gluing them directly to a metal paper clip would have been ineffective and utterly silly. I ended up painting it with gloss black enamel and spraying it with a coat of clear gloss coat. Will that hold up against rough use? No idea!

I ended up using about six cards worth of material for this project, but ate up about 4 cards in development. Most of the parts were leftovers from the horse. This project helped deal with the pile of small scrap cards sitting on my desk, which is always nice as large projects yield a lot of semi-usable scrap.

More Horse Progress

2011-06-24T21:45:00.000-06:00

There's slow progress for the horse. Just haven't had much of an incentive to get it going farther than it currently is.

In order to determine how the neck sections will be concealed, I started developing the frame for the horse's body and skin. Since it's going to be hollow, I've experimented with a more lightweight means of making the skin than the old method of piling on 110lb cardstock tubes until the shape gets fleshed out. The method involves making use of the tube framework that holds the body together, and adding depth gauges all along key points, then connecting them together with two thickness strips of 110lb cardstock. The resulting model looks like a wireframe outline of the desired shape, and presumably uses less material. It's a lot more fragile, but that's where the depth gauges come in to support the skin. The MtG skin should be thick enough to support itself once curved and glued.

Building the body requires the legs to be somewhat fleshed out as well. Tubes have been glued over the screws to provide access points. They're all outside the horse this time instead of the cosmetically better looking underside/inner side of the horse. I'll probably be tightening them often, so it's probably for the best. The screw assemblies compose of a countersink bolt, spring washer, two washers and a nut. The nut is held in place inside the center of the tubes by strips 2.5 Magic cards thick, 2mm wide, forming a hexagonal housing to prevent nut rotation. These will be later plugged with a 110lb cardstock core so the nut doesn't travel axially, fully restricting the degrees of freedom. If this wasn't added, tightening the bolts would be tedious and difficult since there's nothing to hold the nuts in place.

Since I've opted for the neck to bend downwards, I need to conceal the gaps that result. Rather than make a giant rotating joint that resembles a LEGO horse, I chose to go a more difficult route.

With the neck region and movement limits defined, I could figure out how much gap I needed to cover. At full upright, the neck has a large exposed gap at the bottom and a small gap at the top. The system has a static upper region, and a dynamic lower region.

At mid position, the edge of the upper triangular shaped cover piece lines up with the edge of the neck opening. The lower cover sinks inwards into the chest cavity, assisted by a set of hinges.

The neck further bends downwards 22 degrees to allow the head to reach the ground to do grazing poses. This does cause another gap in the upper region of the neck, which needs to be addressed. The lower cover dips downwards and inwards to provide clearance for the neck assembly. The purpose for this mechanism is to allow for a curved and molded shape to fill in the gap. Due to the nature of how I designed the neck base to bend in two sections with hard stops to prevent overtravel, a static section was not feasible. I needed something that would move to allow for clearance of the second neck joint that connected the accordion structure to the body.

The neck assembly, removed for detail, shows the general layout. A notched portion inside the lower cover prevents the cover from falling out the gap when the neck is fully upright. It acts as a hard stop around one of the structural tubes inside the body.

Here, the two hinges required to create the movement needed for the lower cover are visible. The hinge base also serves to strengthen the neck base against buckling. Also visible are the wire assemblies that hold the neck sections in place and limit rotation. The yellow wire section has less stiffness than the middle and lower portions. The assembly was too stiff with all three supports being made of stranded wire.

So right now, the horse has a semi-finalized neck and the rough outline for the body. Remaining tasks involve stiffening the rear legs and fleshing out the rest of the body. I'll also need to adjust the center of mass, as it's currently front heavy due to all the neck structures.

J.Norad Reviews: 1:6 scale Dragon Browning M2 Model Kit

2011-06-19T19:38:00.000-06:00

Went to Brickworld 2011. Ended up browsing the local shops after lunch and I picked up this: a 2008 Dragon 1:6 scale Browning M2 Heavy Machine Gun model kit. I wanted to add this to the collection for some time (an M2, not particularly this one), and here was my chance. Not quite the best decision I've made regarding model kits, unfortunately.

I've seen one review of this model kit floating around. Not too surprising since not a lot of people review model kits, especially model kits of infantry weaponry. However, I've gone through the ~~joy~~ horror of building this kit to tell you how it really is.

Phase 1: Misinformation
I picked this up at the cost of under $19 at a hobby shop, all ready to get me a heavy machine gun. I opened up the box and beheld the presence of a foul and unholy mass of injection molded plastic and metal. Yes, there's metal. Is it awesome metal, as in "metal barrel and other assorted parts to enhance the flavor and detail"? Hell no! It's the "purely decorative but essential to make the kit annoying to build properly" type. We'll get to that in a bit. First, let's look at the biggest problems with this kit: the instructions.

Here's the first sheet. Top gives you an overview of the model, same as the box cover. Middle covers the runners and what each part is, in case you cut them all loose and have no idea what they're called afterwards. The bottom covers a painting color guide, which luckily is composed of 5 colors, and only two are essential to the gun. Take note at the grey section on runner set A. That designates parts that are not used in this model. My first question is, "why do you even include parts on the runners if this model doesn't use them?" Second, "what set does this get packaged with that uses these parts?" And lastly, "why the hell are these spare parts not duplicates of essential but potentially fragile parts?"

The answer to these questions is "they're actually used in this model kit, but the instructions writer decided to troll the kit builders who actually bother to look at the sheet". Because, who reads the instructions anyways? Certainly not the 4-13 year olds who buy this model, since this package certainly says that it's for 14 years+ only. We all know that getting a 14 year old to read a book is not particularly easy, so they added a visual instruction sheet with numbers on it. That's what the back side is for!

Phase 2: Deception
Side 2 of the instructions is where Dragon likes to whip out the middle finger and also take the time to poke you in the eye. I don't know if they fixed this for subsequent releases, but there's numerous errors with the instructions. I've handily corrected them in red. Notably, I've labeled where the "unused" pieces actually go on the model. Part A19 corresponds to the swivel tripod lever handle. Optional parts A29 and A30 turn out to form the "integral" leg clamp assembly for the right side of the tripod. Of course, you could have figured that out without the drawing by looking at the spot at the end of the leg and then at the runners. The handle isn't integral, but it's actually depicted on the cover photo, if you notice.

Per the numbers, you're supposed to be issued three B17s which correspond to the gun's firing mechanism assembly, and are supposed to glue them into the tripod legs. Great! I always wanted my tripod to shoot holes into the ground so I can have an easier time digging them into the ground. In a pinch, they will also serve to provide a last point of defense for the tripod carrying guy, so he can at least get some shots off. Dragon thought of everything.

Lastly, the instructions conflict with the product photo. The tripod feet per the instructions have the feet one way, and the photo has them the other. Which is correct? The product photo, apparently. I checked with what the actual M3 bipod looks like and it matches the photo, with the spades pointing all the same direction.

Phase 3: Lack of Information
At this point, you can argue that I'm being nit picky and deliberately bashing a decently designed kit for the sake of your entertainment. Now here's the point where Dragon takes their other hand and gives you the finger, and also jams it into your other eye. The METAL PARTS. Nowhere on the kit does it say that you need to have needle nose pliers for this kit. YES you need them. Why? Because the metal parts can't be assembled onto the other parts otherwise. And they're tedious.

The metal parts are all confined to the ammo box lid and a carrying handle on the barrel. The barrel requires you to clamp the loops tight otherwise they'll come off. Not too bad. Next part are the lid handle hinges. You'll need to pry them apart to fit them around the lid loops, then close them while the strap is in the hinges. I have decent dexterity and I had issues keeping the parts aligned while I clamped the loops closed.

Last is this little gem here.

The ammo box locking plate. It's a metal plate with a metal C that goes through it. They come separated and must be assembled together as shown above. Keep in mind the C hinge piece comes bent as a C and not straight. In order to get the part through the holes in the plate, you must unbend the part, thread it through and re-bend it. It's like unbending a paperclip and trying to bend it back so it looks the same. Doesn't happen, unless you're good. Mine still came out semi crooked.

My last point of the model kit is the plastic itself. You clearly need to paint this. The tolerances are tight without painting. A bit of sanding is needed to get the tripod legs to even slide. It felt like the model I got was late down the line where the mold had gotten sloppy. The ammo insert in the ammo box is wider than the ammo box inside, and requires trimming. The halves of some parts (legs, receiver, part of the barrel shroud) didn't meet up flat. As a side effect, the barrel came out crooked when assembled as is. Noticeably crooked.

Overall

Griping aside, the model's not bad. You just need to know what you're getting into. There's a lot of moving parts. Some of the movement can be nullified by bad handiwork or too thick of a paint job, however. I honestly don't think it's worth buying the kit if your skill isn't great and all you want is an M2. However, I don't think they sell the M2 pre assembled, at least not anywhere convenient. There's a limited number of M2's from other manufacturers, and none are common. So if you're in the market for one, you're forced to go the Dragon route if you're unable to find pre-built ones. If you're absolutely rubbish at painting like I am, you'll hate this option.

On a last note: the ammo links are too rigid. You can sort of bend them. They'll snap and disintegrate though. You'll be limiting it to just dioramas and not much else.

This Week's Project:: Conduit and Cards

2011-05-22T18:09:00.001-06:00

With the head completed, I can judge how much mass I'll be dealing with for the head. The neck is identical in concept to those wooden art horse models that you may have seen: three cables threaded through multiple cutaway sections. It allows for the neck to bend in all sorts of fun directions while resembling a a knife rack. I opted to go with this design over any others since there's not much else that works and looks any better. Also, it works, period.

I split the neck into 20 minor sections composed of 5mm thick sections, and one large 30mm long section. From my understanding, the three bones near the head don't have much movement and the head will likely block the movement when angled down, so there's no point adding articulation that won't be utilized. I originally thought of making the sections 10mm thick, but it would look terrible and have poor movement.

Each section is composed of four cards thickness, so they're stiff enough for shape but not entirely rigid as an eight card thick layer. They taper from 30mm wide x 55mm long to 38mm wide x 80mm long. Approximately 10 stacks were used, so 40 cards total. The neck pivot required its own special assembly, which took 3 stacks, or 12 cards.

In order to get the neck to retain a pose, I selected some conduit that I happened to have lying around. Why do I have conduit lying around, you ask? Who doesn't have conduit lying around, I say! It's one of the fundamental building tools for paper modeling, next to sheet metal and and epoxy. Anyone who says otherwise still uses glue sticks and 100% post consumer content paper to make model La Pietàs. I originally chose three bundles, but that proved difficult to bend. The top and bottom rows need to slide within the 3.175mm diameter holes I made, and the conduit was just enough to not allow for smooth movement. For now, I made the center wire a conduit bundle, and opted for a twisted pair of two regular 20 gauge electrical wires for the top and bottom. I'll probably add a third after some more testing.

The head-neck assembly will be done with a hinge, secured by a nut and bolt. I needed to make an assembly to interface with the hollow head, so I made a partial bucket shaped thing and glued it to the hinge top. Not much to say about my lack of planning here, except that it worked out fine.

The head adapter fits inside the hollow head. I had to modify the head to allow for the adapter to fit in properly. That meant reducing material in the front of the neck and about 10mm from the back, shaped to adapt to the curvature of the adapter and neck. There's some part of the adapter still showing, but that will be trimmed to fit.

Here's the inside of the head. Looks a bit more professional than sanded Hand of Emrakuls bonded together with printer paper.

To attach the neck to the body, I used another 4 card stack to make a mounting plate. Right now, I jammed in the conduit end and it's being held in place by that alone. I'll need to make some stabilizer structures to keep it from wobbling. I'll also need a more permanent and sturdy means of providing neck articulation for the top and bottom wires. For now, the neck can do some decent poses, but can't do a straight extend. The weight tends to make it curve.

Total costs so far: 124 cards on the neck assembly + 122 cards on the head and body= 246 cards. It's looking unlikely that I'll hit the under 300 mark with the remaining parts left. Then again, a smaller scale horse still costs more than the equivalent of 300 commons. If I increase my budget to 400 cards, it'll be about $100 at the rate of $0.25 a common (or $40 at $0.10 a common), which is still better than what they'd fetch if I tried to sell someone a stack of Kurgadons or Ingenious Thiefs.

I Have Chunks of Hands of Emrakul Everywhere

2011-05-19T21:28:00.000-06:00

I'm finally at a stage where I can put a meaningful post on progress. Work has been started on the horse's head, since there's no point building something with the body of a horse and the head that resembles a pile of mutilated Centaur Veterans.After some load testing on a mock up neck mechanism, I decided that the best option is to reduce as much weight as possible and go for a hollow head. A solid one would be too massive to support using wire bundles. Since I plan on having the skin be the backing of Magic: the Gathering cards, I'll need to make it without carving out details. Papercraft to the rescue!

I could be progressive and use modern methods like drawing a terrible rendition of a horse using Sketchup and importing it into Pepakura, then turning it into a paper model. That method's not very fun. I'll go at it the more archaic way that uses simultaneously less and more effort.We'll be making the head using a casting!

Starting off with a base of LEGO bricks, I form the rough shape of the head, so I don't have to expend extra resources shaping a mock up horse head.

After some quick work piling on kneaded eraser, I end up with half a horse's head. Just a half, since it's symmetrical and I can mirror the pattern for the other half.

We bust out the stripchart thermal paper and form a mold. Why stripchart thermal paper? I have rolls of it from work and no stripchart to use them in. The step is just like making a papier-mâché mask: layer strips of paper and glue it together over the object in question with reckless abandon to actual sculpting skill. The shape still needs to be close to the original sculpt, otherwise the next step is worthless. The goal is to make a thin shell of the original.

With the shell removed off the kneaded eraser sculpt, you'll have the negative to cut and flatten to form a template. The trick is to understand how paper behaves and where the folds would likely happen. It's like peeling an orange and keeping the peel in one part. Useless for the majority of you, since you won't be making castings with playing cards. This technique is going to be the core of all the horse's construction from here on out. The resulting template gets tested out on cardstock before the final build with actual cards.

Behold, a horse's head, made out of Hand of Emrakuls. There's still slivers of them near the base. Took me five of them and a Predator's Strike to form a head, or a converted mana cost of 47! They were quite playable in retrospect, but I hate Timmy creatures.

I'm mildly happy with the results. I achieved the goal of forming a hollow horse's head. Just need to form a mount for the rest of the structure. Total costs incurred so far: 122 (6 cards used on the head) Now for some fun with a hollow horse's head, non-Godfather style.

I am Heavy Weapons Horse!

Heavy Weapons Horse is hungry!

I'm almost finished with the neck mechanism. Hopefully, by the weekend, I'll have attached the head to the neck. Or I may end up stabbing horses in Mount and Blade.

This Month's Project: Horse Legs

2011-05-01T15:32:00.000-06:00

Been about a two months since I decided to build a horse. After much time of not trying, I made some progress. I've finished drafting up plans for the legs and am happy with the overall status. No point posting plans since you will never want to build these. I also still have no plans for the neck and head so far.

The leg system is largely unchanged from other endeavors: 16 card thick hinge pieces with screws.I should be using larger fasteners, but I still have a good stockpile of parts remaining. Only difference is the overall larger size of each component, and less modular nature. What you see here is a sense of how many cards were destroyed to build the horse's legs. Quite a bit this time. A set of forelegs and hind legs used 22 sheets of 4 card stacks, for a total of 88 cards. Already close to my original arbitrary goal of 300 cards. I ruined one part due to drawing errors, adding eight more cards to development costs. Sixteen cards were used to build the templates, with four being scrapped. That brings up the total expenditure (including the four used in development two months ago) to 116 cards used. In case there's any doubters that I am not using basic lands, and am, in fact, using crap commons, here's some of the templates used to build the legs:

Good old crappy Ice Age. Seems that I accumulated a stack of oddly glossier Ice Age cards. I never liked them due to their odd finish that ruined and came off easier than the regular coat and used them for templates. Turns out that they were sort of uncommon in print run, but nothing worth celebrating about. A glossy Pyknite is still useless.

I spent some time figuring out the leg range of motion for each part using various photos and references. I'm probably off by a good margin, but I have the general movement mapped out. If you're interested, you're better off buying a book on horse anatomy (which I didn't), or studying one properly (which I didn't). My measurements aren't the most reliable.

The most important parts of the project are the legs, neck, head and, for a lack of a better term, chassis. Everything else will be freehanded like the camel, and skinned with a coat of card, hopefully. Right now, it's going to be a horse made of scaffolding.

This is where the horse currently stands. The joints can be tightened enough to allow me to do this, and hopefully retain this pose with additional weight from the rest of the horse's body. As a test of joint strength, I added some test mass to the neck region to give a good estimate on what to expect. What better to simulate the mass of 60 more magic cards than someone made of about 60 Magic cards?

Hotaru proved that the hinges need a lot of tightening. I could stack the Heavy on the front and provide a more rigorous test. I had some difficulty keeping the rear legs angled correctly with just Hotaru, and it will be trickier once there's more mass to work with. I'll have to readjust the center of mass once I develop the head, much like the camel.

It'll probably be a while before I figure out the neck and head components. Until now, it's a glorified barricade horse. I now have a good idea of how crazy of a size this thing is going to be, fully built.

This Weekend's Project: Cleanup

2011-04-09T18:53:00.000-06:00

Never officially finished the Demoman and posted any of the results on this blog. Been overdue for two years. Wasn't entirely happy with how it came out, but I had a chance to redo some of the problems I really didn't like about the first attempt. It's a good opportunity to share what I've learned during the process.

First, I didn't like how I did the head. Plain generic expression. I carved a slight grin to his face. Can't say it's my best work, but it helps a lot. Not bothering to completely redo the head this time. It wasn't as bad as the first Medic's head. That was horrible. This was one of the later sculpts that wasn't entirely made of suck.

When I started out, I was still using some lackluster materials to accomplish the job. Notably belts made of black construction paper fastened together with a wire hook that was neither strong or pleasant to look at. Had a chance to correct that by making some fake leather belts. Picked up an imitation leather wallet and stripped it apart for materials. They're just long enough to make a belt, with some extra length to it. In this case, they were enough to go from the Y shape fork in the back to the front belt. It being vinyl, it was easier to assemble than regular cloth. I had the lovely option of either sewing the belt straps together, or just using hot glue to get them into place. Either method provided a satisfactory result. If you're trying to avoid seamwork, a thin application of hot glue will work. Just don't expect stellar results in extreme heat. Or leave him out in the sun.

The grenades on his vest were made of Sculpey. Bad idea. They were heavy, and not to mention, didn't glue well to anything. I had made sleeves around the thick middle section, and glued those to the straps. Now with better tech, I made the grenades out of 110lb cardstock rolls that are much lighter and more willing to be hot glued into place. I did experiment with fabric glue, but that wasn't strong enough to hold that into place. It may have been if I had let the fabric glue cure for more than an hour. I wasn't taking any chances.

The smiley face was originally paper taped to his crotch. I guess that's how it's supposed to be. It doesn't provide a good result though in 1:6 scale as the tape degrades. For a permanent solution, I glued the paper drawing to a small piece of white cloth, left 2-3mm of cloth over the top, and sewed it to the pants. Fabric glue in this case worked wonders. Don't even bother trying using regular glue with fabric.

The pants themselves, I altered so they weren't as loose at the waist. Not sure what I was thinking at the time, but they were obscenely baggy. As a result, he had loose rapper pants that constantly needed pulling up. Unfortunately, unlike rappers, he didn't have underwear. That was a dead giveaway that his body wasn't actually black either... I added velcro to his fly and narrowed the waist to allow for less mishaps involving pants. Because a drunken man and pants never tend to be good friends.

I learned long ago that you cannot paint directly on rubber. Well, you can, but it doesn't stick. It rubs off easily and does nothing useful for something that will receive heavy play. However, I did learn that if you put kneadatite over rubber, you can cheat and make it paintable. It does add a ridiculous amount of thickness to the medium, which in the case of a flexible rubber hand, any thickness is ridiculous. The hands were immobile and not even worth trying to use to hold anything. Method #2 to the rescue! With the power of enamel paint, you can paint rubber, just not well. If you cover it with a layer of Loc-tite or super glue of any sort, it'll form a nice solid layer that's thin but still somewhat ok. I haven't fully tested the durability of it, but it's an improvement. You may ask "why not just buy a body of the correct skin color?" I'll reply with "This body cost $5 and the correct one costs $30." That body also requires a totally different head. I'm not making another head. Inverse Michael Jackson it is!

Now that the Demoman's officially done, I'm liking him a little better than how it was originally. I didn't make many photos with him in it due to his hands being a liability in holding props. And that he looked mediocre. Now, I can close the project also officially get rid of it for extra shelf space. It's finally in a state that I'd consider "presentable" and safe for someone to handle.

Loot Haul: C2E2

2011-03-26T07:48:00.000-06:00

Haven't made much progress on the horse yet. Neck's a big issue. I did however get a chance to examine a wooden artist's reference model at this year's C2E2. Figured out what I needed to be able to replicate. Those wooden horses cost $99, which surprised me.

I did browse the stalls for some 1:6 scale loot to haul back with me. I didn't find a cache of guns like I did at Wizard World '07, but I did find something unexpected...

Why, it's a 2004 Donald Trump talking doll from The Apprentice! After about seven years, the battery works still. You can probably pick this up on purpose for under $5 at the right places, but I found this for $10. I didn't care much about picking him up for comedic purposes, but more for a $10 suit.

The Man
Donald Trump's a solid guy. He's actually designed with hard stops in his neck to prevent you from spinning his head 360°, Exorcist style. That was unexpected. His hands are massively rigid and can't do anything short of karate poses and breakdances.

He has no waist articulation due to the electronics, but that's fine. You won't be buying this for poseability. In fact, you won't be buying this at all because it's pretty useless outside of the suit. Last week, his joints were still stiff, but now, his left leg is loose and swings around by gravity. The doll has the same hip strength as the real one. Their party days are all over.

His feet are painted on, and the shoes are integral to his legs. Not bad shoes either. Just a shame I can't move them around. The paint comes off after a few poses, but in most cases, he'll have pants on to hide that problem. The shoes do scuff off the paint easily, so you'll end up with flesh colored shoes after a while. Definitely not something that was meant to be played with roughly. Guess we'll leave the manhandling to Ivana.

The Suit
I did find some issues with the suit, but that's to be expected for a $10 suit. I had a suit for $10 once and it was terrible, but acceptable considering the cost. You don't complain when you spent less than the cost of lunch on a suit.

Wet Willy be dammed, your suit is coming off!

The suit itself was nice. Had a inner lining, which was surprising. I was expecting just the outer side being done neatly. However, the pockets are rubbish and non functional, which is acceptable. They were sewn on with less skill than the rest of the suit though, with loose threads coming out. Makes it look like Trump is on hard times in 1:1 scale and 1:6 scale.

The shirt was flawless for what it was. I had to separate the collar from the shirt, as it was sewn down to hold the tie in place. It did have cuffs that could be buttoned (or snapped together), which was a nice touch, considering most people won't be stripping Donald naked routinely (unless that's your thing).

The tie was very low quality. It's held in place by an elastic string. The string's conveniently short enough just to not fit around Donald's fat, solid, unyielding head that you need to cut off the string to liberate him from his clothes. I made the mistake of trying to untie the tie and now it needs some help to get back to operational status. It'll make a good modified clip on tie...perfect for a budget Trump.

The pants have no belt loops, but that's fine. They do have leg cuffs, and the legs also are WIDE. They were sewn with a generous allowance for even the fattest of Elvis impersonators. Actually, all his clothes are done with rather wide arm and leg openings. The pants do fit other figures fine without any problems. Just need to make sure nothing snags on the seams while you put them on.

Overall
Make no mistake, I did buy the Trump doll just for one person, and one person only. Perhaps the silliest $10 spent. Considering what I spent for Golgo 13's other suit, this is fairly acceptable.

As for what to do with a naked Donald Trump...

J.Norad Reviews: Hot Toys Modern Firearms Set 4

2011-02-26T19:39:00.001-06:00

Picked up a box of Hot Toys 1:6 Scale Modern Firearms, Series 4. They were still selling them at HobbyGen.com for $119 a box. There's a few other places that still stock them if you want to pick up the entire set, but before you do that, let's find out whether it's worth the bother.

They come 12 to a pack, and take up as much volume as other blind boxed trading figure sets. I was quite surprised when I opened the first one, with how loosely secured the box was. Seemed like they used hot glue to close the packages and did a poor job with it. There were no descriptive cards with any of the weapons, unlike Furuta and Zacca. Just plain old $12 of gun.

What struck me as odd was that each of the packs were labeled to what gun was inside with a stamped checkmark (see photo). It didn't look like the seller had opened it and taken the time to give me a full set of guns, which led to one conclusion: These sets aren't blind boxed, meaning they're not randomly packed. Buying a full box gives you a guaranteed set. Not sure if this was the same as Series 1-3. If you guys happen to know how those were packed, let me know via the comments.

Sadly, they don't come with a display stand. I'm still using the display board that came with my 1:6 scale bazooka sets. It's fine though, but it would have been extra cool if they did.

The AKM
Not going to bother covering this. You either want this or you don't. Has a drum mag and a folding wire stock.

The SCARs
There's absolutely no reason why any of you need four FN SCARs. Seriously.

From top to bottom: SCAR-L STD (tan and black), SCAR-L CQC, SCAR-H-LB

For those of you who do, here's the lowdown:

All four have extendable stocks and can be folded to the right
Silencer on the SCAR-H LB is removable
Bipod on the SCAR-H-LB is removable, and swivels
Scopes are glued on except for the SCAR-H LB. Rear sight can move along the rail. Iron sights can be folded down or propped up.
SCAR-L STDs have a bipod stored in the fore grip that can be pulled out. which is nice
The SCAR-H LB is properly stamped as being 7.62mm cal on the side

Unfortunately, while the details are well done, they had an issue with the text. Apparently, this gun's made by FN Heatsel, Belgium. It shows up on all four rifles. The text on the scopes does read "For law enforcement/Military use", which was nice. Wondering if the typo was a usual engrish copy error, or a deliberate typo to not get in trouble for copyrights. Then I noticed that they had the brands for all the scopes labeled correctly. Guessing it's engrish. All four SCARs are about the same to me but I'd have to pick the LB variant.

The M4A1's

There's honestly only one of these you'd want. You do not need all three M4A1's. You probably have tons of these already.

From top to bottom: M4A1 with XM26 LSS, and two M4A1's with M93 stocks

Stoner's properly spelled right on these... so wondering what the deal with the Heatsel was for the SCARs. My tan M4A1 looked warped. Came out of the pack with the front barrel section misaligned by ~5-10 degrees to the left. The stock and barrel were curved upwards slightly. My magazine for the XM26 LSS was loose fitting and does not stay in securely. The clear magazines have issues from assembly, where the adhesive fogged up the inner section, making the magazine not perfectly clear.

Here's the finer details of the M4A1's.

Flippable dust caps for the scopes
Scope for the black M4A1 was glued on, while the tan was not.
Foregrip and flashlight assembly can be forcibly removed if desired; weren't glued on.
Extendable stocks
XM26 LSS has a spring loaded cocking lever and the barrel shroud extends out (presumably to minimize transport damage)
Moving dust covers!

Pretty obvious what you'd want to pick up, because few manufacturers make XM26's.

The M-14's

These things are massive.

From top to bottom: SOCOM II, EBR with M4 stock, and EBR long barrel.

The magazines are very loose. The magazine wells for the EBRs were a thousandth of an inch wider than the magazines.You can fix that by applying some super glue to the sides of the magazine wells and letting them harden to fill in the gap. Just don't stick in a magazine before it dries. One of my magazines looked like it was covered in excess glue residue. My EBR long stock came with a scope latch missing. Not noticeable, but annoying knowing it's missing. The only fun features are the spring loaded cocking levers for the EBRs and the extendable stock for the EBR long barrel. However, there's one little surprise for the SOCOM II.

The rubber butt guard lifts up to reveal a hinged panel for where the cleaning kit goes! It seems to go in 3.5cm deep if you want to stash a cleaning kit in there, if you are that bored to build one. It's difficult to open without tools, so be warned.

The SOCOM II's the best of the batch, with its appearance, properly molded magazine (which curiously does not fit in the EBRs) and detachable suppressor.

The HK-417
I think if this set was blind boxed, the HK-417 is the best model of this series. Thing is loaded with little details that make it so much better than the other models.

First, the biggest thing to note is that you can separate the upper receiver. It's the only model of the set that can do this. None of the M4A1s were given this feature. It has flippable dust covers for the scope lenses and the ejector port. The front iron sight can be moved. the bipod is adjustable and is spring loaded. The stock extends.

The most overlooked feature is the charging handle. This was surprising as none of the M4's had this.

I did find some short comings with this model. The magazine is near impossible to remove. I fought hard to remove the magazine after jamming it in there. Measured the difference with my micrometer and found the well was 3 thousandths of an inch too small for the magazine. The magazine could have been given a chamfer to help guide it in the magazine well too. I had to shave the inner walls to get the magazine to not be permanently stuck in there.

The markings were fairly good, until you look at the right side. You really need to have good eyes to catch this, because at a fair distance, it looks fine. Odd how it has the HK logo on the reverse but has this misspelled.

"Heeklor and Keeh GmbH". At least they spelled "Sterling VA" right.

The Verdict

If you want a highly detailed model of any of the reviewed firearms, Hot Toys does not disappoint. It's pricey at $13 apiece minimum compared to the lower quality Zacca P.A.P. models but you get what you pay for. They can be had for about $15 from most 1:6 scale hobby shops online, or e-bay. The redundancy of some of the models makes picking up the set a bad idea, so I highly suggest only picking the ones you like. You seriously do not need 4 SCARs.

J.Norad Attempts Resuming Useless Projects

2011-02-24T22:16:00.000-06:00

It's about time I set my sights on a big target again. The past month has been spent doing retrofit work on the girls, and before that, custom jobs. Actually, most of it was spent playing older games. Finished STALKER: Call of Pripyat and working on Hitman: Contracts. Haven't found anything from those two games that I'd want to replicate so far. They were a nice change of pace from manufacturing rifles in a small dark room.

Going to start drafting plans for a 1:6 scale horse. May decide to skin the horse like the camel and have it visibly be made of Magic cards. Seems like a 1:6 scale horse runs about $200-$300 for a good one. Since this is the Vortex of Suck, I'm going to try to make an articulated 1:6 scale horse for under 300 Magic cards. With a common being about $0.10-0.25, that should put my budget (including prototpying and development work) at $30-$75. Tenth of the cost and maybe a tenth of the quality! How will this endeavor turn out? Probably with massive failure!

I'll be trying my best to post updates for once and track the total costs incurred so far. However, Agent 47 may derailing my plans.

This week's expenditures:
4 Magic cards used (development work on the neck mechanism)

This Fortnight's Project: Camel Expedition

2011-02-13T14:30:00.000-06:00

Trying to get better at sculpting organic models again. Built some mediocre ones back in 2004 out of masking tape and paper and they were mildly decent, albeit not very pretty. This time, I attempted to apply new materials with old technology. Per request, I tried working on a camel.

The hardest part was to make a decent head. To do this, I bust out some 8 year old kneaded eraser and molded my attempt at a camel head. I used the same techniques used to build Aelia's armor (along with general clothing) to create a paper cast of the camel head. From there, I transferred the cast to a papercraft pattern, which eventually became a model made of Magic: the Gathering cards.

The body was largely done in this manner. The internal structure of the camel was built first using an arrangement of tubes, then the camel's hide was molded around it. That hide was then flayed off and converted to another pattern that was transferred to Magic cards. The card layer is one thick and connected on the edges underneath by another thickness of card.

And here's the finished result. Not my best work, but not bad for a first foray into static animal models out of card.

Will be returning back to regular projects after some more tech research. Until then, time to explore the barren wastelands of the living room.

Miscellaneous Updates for January 2011

2011-01-31T22:18:00.000-06:00

Time for some much needed updates. I've previously showcased unpainted models of the Sticky Launcher and the Pancor Jackhammer, in unpainted states. I finally got around to painting them.

Not the most exciting model I've done, visually. The wood color was done using a dash of Dark Red, liberal use of Flat Brown, and some Rubber enamel paints. The green was done with a mix of Dark Tan and Dark Green. The rest are standard Greys and Flat Black/Grey mixes. Figured I'd post what I used so I'd remember if I ever needed to make another one of these things. I coated the trigger button with Loc-tite to improve durability and reduce the paint from rubbing off after repeated firings.

I hesitated in painting the Jackhammer because I was certain it would look like rubbish after I painted it. It looked partly like rubbish, so I think I succeeded. I covered it with a thin coat of black acrylic as a base, then used Flat Black enamels to finish it off. I chose to paint the barrel aluminum to reflect the last prototype photos of the MK3A1 I used as reference. Gave it a good contrast. The barrel was coated with a layer of Loc-tite glue to help reduce wear on the sliding pump.

With older jobs out of the way, time to showcase some loot. The second Minigun, S/N 0002, was successfully bartered for foodstuffs with someone with way more skill than I do. Feel free to visit her livejournal, since unlike me, she actually sells stuff because her stuff is made with quality and not with freakin Magic cards.

So I got a ramen bowl, a submarine sandwich, cookies, a chocolate heart, a chocolate bar, and the Cake from Portal. Also received a bunch of extras like a soy sauce bottle and what suspiciously looks like a package of either dried fungus or chinese herbal tea. The craftsmanship is obscene for the ramen and sandwich. I probably could have gotten more from the trade, but I'm pleased with the goods. I did trade about 12 Tenth Edition commons and 10 sheets of cardstock for it all....also considering I'm terrible at making anything other than firearms or furniture.

Now, for some post-loot trophy photos.

It's so moist and delicious!

"No."

"WAAAH! Your sandvich is longer than mine!"

There's also one last item that I received that I shall treasure very much. A Hello Kitty cup.

Golgo 13 is extra manly now.

J.Norad Reviews: Intoyz 1:6 PSG-1

2011-01-08T12:43:00.000-06:00

Adding to my collection of "Sniper rifles in cases", I bought an INTOYZ PSG-1 (2000, ~$15 shipped) Been debating getting one for a while. First thoughts when I received the item was the sheer size of the carded item.

Thing is huge.

Way larger than I expected the card to be. If you're planning on buying one online, this will explain the shipping costs.

Out of the Box

The case is rather unspectacular. It at best resembles a Black Monolith pencil case from the 1990s with a remnant of a shop rack hangar tab on the top. The hinges are great, however, as they use metal pins. Gives a sense of confidence in repeated use with those.

Opening up the case, we get two magazines (one in the rifle already), a folding bipod, and five spare bullets. The set comes with five spent casings, but there's no way to store them conveniently in the case.

The spent casings are nice for dioramas, but you'll end up stashing them in a small zip baggie and storing them in a case where you can't lose them.

Details

INTOYZ has a lot of nice little details on their model. First, is the safety selector lever.

The lever has two detents to rest at, so they don't keep moving. They seem to have a hard stop as well, so you can't swivel them 360°. Also nice to have the selector markings.

This model has a spring loaded cocking lever so you can fiddle with it at your leisure. Not something you'd really need, but it adds to the overall level of detail. Some people tend to try moving the cocking lever on 1:6 scale guns, or maybe that's just me.

The rifle comes with a folding bipod. It can slide along the bottom front grip of the rifle, and neatly folds up. I didn't find it too sturdy when folded down. The legs tended to bow out and the left one has become slightly loose, and tends to pop out. Something to keep in mind if you intend on using the bipod as a load bearing structure and not as a decorative item.

Here you can see the full extent you can move the bipod back. Also visible is the safety selector markings on the right side.

The magazine has molded bullets, but they seem smaller than the loose cartridges. not a big deal as you won't be looking at these too often side by side. They're molded well, complete with the rim.

Annoyances
This model is pretty good. However, I have one complaint about the case. There's no ideal way to store the extra bullets in the case, as provided.

Closed up and latched, the bullets will shift around a bit, which is expected. However, the slightest crack will result in bullets all inside the case. Fine if they haven't shifted around like the above image, but they'll tend to migrate into the bipod area and into the rifle region. I think they should have used the space for holding the second magazine and not have one in the magazine well. I'm probably going to do that since I don't like the idea of losing tiny pieces. Into the bag of loose ammo casings they go!

The main reason I picked up the PSG-1 was for my Yamato Solid Snake. I was pleased to find that the grip slid into his stiff hands with relative ease. Snake's hands are absurdly stiff and difficult to get some rifle grips in there. The PSG-1 slid in like Snake's hands were designed for it.

Unfortunately, his other hand isn't.

I tried using the bipod for a prone shot, but the bipod wasn't good for supporting the rifle as it was being pushed downwards by the arms of Snake. Not a lot of figures can do this position (Snake can't do it too well), but if you do find one, the bipod should give you less problems.

Overall
I was pleased with the construction and general build quality. There are only four PSG-1 models I'm aware of on the market in 1:6 scale. One being from Hot Toys' Resident Evil line, the second being the Yamato version from the Sniper Wolf doll, and the other being ZACCA's World Weapon Collection. Hot Toys' PSG-1 is perhaps the easiest to obtain loose, with ZACCA being the rarest. However, in terms of overall detail, the INTOYZ model may be the best if you like all the little mechanical details. Molding quality and paint, I would probably guess Hot Toys' has a leg up in little molding details. However, I didn't see the right side safety indicator markings on some product images of their PSG-1.

If you don't care about the case and just want the rifle, you're better off getting a loose Hot Toys' rifle. The bipod may be too fidgety and the remaining details may be too delicate for rough play. It's a lot cheaper if you're on a budget to get a loose rifle.

On a side note, INTOYZ also makes a MSG-90 which can be bought for approximately the same price as the PSG-1. As far as I know, no one else makes a MSG-90 model in 1:6 scale.

This Week's Project: Weight Loss Program for Miniguns

2011-01-01T00:03:00.000-06:00

Chalk up another item on the list of "things I'd prefer not to ever redo but ended up doing anyways".

I had an opportunity to try out building something with the new revised minigun schematics I posted a while back. Seems that there's some errors that needed to be corrected with those schematics, in terms of a few dimensions being wrong. As posted, they either require longer support arms on the handle mount bracket (sheet 2), or a shorter profile on the outer barrel support (sheet 1). A modification of 2mm more on the handles or 2mm less on the outer barrel support (actually that needs to be dimensioned in general) will fix the problems. Oh well. None of you actually are using my plans anyways, so you're not affected.

Since this build used the newer schematics and improved building methods, I have officially designated this model as the "production" model. I've taken the opportunity to try out different build methods to lighten up the minigun as much as possible. Also, I've forgotten how I built it in the first place, so I had to.

The main differences in the production model and the prototype involve the larger, more liberal use of Magic cards. The whole handle bracket for the prototype was purely 110lb cardstock, whereas I've taken the opportunity to experiment with hollowed assemblies for the lower bracket. The ammo chute, power control module and bottom pipe mount were built the same way with Magic cards. The piping itself was done properly, at the elbow. I achieved a cleaner bend by notching sections of tube evenly to form a gentler curve than the atrocious abrupt elbow on the prototype model.

The drum is the biggest change. I made the drum as thin as possible knowing that a wall thickness of 1mm is sufficient for the mildly cosmetic nature of the shape, and that I was going to reinforce the middle and ends with a three card layer circle plug. There's now a taper from the aluminum section to the start of the black region, a task not feasible back then in the era of manual sanding. Having a Dremel allows for greater opportunities! The end caps on the prototype may have been constructed from a back of a art sketch pad due to the supreme rigidity. That material is also significantly heavier than Magic cards.

The minigun barrel spindle assembly was built with purely 110lb cardstock this time. I think I may have used a plastic tube in the prototype to reduce friction. That may also have been a big factor in the weight reduction.

The rest of the build was the same as the last. Except I had no idea how I pulled off making the rear handle bracket without a Dremel. Or in general. I ended up shearing off a section in the middle and needed to reinforce it with a paper clip rod. I'll call that "planned strategic structural enhancement".

I noticed a long way though that I undersized the minigun barrels from 6.35mm to 5mm. I don't really care and I don't think anyone else does either. It looks OK as is. Makes painting the barrel assembly easier.

Here's the completed production model Sasha, Serial Number 0002 (assigned one, as though I'll be making more, but you never know). The Mini MS stand I bought a while back finally found a good purpose. Just the right height to display this monstrosity.

The build took around a week (with copious breaks in between part fabrication), and definitely was made easier with pre-existing plans. However, I had some quality issues with the large drum that resulted in a warped outer surface. That entire drum needed to be scrapped and redone, costing a day's worth of work. It's not particularly an annoying project to do, but it's not pleasant either. I did achieve a noticeable weight reduction, but not enough to allow the minigun to be properly wielded by the Heavy.

As for the fate of Prototype S/N 0001, it shall remain in possession of The Vortex as no smart person would want the flawed model (and I actually like the older one better for some reason). S/N 0002 shall be used as barter for rare and exotic trade goods.

Finishing up the VSS and Case

2010-12-11T14:55:00.000-06:00

Last time, I covered building the VSS "Vintorez" sniper rifle. This time, I'll highlight the carrying case.

The build is similar to the Golgo 13 gun case, with the exception that I have no idea what the rest of the case looks like other than the inside. The walls are 4 cards thick, with a 2mm overlap between top and bottom covers. The case seems to have different latches and handle, so I'll be using a newer design for those.

I have a ton of leftover foam from the Golgo 13 case. Absolutely annoying to trim and cut. What I did was trace out a template of the parts arrangement on some paper, then attempted to cut that pattern on several layers of foam. The case is fairly deep, and it required three sheets of foam.

Each layer of foam differed, requiring the three different patterns shown above. A larger block of foam would have been extremely annoying to cut out in this case. As usual, the foam is completely different colored from what the inside of the case is, and visually showcasing black gun parts on a black background is terrible.

The handle looked like a double hinged attachment, so a bent paper clip tacked in place with some cards worked fine.

I had more liberty with experiment with hinge sizes this time. The hinges are composed of two 2mm wide strips of 110lb cardstock glued together using loc-tite to strengthen it. They were then folded over a paper clip to form the hinge hole. The sections were then staggered and glued together to form two hinge halves. The overall thickness of the hinges was under 3mm, closer to 2mm.

I could not find a feasible method of reproducing the latches on the actual VSS gun case. Mostly because I couldn't tell what they looked like. So I went with generic suitcase latches. The overall width was 3mm, requiring some narrow strips of cardstock. The construction method is the same as the rear case hinges, but uses two narrow 1mm strips for one side, and one narrow 1mm strip for the latch. These had to be strong enough to not snap off after 5 uses, but not bulky. I fixed that by effectively soaking the sides of the hinge pieces with super glue and letting them sit.

As great as the prototype colors look, I had to eventually ruin the project with my crappy painting skills. At least, just the gun part. The case may not see paint for a while. Onward to failure!

This gun used mostly flat black enamels. The stock was a nice mix of dark red, flat brown, and "rubber" enamel. Turned out better than I expected (meaning it didn't look like complete crap). I have no idea how to make textured surfaces like stucco, so the grip is a smooth finish. Anyways, here's some more images of the completed sniper rifle.

So, Golgo 13 has a choice of covert sniper rifles to use. Options are always great.

For the people completely uninterested in reading blocks of any text at all, here's a video demonstrating the case.

This Month's Project: 1:6 Scale VSS "Vintorez"

2010-12-08T19:41:00.000-06:00

This month's project could be tied to the game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl, but I actually chose it on other merits. The VSS Vintorez silenced sniper rifle is an interesting weapon for a few reasons. Its existence as an integrated silenced sniper rifle alone is notable. It also is a fully automatic sniper rifle. I was more interested in the idea that it was capable of being disassembled and stored into a carrying case for Spetsnaz operatives to use. The goal this month was to design and build a 1:6 scale VSS Vintorez that can be disassembled and stored into a briefcase.

Since there's a whopping one image of the briefcase, it was a tough job. The goal is to replicate the configuration of this case, down to the specific scopes used. In this case, there are three 10 round magazines, one 1P43 scope, and one MBNP-1 night vision scope. The MBNP-1 was reverse engineered with the help of this site, and the 1P43 scope was built with the lone side view offered by this site. Most images of the VSS feature it with a PSO-1 scope, which was not one of the scopes in this case.

First, we get some helpful side profile images as usual, then scale them down. For this, I mapped out each section and how they'd integrate with each other. The toughest part was devising a means to attach the stock to the receiver. Otherwise, this gun is a very mediocre and easy build.

This is the base, composed of simple laminates, a box for the magazine well, and a rolled up paper tube fitted over a bamboo stick barrel.

Next, it's time for adding single sheets of 110lb cardstock to thicken out the smaller details, and carving off sections to form rounded areas.

Smaller pieces like the sights and safety were done with two sheets of Magic the gathering card thickness (in this case, X-Men TCG cards were handy).

The VSS has some side rail mounting system that I can't replicate in 1:6 scale, since I can't build a clamp that small. I however could copy the aesthetics with a single layer of MtG card and a lot of zealous gluing. Loc-tite and other super glues aren't good in shear, so I had to compensate by using MORE GLUE. Plastinating the entire section worked out ok.

Here's the major portions broken down. The magazine up to this stage is a placeholder.

The attachment mechanism worked out better than I hoped. It was a simple paper clip rod inserted into a groove covered by a single card. It was sturdy and had a very low profile.

Using the sites mentioned above, I was able to create close replicas of the scopes in question. I have a bit of uncertainty about their actual names, but I'm fairly confident I have the dimensions done right. These were done using my spreadsheet for making cones and solid cylinders. The goal was to have clear lenses as well, so they're hollow in the center with proper recesses to allow fitting of plastic lenses.

The mounting method was tough to plan out, given the small workspace. The requirement was to have something 1mm thick, but rigid, and also have a means of attaching it to the side of the VSS. Paper clips are about 0.8mm thick, and alone weren't enough to fill out the frame. I turned to an unlikely resource that I had accumulated: hard plastic card sleeves. Gaming resources unite! Two sheets of hard plastic card sleeve glued with Loc-tite made a fairly stiff sheet. Gluing this to a bent paper clip allowed me to make a thin but sturdy component.

For mounting the scopes, I ended up having to cheat. I drilled two 1/16" diameter holes into the side of the gun, and put a mating pin into the scope mounting brackets. I used more paper clips to serve as attachment rods. The original goal was to have the holes be hidden near the mounting rack things on the gun, but they were placed in not convenient locations. As a result, they're noticeable without a scope attached. However, the end result is stable, and the mounting rails catch the bracket frame on the scope to align the scopes up with just one pin.

VSS with the MBNP-1 scope attached.

The other scope was built in a similar manner, but with less overall complexity.

Next time, I'll cover the briefcase construction.

This Fortnight's Project: Sticky Launcher

2010-11-21T08:29:00.001-06:00

Decided to try compressing the firing mechanism used on the Rocket Launcher into a smaller space. As it stood, it used one mechanical pencil spring and one retractable pen spring. The goal was to simplify it down to a single spring for actuation and firing.

Mechanics
In reducing the size, I chose to use the smaller mechanical pencil spring (12mm uncompressed, 4mm compressed) as the propulsion method. Preliminary tests with the smaller spring yielded satisfactory results in terms of projectile range and speed.

The firing rod was also size reduced, with a diametrical drop from the Rocket Launcher's 3.175mm bamboo stick to a 3mm diameter Gundam part runner. The firing stroke was limited unlike the Rocket Launcher's massive 70mm displacement to a more modest 16mm. Previous experiments in firing mechanisms showed that additional stroke length did not appreciably contribute to projectile performance.

Actuation
This design uses a paper clip bent in a box shape to act as a flat spring. There are two "arms" that connect to an obstructing rod to block the head of the firing rod, with the remaining side fixed to the barrel. Actuation is provided by a 3m MtG laminated arch that depresses the paper clip arms, lowering the obstruction and allowing the firing rod to complete the stroke forwards. A very primitive mechanism, but it offered reliability.

The initial design used a fairly long flat spring, with arms 20mm long. It worked just as well after a reduction to 13mm in length. For this design, a shorter mechanism is ideal. A shorter spring provides a longer stroke and requires more effort to depress, giving the user more of a sensation of pushing a button.

Diagrams
Perhaps the most pointless part of the post, since none of you are ever going to try to build this. Posting it here as reference regardless. Only core mechanism parts are diagrammed. The model's fairly simple that you can half-ass the rest and still have it look decent.

Prototype Testing Results
The initial prototype cycled through several rounds successfully, but there was some sign of wear where the firing rod head contacted the latch spring. There was also a significant reliability problem with the initial design, where pushing the firing rod back with any ordinance met with some interference with the latch spring. To solve this problem, another step was added to the firing rod, so the latch secured a section in the middle of the firing rod head than at the front. Stroke travel was not affected.

Ammunition

For the sticky bomb, I used a clear Gundam runner and stuck the ball of spikey death on top. From estimates, a sticky has spikes that are 1/5 of the diameter in height. I wasn't concerned with accuracy of the sticky, but more of "will it fit in this stupid launcher". A 7mm ball with 2mm spikes barely worked, as my inner barrel diameter was 11mm. Had to trim them down a little to fit better. Also, for ease of loading, I opted not to put a spike on the front of the projectile.

Prototype Demonstration (With test fire)

I really need to learn how to make videos that don't suck so bad.

Notes
In another case of "crappy TF2 modeling", it should be noted that the game model when viewed in first person vastly differs from the model viewed in third person, unequipped. The dimensions for the side plates on the ammunition drum changes. The part that I presume is an ammunition ejection port also flops sides. I suggest that one or the other be chosen for making a replica, and not both. I used the 3rd person, unequipped viewmodel for this project.

In terms of production costs, this model can be assembled for around 6 Magic: the Gathering cards and some generous amounts of cardstock. Not that you'd need one since no one else has a 12" Demoman, and this model's pretty bland, visually.

Assembling a Sentry Gun

2010-11-07T06:53:00.000-06:00

Doing some more clean up with documentation. The TF2 Sentry Gun paper model is very under documented. Magically jumps from a base stand to a level 3 within four days.

I've recently uploaded revised schematics to replace the very ineffective ones posted about two years ago. However, there's no documentation of how the parts were assembled. Time to fill in those gaps.

Building a Sentry base
The base needs to be stiff. 110lb cardstock without special treatment methods will be ineffective in supporting the loads this model will encounter. Recommend using 110lb cardstock only for tubing and using thick laminates of Magic: the Gathering to assemble every part on the base.

Magic cards offer good strength for little material. Treat them like sheet metal when building the front legs. Use thicknesses of 8 cards to create 2.5mm thick sections. The curved side frame posts were built in that manner. A thickness of 4 cards was used for minor sections like the upper parts of the front legs.

110lb cardstock is weak when used as a plane sheet, but when rolled up with or without support of a 3.175mm wooden rod, it's sturdy. The main post and rod running through it were done with both methods: using a wooden inner rod and without.

These rear legs are very troublesome. You're going to have minimal adhesive holding these parts together. Recommend making biscuits and joints to connect the sections. Super glue is recommended for these parts.

Tubes, Tubes, Tubes

A lot of the sentry will be large sections of material. The trick is to lighten up the material as best as possible. The ammo drum was built almost like a papercraft model, with lots of empty space inside. Making the drum solid would contribute excess weight to an already unstable model. Here, there's the inner drum (left), outer support drum (middle), and the outer shell (right), which is composed of a tapered cylinder. The outer shell fits alongside the outer support drum to stiffen one side, while providing the tapered shape on the other side. Magic cards were used for the flat backside, offering good planar stiffness with minimal warping.

I built the ammo drum support arm in sections. Don't do that. Build this section as stiff as possible, and out of as few pieces as possible. This part is very problematic as it supports a lot of load and will be subject to constant bending for the rest of the life of the sentry. Don't even try using 110lb cardstock without some inner support material. Stiffer the better.

The minigun assemblies are designed to spin, but also designed for weight reduction. The arch shaped supports are fleshed out using tubes on the curved ends, and troughs made of Magic cards. Tubes offer stiffness with shape, and the cards offer stiffness with flat surfaces. The only time something needs to be completely solid is for shapes 3-4mm thick or less.

For the barrels, they span a length of 40mm, but you can support them on the edges with 12-16mm of material. This lightens up the parts significantly.

For this build, I considered using pre-existing plastic tubes to minimize friction when rotating. Not a big issue in the long run since it won't see much rotation. The tubes offered strength and volume for little effort. The barrels themselves need rework, but I've drafted new plans for a stronger set in the newer plan revisions.

There's a bit of sag from the barrel weight, since rolled up 110lb cardstock is still heavy. There's little room for a counterweight, but adding more mass to the supports only loads the center mounting plate more. The goal is to minimize overall weight as well as keeping it balanced. The first objective helps with the second.

The Turret

The rocket turret is another part that requires lightening. The image above demonstrates how it was built: four tubes running along the length, with tabs on the sides to allow for a cover to be placed around it. Build this like sheet metal and not like a milled object.

These support arm parts for the turret were built light and stiff. They may appear thick, but they're mostly hollow inside.

The amount of "large mass supported by a thin strut" situations on this model are numerous. Luckily, this is the least severe of the situations. The white support base is made of several layers of 110lb cardstock, but can be done with Magic cards. The trick is to use the thickness of the material to your advantage for small details.

Wiring the Sentry

This wire assembly can be tough. You'll need to find wire with a sleeve diameter of 3mm, or make your own by rolling printer paper around some thin wires. Printer paper is soft and bends easier than 110lb cardstock when rolled. Goal is to keep the rolled thickness to a minimum. Thicker the walls, harder to bend.

Attaching the wires to the plate can be done by leaving bare wire on the ends and threading it through a sheet. Just glue another sheet to sandwich the wire ends in, and they should remain in place.

I've documented the ammo belts here, and with the rest of the new diagrams, that should cover all the miscellaneous aspects of building the sentry gun.

Now.. Just need to properly present the completed model this time around.

Revised TF2 Sentry Gun Schematics

2010-11-06T08:46:00.000-06:00

Reworked all the original 1:6 scale Team Fortress 2 Sentry Gun schematics I had posted previously, so that people could actually use them. I was innundated by a single comment requesting the originals be refined. Should be fully documented to the extent that you could theoretically CAD and CNC your own parts. But would you trust the accuracy of a guy hand drawing part diagrams with a ruler, protractor and a circle template guide? Probably not!

There's 8 sheets to work with, 7 of which contain dimensioned drawings for all the individual components. They're designed to take advantage of common sizes when working with paper, so you'll see a lot of 3.175mm and 6.35mm diameter holes and tubes, corresponding to a 1/8" and 1/4" hole punch. Easier than cutting a 6mm circle by hand. Best built using 110lb cardstock and Magic: the Gathering cards.

Sheet 1: Deals with the center support post.

Sheet 2: Front legs and rear supports

Sheet 3: Mounting plate for miniguns and ammo drum

Sheet 4: Ammo Drum

Sheet 5: Rocket Turret assembly

Sheet 6: Miniguns

Sheet 7: Rear legs

Sheet 8: Miscellaneous Assemblies

Next time: tips on weight reduction and building techniques using these diagrams!

This Weekend's Project: Reworking the TF2 Rocket Launcher

2010-10-31T18:07:00.002-06:00

This weekend's project comes from the pile of "looked ok 2 years ago, but looks like crap compared to newer stuff" programs. The Soldier's rocket launcher has been a simple and primitive build. The paint has been very lackluster. However, there was little improvement possible for the build, leaving just a new paint job and maybe a few extra polygons.

Here's the 2008 prototype model (top), compared with the 2010 production model (bottom). Major changes include the less-half-assed construction, increased weight due to a liberal use of Magic: the Gathering cards for a stiffer build, thinner inner barrel diameter, and the addition of a firing mechanism.

Yes, this model fires out projectiles.

The Mechanism
Let's go build ourselves a working paper rocket launcher, shall we? First, let's explain a few things. This mechanism is a simple, using a total of two moving parts: a trigger and a launcher rod. There's two springs, easily obtained from mechanical pencils.

The mechanism works by the use of this odd shaped metal wand and a wooden 3.175 diameter dowel with a 6mm diameter head. The barrel diameter is 6.35mm, giving the rod enough clearance to move around freely.

The rod fits in a slot that runs through the diameter of the barrel.

The part that dips low at the top between the "ears" obstructs the head of the launcher rod from moving. Pushing the metal wand upwards into the slot in the barrel allows the dip to slide into the barrel wall, leaving the barrel clear. It's a simple mechanism that is reliable and fairly easy to build. The downside is that it requires a large diameter barrel to make good use of it.

The Build
You'll need the following schematics for the major components:

You'll need the following tools:

This excel spreadsheet from this explanatory post explaining how to make cylinders out of paper
110lb cardstock (don't even bother using printer paper)tack of Magic: the Gathering cards (or structural equivalent, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards need not apply.)
X-Acto knife and a cutting surface, and regular scissors
ruler
Sandpaper (coarse grit at a minimum)
Elmer's glue (any strength, but not a Glue Stick), and Super Glue of any type
Paper clips (smaller the diameter, the easier)
One 1/8" (3.175mm) diameter wooden stick
Guide to building with Magic: the Gathering cards (optional)
Pliers (Jewelry Beadmaking pliers HIGHLY recommended, regular needle nose pliers mandatory)
Badass paper clip bending skills

The level of involvement of Magic card use for this project is minimal and borderline optional. There's only one part that requires cards, and it's pretty easy. The biggest challenge will be your ability to bend a paper clip to this following component:

This is the key to a successful construction. The closer you are to the dimensions, the better the result. The two legs of the wand have a little protrusion for holding the end of the spring between the head and the middle of the wand. Without that small protrusion, the wand will slide out of the handle, and the spring won't have anything to push against. Your success will depend on whether you can replicate that out of a paper clip. Hope you bought that 100 pack. Don't even try it by hand.

About building the wand: Use a beadmaker's jewelry pliers with thin rounded tips to initiate small bends. After the bends get close to a "U" shape, compress the entire "U" together with needle nose pliers. You'll have two chances to get it right. You can usually undo the bend once before the metal is too fatigued and snaps apart with a second attempt.

About the spring: start from the wand's open end and take the termination end of the spring coil and thread it around the two legs. Spin the spring around until it eventually screws into the region. You should be able to compress the spring while it sits in between the wand head and the protrusions in the middle without any obstructions.

Building the components

The center object is the trigger housing. The housing preferably should be made of Magic cards. The side wall is 2 cards thick, and the thin walls are 3 cards thick. A plastinated wall made of 110lb cardstock and enough super glue permeating through it may be acceptable, but is very messy. The center of the trigger housing has two walls protruding inside the trigger pathway. This is there to keep the trigger from falling out too far. May be critical if your spring is too stiff or too long for the wand. This, and the bottom of the trigger will be the only parts that Magic cards are helpful for, but can be done without.

Now if you've built all the pieces, you should now have the following items:

These are the major components needed. Anything not mentioned in the drawings is stylistic and not structure critical. Depending on your spring length, you may need to either trim it down or change the dimensions by pushing back the rear end stop into the conical part.

The sight works better if you use Magic cards. I did it with 110lb cardstock 2 years ago and it was acceptable.

The rear part of the launcher is made of three conical sections. You can put them together by making cones or carving down a cylinder. Not structurally important, as long as it stays together.

The build is mostly tubes and squares. A simple project by normal means. I recommend doing some test fires before gluing both halves together. Always good to verify the mechanism works reliably now than have to redo a section later because of a failure. The mechanism isn't the best, but it's effective. You will need to push the trigger in as you load the rocket launcher so the head can clear the obstruction. I haven't tested out other means of assisting the load mechanism, but there's some room for improvement.

After you've assembled the rocket launcher, you'll want some rockets. I recommend making generic projectiles 5mm in diameter and fairly long so you can push the launcher rod in with it. They go fairly far using mechanical pencil springs, despite my reservations.

Happy blasting! (Now with video!)

TF2 Minigun Documentation

2010-10-28T20:16:00.001-06:00

Doing a bit of housecleaning on this mess of a blog. Realized that I've never posted the drawings used to build the Heavy's minigun. The drawings were used as a backdrop for the finished model. It's like I suddenly had a minigun built, without any construction progress documented at all. Not too useful if I for some reason need to rebuild one. Luckily, I've re-drawn 95% of the parts properly, so that even you have a chance in hell of reproducing the minigun!

There's four sheets of diagrams total to document each part. This model can be built entirely out of 110lb cardstock and 1/8" diameter bamboo sticks, with little or no Magic: the Gathering requirement for strength. You'll need a good understanding of how to read an engineering drawing, otherwise parts may get confusing. All dimensions are in millimeters.

Assembling them all together is left up to you using a general idea of where the parts go. Shouldn't be too hard. I haven't split up the parts into basic components, so how you go about it is up to you. There's a lot of weight for the model, so you'll have to get creative in saving weight. It won't be a good beginner's model, but handy if you need to draw most of the gun using CAD, and wanting the result to be in scale.

EDIT: Thanks to wargrounds for pointing out some errors in the schematic that make the assembly ambiguous. The updated schematic is here and the old one taken down.

This sheet details the spinning barrel assembly. Details how the inner and outer assembly are made, along with the end cap to allow the inner assembly to stay in place while allowing for rotation.

Miscellaneous decorative elements and the supports for the carrying handle.

Main handle assembly and small view of how the barrel is assembled using the featured rod.

All these parts deal with the ammo drum and the six barrels. The center item with the multiple specified lengths of tube to make deals with the individual sections of the barrel. These fit over the 115mm long rod, and are spaced out with the four disks and the muzzle.

It looks huge, but it is 1:6 scale despite what I thought it was. This will help you figure out where everything goes.

I'm in the process of cleaning up some old drawings to save folder space. Nothing like having a folder stuffed full of schematics for 1:6 scale junk no one wants to build.

This Weekend's Project: 1:6 Scale Pancor Jackhammer MK3A1, Version 2

2010-10-24T21:31:00.002-06:00

This weekend's project is part of the continuous improvements tasks, where I blatantly don't try to build anything new and revisit older projects since I have little incentive to go forwards. A little under two years ago, I built a 1:6 scale model of the defunct Pancor Corporation's Jackhammer automatic shotgun. That model was pretty good back then. But that's like saying "You did a great job there building that hovel with those rocks and twigs, but you could have used this shovel if you knew how to back then and make it suck less."

So, with Disappointment Depot behind us, let's move onto another Bad Tutorial! Last time, I attempted to teach you how to build a TF2 shotgun. Now I'm going to semi-attempt to tell you how to build your own Pancor Jackhammer. Chances are if you can't build the first one, you sure as hell aren't going to make it far on this one! With the demeaning taunts done (or am I), let's get to the schematic.

For this task, you'll need the following tools:

Stack of Magic: the Gathering cards (or structural equivalent, Yu-Gi-Oh! cards need not apply.)
X-Acto knife and a cutting surface, and regular scissors
110lb cardstock and regular printer paper
ruler
Sandpaper (coarse grit at a minimum)
Tweezers (by Yawgmoth almighty, you'll want these badly)
Elmer's glue (any strength, but not a Glue Stick), and Super Glue of any type
Paper clips, and preferably a 1/8" diameter rod
Dial calipers (oh hell yes you need this unless you're a savant)
This excel spreadsheet from this explanatory post explaining how to make cylinders out of paper
Guide to building with Magic: the Gathering cards (optional)
Pliers (recommended unless you're a badass)
1/16" hand drill (highly recommended, but completely optional)

That's a lot of tools, no? You'll need every single tool here unless you're a badass. I'm not a badass.

From the schematic, you'll need to make a few templates out of cards or 110lb cardstock to trace out sections of the gun. I've drawn some diagrams of how some parts need to be assembled, but you'll have to fill in the gaps. It's like woodworking, or shop class, except my shop class experience was a lot of New Yankee Workshop episodes on PBS and no actual building.

I've fortunately done most of the hard work for you, mapping out all the major components. We'll break down the gun into regions to work on. We have the following zones and sub components:

Magazine (1x 9mm outer diameter, 2mm inner diameter 110lb cardstock cylinder, 12.5mm long; 10x 3.175mm inner diameter, 4mm outer diameter printer paper cylinders, all 12mm long)
Grip/receiver (Magic: the Gathering cards, to be documented later))
Pump (2mm diameter rod, 75mm long, made from a paper clip and covered with a roll of printer paper glued with loc-tite super glue; lots of MtG cards)
Magazine housing (13mm wide x 32mm long MtG strips glued together to form a 10mm radius half arc; 2x MtG card covers built to schematic specs, 4 cards thick)
Stock (2x 8mm outer diameter, 3.175 mm inner diameter, 16mm long 110lb cardstock tubes)
Carrying handle/sights (MtG cards, to be documented later)
Barrel and muzzle (45mm long, 3.175 inner diameter, 7mm outer diameter tube; compound tube with a 13.5mm long, 8.5mm outer diameter first section; transitioning to a 10mm outer diameter, 3.5mm long second section, uniform 7mm inner diameter throughout; 100lb cardstock)

Good Galacian, that was a lot of stuff to build. Here's what most of that junk looks like:

If you thought that was hard, well, the rest is more of the same. Time to explain the receiver/grip and the pump. For this model, we're going to make the model have a sliding pump to release the magazine like the real one supposedly does. You can skip parts of this if you wish, and it'll make the job obscenely easier. I'll note the options you can skip if you want a static model and describe anyalternate steps in italics.

The top part shows the template for the grip/receiver. Trace out this on a 4-card thick lamination of Magic cards. Cut a 2mm wide groove along the receiver, above where the trigger guard is, but only cut it 3 cards deep and not all the way through to the 4th card. Glue two of these together to make a 8 card thick block of Magic cards. Add two 3-card thick panels of 33mmx13mm to the sides of the receiver to thicken it to 5mm.

The pump needs a template too. Of the 9mm tall section, you'll need just 6mm of height, as the center region will mate with the barrel's underside. Do the same as the receiver and cut a 2mm wide groove on the bottom of two 4-card thick sections of the pump. Roll printer paper around a straightened paper clip until you reach a diameter of slightly under 2mm. Glue this rod to the pump groove, and only to the pump groove. Highly suggest using loc-tite or super glue to coat the rod to enhance durability. Make 16 cards thick worth of the center part of the pump, then another 3 card section of the full profile to do the side grips. The additional 3mm will overlap the barrel, and needs to be bent outwards slightly. Tweezers helps a lot with this task.

The magazine.

I want my magazine to be removable and to be able to have ten 12 gauge shotgun shells be loaded into the chambers. If you're making this model static, simply build a 18mm outer diameter tube with any reasonable inner diameter and a height of 12mm, and skip the rest of this step. Glue 10 of those 3.175 ID/4mmOD tubes around that 9mm tube. Fill in the crevices with some wedges made of MtG cards or anything handy. I offset the 10 tubes by 1mm from the center one so the shotgun shells sit flush with the cylinder face. After this, sand the outside smooth and cover the outer perimeter with printer paper.

The Magazine housing.
Didn't take a damn picture, so here's what you're ultimately trying to get:

It's a hollow section made of two walls and a half circle arc made all of Magic cards. Trace the front profile of the magazine housing from the schematic and make it 4 cards thick. With two 13mm wide, 32mm long strips of Magic cards, glue them together to form a half circle and glue that to both halves. You want the bottom open area to be the side that is completely circular and not the side with the weird dome. Fill in the top dome with 110lb cardstock and sand flush with the sides.

At this stage, you'll want to make the grooves on the side of the magazine. Make some right triangles with 7mm height and 5.6mm width for the side facing the barrel. Make a series of "L's" 6mm tall and 5.6mm wide for the other side. Printer paper works fine.

Barrel and stock assembly:
Barrel's just two tubes as described earlier, but you'll need to cut the muzzle at a diagonal. Join the muzzle with the barrel and leave 40mm of the barrel in length unobstructed. To attach the barrel to the receiver, go nuts with the super glue or add a 3.175mm diameter rod to the receiver to support the barrel.

For the stock, you'll use two of those 8mm diameter, 16mm long tubes. Flatten the sides of one of them by shaving off material with a sander/knife. Glue the two to the oval looking shape from the stock's drawing. That section needs to be 12 cards thick. Add the little details for the stock at this point. Should be trivial at this stage.

If your gun looks remotely like this, you're doing great! Time to make heat dissipators!

To make these, I used two 8mmx33mm cards glued together, and curved slightly. I drew a 18 hole array onto the sides and drilled them through with a 1/16" hand drill. You can simply poke a crude hole or make a dimple with a ball point pen. To glue these to the gun, glue three 2mm wide strips of MtG cards to the sides of the upper receiver, and stick these on those. See the photo for a reference.

Carrying Handle.

Trace the template but leave just a 1mm tall section above the holes instead of tracing the full template. Make two identical 2-card thick sections with that template, then glue those to another set of 2-card thick sections. This time, leave the bottom 3mm hanging off, so that the part with holes lines up with the edge of the Magic cards. This will need to be bent outwards with tweezers. I recommend scoring the fold first.

Glue both halves together and rejoice! You've completed the hard parts. Complete the handle by making two 3-card thick rails and gluing them to the upper 1mm wide section above the holes. Should make sense if you look at the schematic. Now it's detailing time!

The muzzle isn't cylindrical, apparently. I added some flats using 110lb cardstock, and cut slots with a knife to represent the flash diverter things. You can add the trigger and the oval handguards now. I cut a triangular groove in the pump handle sides which may be noticeable in the photo above.

This part sucks no matter who you are. The stock has a separate region that tapers off. I made it using about 22 cards worth of thickness, and cut it to shape using an X-acto knife. Then, I added the little ridges using tweezers. There's a little circle at the bottom of that end piece which I'm uncertain about the purpose of, but it's there on the photos. Have fun doing that.

So, after a whole week wasted for you guys later, you'll have a 1:6 scale Pancor Jackhammer! Since no company makes a 1:6 scale model of this, this is currently one of few ways you have to obtain one. If you opted to make the moving pump version, go celebrate by buying some 1:6 scale shotgun shells or make your own! You now have the most badass 1:6 scale Pancor Jackhammer model money can't buy (or if you built it poorly, the most crappy model ever!).

Now go equip some infantry and enjoy using excessive force.

Golgo 13 Suits Up

2010-10-13T20:34:00.001-06:00

Rather than sew a terrible suit, I went the easy route and bought a grey suit off toysity. Suit cost me $15 with $15 shipping, adding another $30 to the overall cost of Golgo 13. I'm starting to understand why the Hot Toys Golgo 13 cost $220+. The suit Hot Toys has is pretty obscenely detailed and well done compared to anything else out there.

The suit set comes with a black shirt, red tie and some very forgiving and flexible shoes. I wanted to get a white suit/black shirt/white tie, but they didn't have plain white suits that looked good. Or white suits in general.

The suit offers a good range of freedom, combined with the joints of the Dragon Neo 3 Body. However, it should be noted that either the body has rather beefy arms or the suit's really designed for our elbow-challenged non-combatant, Ken. The arms are a rather tight fit.

The pants have pockets and belt loops, which was nice. No belt though, but not complaining. The pants were a tight fit at the waist, with or without the shirt tucked in. May be a bit of a problem if I decide to give Golgo 13 underwear too. The shirt, coat and pants fasten with plastic clasps; no Velcro here. That makes for a clean look, but a very unforgiving fit. Unfortunately, I can't fully put his hand into the pants pocket for his casual pose.

I can however, hide the fact that I can't by covering his hand with the suit.

I finally bothered painting the case. Mechanically, I'm happy with it, but it's still large and not a discrete means of transporting an M16. I may try making another variant with the parts angled about for minimum volume and surface area.

Overall, I'm happy with the suit, despite it not being lined on the inside. For $14, it's ok, but for $30, I'd at least want some extra slack on the waist and a belt. I could have gone the crazy route and bought a $60 suit from Saturday Toys, but I was going for cheap Golgo, not "same price for an inferior product". Right now, we're at $104 for "Golgo 13 for Under $130". The Saturday Toys suit would have made that goal a fail, at $134. And that's without a trench coat too.

I'm also missing a .38 revolver. Duke Togo will have to make do with a .55+ caliber Ambassador! Not quite an easily concealed revolver, but it'll have to do. I'll have to build a proper revolver, knife and sheath/holster later.Until then, we can now make Duke Togo do completely un-canon acts for our own amusement.

Hooray for the terrible idea of using my monitor as a backdrop! Duke is not impressed.

What if we had Golgo 13 snipe people with bunny ears?

Golgo 13 does not approve. I wonder if that could be imposed as a job requirement if you hire him.

Fortunately, where Hotaru fails, the mighty hand of J.Norad can force Golgo to do anything.

This Week's Project: Golgo 13's Rifle Case

2010-10-09T10:59:00.001-06:00

I've actually had this project completed last week. I've just been apathetic to finish up the M16A2 first.

Anyways, each Golgo 13 figure has had the M16 rifle stored in a case. I opted to replicate the Hot Toys version since it best fit the layout for the M16A2. Skynet's version is smaller, but I didn't like how the inside was arranged.

Figure 1: Hot Toys' case (top), Skynet's case (bottom)

I like my cases laid out orderly, with none of this "diagonal part orientation" business.

There's no point posting the sketches I used to build this case, since they're useless and indecipherable to you; not to mention you're totally not going to build this out of Magic: the Gathering cards.

First, we need to construct the two halves of the case. I did my best to size up the Hot Toys' case to my rifle dimensions, and ended up with a 100mmx50mm case interior with an interior depth of about 22mm. I made the bottom half 13mm deep and the top 9mm deep. Since the footpath of the case is larger than the face of one Magic card, I had to make some extended sheets, featured on the left. This does leave a crease in the face where the two cards join, so we'll need to fix that later. For now, I made both sides 4 cards thick.

To make the walls, I did the same technique as I did with the guitar. I laminated strips around the case backs and taped them down as the glue dried. Since there's a lip where the two case halves meet (it's there to help hold the case together when closed), I made the interior wall 2 cards thick and 1mm off from the remaining 2 outer layers. This gave me a 12mm interior wall height and a 13mm outer wall height for the lower case, and a 10mm inner/9mm outer for the top. After these dried, I glued them to the case backs. I added another sheet to the case backs to overlap the wall edges to help hold the two sides together and to hide the edges.

I did a layout check with the parts to see how they'd look inside. I had determined the layout before drafting the case dimensions, because the reverse order is just a bad idea.

For hinges, I used some Loc-Tite bonded printer paper rolls, made around a paper clip. Each half would be glued to the flat sloped pieces, forming the hinge attachment points. The hinges aren't very strong, but with enough Loc-Tite, they can become stronger. I had some issues getting them to stay on securely, even with notching a groove into the cylinders to better mate with the hinge plates.

For the handle, I stacked 12 cards together and hacked away until they formed a decent looking handle. I used more Loc-Tite to roll up the hinge parts (if you use Elmer's or anything that doesn't form a more solid, plastic bond, the hinges will slowly decay over use). The attachment points were some small wedges of 12 Magic cards with a slight groove cut into them to better stick with the hinge parts.

To handle the seams that resulted from gluing two cards together to make one larger surface, I covered the entire case with a single sheet of 110lb cardstock. I tried printer paper, but I had quality problems with the glue not spreading evenly, resulting in air pockets. 110lb cardstock was more forgiving in spreading the glue without tearing. I cut out sections in the side sheets to allow the hinges to be glued directly onto the case walls without fear of the lower strength paper cover tearing off first.

For the feet, I just cut some 3.175mm diameter (1/8") bamboo sticks about 3mm tall.

Naturally, the rifle case has latches or something to hold it together. Since I'm not happy unless there's some absurd detail added to my stuff, I opted for working latches. Bit of a problem due to the small design space. I made some 2mm diameter hinges around a paper clip, attached to a plate made of two Magic cards bonded with Loc-Tite. This is important, since it'll deform and bend quicker if any other glue was used. Practically makes the hinge plastic.

The hinges swing open enough to clear the pin holes I made to secure the latches together. To lock the latches in, I drilled a 1/16" diameter hole into the latch and the latch plate, and glued a 2mm long paper clip into the latch. The paper clip fits securely into the bottom case plate, and doesn't move easily. It only needs to hold the case shut, not support a massive load, so this solution worked fine.

Here's a better view of the latch. I used a Dremel to sand down the paper clip tip to make it flush with the latch.

To fit all the parts into the rifle case, I needed some foam. I bought a sheet from a craft store for $0.99, which was enough to line about 5 cases. I chose black instead of red since I liked a black lining better. The deep red from the Hot Toys case wasn't a color I could easily get at the craft store anyways. I can use the black foam for other things too. I traced out each part onto the foam, and cut them away with an X-Acto knife. There was a few rough edges after cutting, but they're only noticeable with all the parts extracted. I did my best to smoothen it out by trimming. Didn't work that well, but it was acceptable.

For the M16A2, I finally painted the rifle and all the components. I also finished up the two magazines and added a bullet to the top of each mag. The bullets were made by carving a bamboo stick until it somewhat resembled a 5.56 round. I replicated the 20 round mags from the Skynet rifle, since that was the only one I had a decent photo of for a size comparison. The magazine grip grooves were done by cutting V shaped grooves with a knife, and run about 75% of a Magic card's thickness deep.

Instead of choosing to do what Hot Toys did and make Golgo 13 have the option of assembling the rounder triangular M16A1 grip along with the M16A2 grip, I went for a silencer/suppressor. The second grip option made no sense to me since it would just be a M16A2 receiver with a different hand guard. I'd still know that it wasn't truly what it was supposed to look like and it would annoy me. I also found it odd how neither set gave him a suppressor, even though I would assume he'd have one for the more covert jobs. He clearly used them in numerous occasions, so there should have been one in his case. I reworked the integrated flash suppressor to have slots all around instead of just 2 like the ones the Furuta/Soldiers of the World rifles had. This gave me the opportunity to clean up the dimensions to allow the suppressor to be universal with the Soldiers of the World M4 that I used as a reference. Hooray for interchangeability!

Added costs to the "Golgo 13 for Under $130" project: ~$3 (Matte Black paint and foam sheet)
Total costs so far: $66 (body) + $2 sculpey III head + $3 (XM-177 rifle) + $3 (paint and foam) = $74

J.Norad Transmutes a Furuta 1:6 Scale XM-177 to an M16A2

2010-09-26T16:17:00.001-06:00

This week's project was to determine whether a Furuta 1:6 scale XM-177 could be converted to Golgo 13's custom M16A2. I could have bought an M16A2 model and just used that, but that would be too easy. And it wouldn't be as great as it would be a static model. The goal was to overhaul the Furuta model so I could strip down the M16A2 and store it in a briefcase like the other Golgo 13 figures. Never mind that I don't have a briefcase fabricated yet, but we'd need the gun first anyways to determine how to fit the pieces in.

I purchased this XM-177 as part of two Furuta Metal Gun Mania sets, one of which had the G11 rifle. Average cost for each gun is about $3, with shipping (14 guns for about $30). I unfortunately don't have a photo of the gun intact, as I started dismantling the heat guard and ended up at this state. Oddly, the barrel and front sight are made of metal, which ruined my plans. Difficult to glue metal to things, especially by a small point of contact.

First act of business was to separate the gun into the usable components. Here, I've cut the barrel ring from the heat guard halves and glued them together. The stud holding the heat guard to the frame snapped off after trying to pry off the lightly glued parts. Likewise, the stock came off quick, needing only a 0.5mm deep starting cut around the separation point, and snapping it off by hand. The plastic used for Furuta's guns are quite soft. Good for carving up.

I drilled 1/8" diameter holes in the frame and stock to accept some bamboo sticks to allow the gun to be recombined later. I learned that I could manually twist a drill bit into the plastic than use the Dremel, as the Dremel tended to overbore the holes. The plastic was compliant enough to allow for me to bore a hole by hand. Great, I guess?

Since I couldn't feasibly use the metal front sight, I decided to rebuild everything from the frame outwards by hand. Nothing was usable except for the barrel ring I salvaged from the heatguards. I used a bamboo stick, carved a groove, then put a thick paperclip in the groove to act as the gas return line. This piece will also serve as a structural component to prevent the barrel from rotating, by using the paper clip to act as a key for a keyway system. I used some 110lb cardstock and fabricated two cylinders: one 3.175mm ID, 5mm OD with a 1.5mm wide keyway carved out; and one 5mm ID, 7.49mm OD heat guard cover. The keyway is important, otherwise the heatguard will rotate freely.

The front sight was nothing special. Chaff cut up Mountains from a previous job, glued with plenty of Loc-Tite glue.

To get the front sight rabbit ears, I used 2 layers of Magic card and glued the V shaped sections over the sight assembly. Perhaps the easiest part of the job.

The next part was to complete the handguard. The M16A2 has a recessed row of heat dissipating holes with light ribbing around the diameter for gripping. If I was building the M16A1, it'd be a much easier triangular cross section grip with a smooth outer surface. I added a taper to the guard from 7.49mm to 9mm, then carved 2.4mm of material along the top and bottom. To get the heat dissipation details, I poked a set of holes along a strip of 1 Magic card, then lightly drilled the face with a Dremel so that the material wasn't completely drilled out. I did this for both sides to widen the holes better.

Having glued those, I needed the separation line for the two halves of the heatguard. Two layers of Magic cards 1mm thick was used. I cut a groove to help align the piece to the heatguard.

The XM-177 differs from the M16A2 in several spots. It essentially has the same body as the M16A1. As a comparison, I used my Soldiers of the World M4, which has the same frame/body as the M16A2.

I started off by shaving off all the details on the upper part, namely the sight adjustment screws.

The XM-177 has less material on the upper receiver. I fleshed it out by gluing Magic cards to it. I also added the brass deflector that was added on the M16A2, but absent on the M16A1.

Magic: the Gathering cards are like Bondo for model making. Great for filling in small gaps, then you just sand the excess away. Here, I've filled in the spots that are solid on the M16A2 and narrowed the receiver region.

Here's the M16A2 with all the pain in the ass parts completed. I've added the details to the heat guard by gluing 110lb cardstock in 0.5mm wide strips to the guard, spaced 2mm wide. I've also completed the remodeling of the upper receiver by adding a layer of printer paper to cover all the Magic cards I added as thickener, then added some simple details.

The scope was a standard tube and cone build. I opted to use a heavy card protector to create the lenses. Not too visible here, but they'll be there! The scope was copied off the DVD cover. I didn't feel like tracking down the exact design it was based off of and replicating it. The scope fits in the groove on the upper receiver like the actual scope, but I have not added a mounting/clamping screw nor made provisions to allow the rear sight to still be used with a hollow sight mount base.

Current state of the M16A2, all parts attached. I'll need to redo the magazine to make it a straight 20 round magazine. I'll need to build two magazines anyways.

The M16A2 can be disassembled somewhat. I didn't want to scratchbuild the receiver this time to get the level of detail from the Skynet Golgo 13 doll, where the upper and lower receiver could be dismantled. What I had now was good enough for me. I haven't gone into the painting phase yet, with hopes that I can strip the existing grey paint off the receiver first. Paint thinner doesn't seem to be cutting it yet. If anything, I'll just sand it down and paint it with an unnaturally shiny smooth black finish.

So, if you are really bored, you can in fact, convert a crappy Furuta XM-177 to a strippable M16A2 rifle. Is it worth it? Only if you don't want to spend $300 to buy a Duke Togo just for the rifle.

Total added cost to the "Golgo 13 for Under $130" Project: $3 (XM-177 rifle).

This Weekend's Project: Golgo 13 Headsculpt

2010-09-19T13:41:00.001-06:00

This weekend, I attempted to make a Golgo 13 headsculpt for a Golgo 13 figure. There's already two professionally done ones on the market; one made by Syndicate and one made by Hot Toys. Both cost $200 or more to obtain. So, rather than spend $250-$300 to get one, I'm going to see if it's even possible to make one for under $130! ($13 didn't work, as I already exceeded that price on the body I chose.)

For the body, I defaulted to a Dragon Neo3 Body, since that's all the local store had. I wanted it now and not two weeks from now. That ran me $66. It also gave me a MG Lafette mount and an FG42 rifle.

I had a remaining unused pack of Sculpey III which I recall cost me $3. About 75% of that would be used to make a new head sculpt. Rather than give you the illusion that you can do this easily with progress photos, I'll just summarize the sculpting process. It would have slowed me down more than I'd like by taking progress photos every 20 minutes. The entire process already took me 3 hours.

I started off with a basic featureless head with the nose, face and eyes located. This is perhaps my 11th Sculpey based head, and certainly not my 13th overall, unfortunately, however fitting that would have been. From there, I used only an X-acto knife and a pair of tweezers to finish the sculpt. A proper sculptor would use actual tools, but when you're someone who builds shotguns out of cards, those look like decent tools. Worked for the first 10!

The progress went like this:

Etch the hairline and ear positions for reference
Flesh out the jawline, pad the eyebrows and hair (he has thick sideburns)
Carve reference points for the mouth and eyes
Rhinoplasty fever. I don't know why I did the nose first.
Shaping the face depressions and mouth
Fiddling with the mouth for an absurd amount of time
Eyes.
Back to the nose and nostrils. Then more mouth work.
Redo eyes because they looked weird.
Ears and eyebrows.
Dropped head on floor and have to redo the nose.
Neck and rear hairline work
Thicken regions of the head to be rounder where needed
Wonder how terrible the head looks when painted
Picking Golgo's nose with a knife, and fiddling with his mouth more
Wonder more how bad this may turn out since it's starting to look like Steven Seagal and Spock mixed together

So, three hours passed and I baked the head for another hour, stopping midway while it was soft to smooth out the head where there was excess material. I safely could carve away without fear of crushing a delicate feature.

Some horrible painting skill later, I finished my very own Duke Togo. I feel his head looks a bit big, since he always has the appearance of a smaller head due to his wide build. Since I have the head finished and 9 bodies to swap him around....

Here's TEAM GOLGO 13! The least chatty group of mercenaries ever.

"..."

Now if I could get a model pack to swap out all the character faces with Duke Togo's for TF2, I might be bothered to play again.

Paint and Shotgun Shells

2010-09-12T07:29:00.000-06:00

Well, I feel silly. Forgot the TOZ-34 and TP-82 use 12.5x70 mm shotgun rounds. I ended up building a 12 gauge TOZ-34. For future reference, here's a handy chart of shotgun ammunition sizes for making future casings.

I need to find myself some 2.08mm diameter rods to convert to 1:6 scale 12.5x70 mm rounds. Closest thing is the straw to a compressed air can, which is slightly oversized by 10 thousandths. Gundam runners are now only applicable for 12 gauge.

On that note, I finished painting the TOZ-34. Built twelve 12 gauge shotgun shells to go with my re-chambered shotgun. Was debating rebuilding the Pancor from a while back. If I do, I now have shells for it. At least that uses 12 gauge.

Nothing particularly new here, except that the paint doesn't entirely suck this time. Can't figure out how to do an orange wood color. Stained wood it shall be! Forgot to account for the shell rim thickness, so I had to modify the dimensions a little to get the locking motion to properly engage. The rims were causing some interference between the barrel end and the stock.

I properly painted the shells this time and added some depth to the gold paint application to account for the metal casing that Dragon conveniently leaves just to the rim. Now I'm dead set on not buying 1:6 shotgun shells since now I have to deal with bore sizes.

Other Developments

There's a couple items in development right now. I should organize the completed, pending and queued projects in a post so there's actually some organization to this mess of a blog. One of the items I'm attempting is another flower out of Magic: the Gathering cards. The rose turned out well. I figured it's time to try another type of flower. Bad idea.

Here is my test build of a lotus. Didn't turn out too well. Needs some work. Learned that this one has more issues with color coordination than the rose, since the rose has one side of the cards dominate, giving the color a more pronounced effect. With the lotus, the card back and fronts compete to the point where it looks like a dying mass of brown. Didn't help that I used a lot of land cards to get me some neutral red color, which failed.

If you're wondering "Why a lotus?", you haven't been playing Magic. I figured that I should attempt to build one of the iconic artifacts from the game, and something that also doesn't look out of place by itself. Flowers, I can easily pitch away to people. Chairs and golems don't work that well. I also received a generous donation of lots chaff that included 19x Vampire's Bites that I thought would look OK if all mashed together into one lotus.

Anyways...

In testing out the lotus build, I did end up with some interesting effects. Here's the outer layer of petals that ended up rather neat, using Portal 1 mountains.

It's certain that I'm never going to use land cards for anything aside from structural components ever again. You can't get a good color palette from the lands as you do from non-land pre-Mirrodin/8th edition card frames. Brown's also a very unflattering color for a flower.

J.Norad Reviews: Furuta 1:6 scale G11 Rifle

2010-09-06T19:05:00.000-06:00

I've been fairly satisfied with the quality of models ZACCA has issued in the blind boxed 1:6 scale gun models. Today, I bring you the opposite side of the spectrum: Furuta's Metal Gun Mania: Assault Rifle Series' secret chase model, the Gewehr 11. It's not the prettiest gun out there, nor is it something that a collector would go, "My collection is missing a G11". It's also a very lackluster secret chase model compared to what ZACCA offered in their series (the M60E1, the FIM-92, the XM-177 with M203, and the M32 MGL, all of which were superior to the listed offerings on the boxes). Why? First, let's take a look at the model.

The item comes with a small collector's card with a photo of the real gun, so you know exactly how bad your model looks in comparison. Luckily, the G11 is all black. There's not even any paint applications for the safety/selector switch. The "S" is black, and not even painted. There's actually no paint at all on this model, an issue that I'll bring up later.

The Good (Lord this model blows)

The only way I can describe seeing this model come out of the packaging is "poor". Actually, "lackluster" and "subpar" work too. It feels like I paid $3 to receive a model kit put together by an apathetic child with no access to tools. Or hands. Or vision.

This model suffers from numerous problems, other than the blatant problem of being the most uninteresting model of the set. I've circled the problematic areas on the upper region of the model. The biggest problem is that the model was molded in two halves, and there must have been production problems in the molding process. There are several instances where excess plastic remained and needed to be trimmed. There were a few small spots where glue beaded on the surface near the mold halves. There's a large spot where a blind man let glue run all over the model.

The Bottom Half

You didn't think that the upper side was all that was wrong with the model, did you? Furuta is an equal opportunity half-asser!

Something went wrong with the mold design in the grip, or the plastic deformed significantly during the molding process. There was a 1mm wide gap between both mold halves in the grip bottom. There's also some glue residue and plastic too, but that's overshadowed by the assembly problem. Luckily, I deduced by the poor quality of the overall product that the glue itself must have been lackluster. And I was right.

After twisting the frame around, I sheared off what little glue was used and separated the gun's front half from the body (by accident), and tried to separate the two halves. That didn't work. I found that the grip gap wasn't due to lack of glue. There seemed to be some interference between the two halves that prevented them from fitting together. I shaved some material off between the gap, which was easy due to how far I could separate the two halves. I tried to glue it back together, but I don't think it mattered whether I'd glue it back or not. A lot of the frame was damaged by me prying it apart with a watch screwdriver.

This is the best I got in reassembling the G11. I can't fix the regions I shaved off the glue and plastic. All I ended up doing was closing the gap between the handle.

The paint

Now...about that paint (or lack thereof). I obtained the full set of Furuta Metal Gun Mania models (all 14), and none of the magazines had the bullets in the magazines painted. There was a bit of extra plastic from the magazine's parting line from the molding process that I had to trim. This was true for half the magazines. The G11 comes with three magazines which required some trimming.

None of these magazines had paint when I obtained them. They looked terrible. I used Testor's gold and copper paint to paint the bullets. Even with my crappy paint skill, I managed to increase the appearance by a large margin with the painted bullets.

Product Summary

Furuta reinforces the idea of "you get what you pay for". I paid about $2-3 a gun, shipped. I don't think that is a price worth paying at all for any of the models when you have alternative options. Only the secret chase models are exclusive to Furuta, and they're both mediocre and need rework to look decent. Whatever you do, PASS on the opportunity to obtain any Furuta 1:6 scale guns. Save your money and buy a better made model, unless you're a glutton for re-working on someone else's mistakes.

I may review the remaining Furuta models all at once, since they're generally all mediocre and not worth a post for each gun. They're almost not even worth a post. The G11 takes exception for how bad it was compared to all the others.

Now, for the miscellaneous statistics!

Price Paid: $2-3 shipped (average cost)
Price worth: I'd rather build it myself with sculpey, drywall and a large wooden cooking spoon.
Defective pieces: 2
Pieces that snapped off during disassembly: 1
Ratio of glue to plastic used to assemble this model: 1/5,000
Ratio of glue used to assemble the model to glue that spilled around the outside of the model: 1/1
Collectibility: 2/10 (who the hell wants a G11?)
Build Quality: 1/10 (I swear their molding machine is damaged)
Reasons to buy this model: 0
Overall Ranking: Above Soldiers of the World, but below Ultimate Soldier

This Week's Project : 1:6 Scale ТОЗ-34/TOZ-34 Hunting Shotgun

2010-09-04T19:52:00.002-06:00

This weekend's project comes from the pile of inactive projects I have lying around due to insufficient tech to advance. The list results from ambitious project ideas that have been stopped by one or two major problems that prevent finalization of construction. Oddly, the one stopping this week's project was something fairly simple: a hinge mechanism.

After moving off to other games, I ended up playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Shadow of Chernobyl with the 2009 Complete mod. Bad idea. Mostly because it ended up crippling the AI and giving me the most lopsided and overpowered weapon in the game's programming: the Hunting Rifle, otherwise known as the ТОЗ-34 double barreled shotgun. So I had fond memories of using my Russian beatstick to take down mutant dogs, SPETZNAZ and other hostilities using a variety of buckshot, slugs and the occasional flechette. Thing is just absurd with slugs.

Anyways, to properly give tribute to my trusty pal that stood by my side for 90% of the game (the 2009 Complete mod gives you this shotgun fairly early in the starting zone), I had to recreate it in 1:6 scale. To understand what the gun is like, here's a Russian tech spec for the gun. The hinge mechanism is composed of a ring and guide rails, so there's no traditional hinge pin type joint. The issue is that the center of rotation isn't somewhere convenient, as it becomes located near the bottom surface of the barrel assembly, where there isn't enough material to support a pin. A fairly simple problem and one that prevented it from going anywhere for about 3 months. I decided to do an approximation that put the pivot somewhere close to the original but used a traditional pin to hold it together. I used some tricks to hide the hinge so you can't tell offhand how it's done.

First, the schematic! (A very poor one)

This is all you're going to get. It's not a very complex model in theory, but I had some additional plans. For this model, in addition to the expected break action and lever lock mechanism, I wanted to go one step further and add a working shell extractor mechanism similar to the one on the actual shotgun. For that, I needed some extra shotgun shells, since the Force-a-Nature and Sledge's Shotgun are tying up the remaining shells I had. Hence, the endeavor to build my own shotgun shells last post.

The barrel is hollow, and to make one strong enough to withstand minor bending and light play, I chose to use one layer of Magic: the Gathering cards wrapped around a 2mm diameter compressed air straw, surrounded by printer paper for a final outer diameter of 4mm. Process is fairly simple, I'm sure you know how to roll a paper around a tube. I had to make two of these for the upper and lower barrels. I had to sand them down flat where they'd join for extra contact and to minimize the overall height of the assembly.

The stock is the standard 4-card lamination combined to form 16 cards' thickness worth of material. Nothing exciting here. Had to remove a chunk off the template to account for the latch mechanism, but that's about it.

The latch mechanism is the same from the Force-a-Nature shotgun: Z shaped lever pivoting around a tube embedded into the stock, then sliding to engage a 1mm wide notch.

This is the hinge piece. The top notch is for the hidden hinge mechanism, which will be composed of a paper clip bent to a "U" shape with a inner width of 3mm. The bottom notch was something I didn't use in the final assembly. The middle piece shows the notch that will be used to engage the latch mechanism.

Here's the hinge mechanism. The "U" shaped paper clip glued to the stock will ride on top of the groove in the hinge piece, rotating around that point. The barrel will sit on top of that block, securing the pin in place. The structure is fairly narrow compared to the rest of the gun, so I can hide the hinge with the rest of the gun's structural components. This does make the hinge integral and irreparable if something goes wrong, but it's a low risk. So much for that holdup that I described. This next part should have been my excuse for the holdup, but I accomplished it in an hour or so.

The way the barrels are situated, there's a groove where they meet due to the curvatures. Normally, I'd fill in this material to get them flat, forming an oval shaped cross section. I decided to use a paper clip to fill in the gap, and use it to slide a small piece of material along the barrel axis to function as the shell ejector. The actual TOZ-34 has this mechanism, and uses these prongs to engage part of the main body to pull the ejector outwards. This piece was easy to replicate, due to how things were going.

I did have to cut away a piece of the barrel assembly after gluing them together, since the ejector was an afterthought that was born from convenience. Not hard since I was removing soft printer paper and not a durable Magic card. I had to replace the missing section with a similarly shaped piece of printer paper, with the same curvatures. Gluing the two paper clips to the sides was easy with the resultant grooves.

Here's the mechanism in place. It consists of two paper clip guide rails using the barrel grooves as the guide. It slides in and out fairly well, with some fine tuning of the dimensions required to get a smooth consistent operation.

The mechanism doesn't extend very far in the real shotgun, and doesn't need to go far for this gun. I won't be getting any fancy things going like having the shells fly out of the barrels when I break it open.

This is the engagement mechanism. It consists of another set of paper clips on the edge of the blue regions to engage the extractor tips on the sides of the barrel. Chose paper clips since it'll take longer to wear out, despite being much easier to shear off after repeated use. Nothing a lot of glue can't fix.

After adding the rest of the bodywork onto the gun, here's the near completed gun.

There's a few small details on the latch. Mostly a raised portion at the end for easier manipulation, and what I presume is the safety switch selector.

Here's the gun with a coat of primer on it. These Obitsu stands are great for displaying new projects.

With the right amount of friction, I can get the ejector to move and engage the rims of my poorly machined shells, and pull them out slightly. I'm happy with the end result.

This shows the level of movement the lever can be displaced. Unfortunately, there isn't a detent for the closed position to hold the lever in place. I think it should be fine.

And that is the TOZ-34, a fine addition to my wall of increasing firearms. I'm thinking of not painting this model since everything I paint turns to crap. I'm best at building the prototype and getting it functional, but I'm absolute rubbish at painting. Rather than ruin a well executed model, I'll leave it in the prototype primer color for now until I get some motivation.

I've learned to appreciate the level of detail a toy manufacturer can get into a model after attempting to get the shell ejector mechanism working. This model would be costly and fragile if it weren't for the metal components, and even then, it has a lot of delicate features that aren't good for a frequently handled item. Best as a showpiece.

J.Norad Refuses to Pay A Man in Singapore $3 For Ammo

2010-08-31T21:10:00.001-06:00

After an hour wasted looking for 1:6 scale shotgun shells to buy for cheap, I was pretty disappointed. eBay did turn up some listings for 12 shells for $3. $0.33 per shell. I'm not going to pay $3 and wait two weeks for something that I can have now for fairly little cost. So I decided to attempt to see if it's possible to build my own shotgun shells.

Initial development tests used printer paper rolls to achieve the proper thickness. The resultant product deformed significantly to be used, and wasn't replicable by the average person. Subsequent attempts using whittled bamboo sticks with paper rolls produced good results, but subpar capability to reproduce the results.

The goal then became to provide a consistent means of producing a 1:6 scale shotgun shell that YOU, the reader, could feasibly do in the comfort of your own desk, given the same tools I have. You probably have better things to do than make your own bullets, but it's always good to know you can save a bit of money for other things. Like more guns.

Using an existing Dragon shotgun shell as a model, I measured the dimensions and found that I'd need a 7.5mm long 3mm diameter cylindrical rod, and a 3.175mm diameter end cap about 0.5mm thick with a minor depression in the center. Those dimensions are mighty convenient... A 1/8" hole punch on two Magic: the Gathering cards glued together gets me the end cap dimensions. As for the 3mm diameter rods, I happen to know the perfect source!

GUNDAM runners. I ended up keeping my runners from my Airmaster, Aegis and Blitz Gundam kits. I got a few more from the Obitsu Multi Purpose Clear Stands I bought. They both have diameters of 3mm for the runners. Excellent. And there's also runners that come in red! There's enough runner from one kit (or in this case, one Obitsu stand) to just cut down the smooth sections and ignore the sprues and gates. You only need 7.5mm of material and there's enough material to make about 40 rounds or more. I chose to smooth out the runners to form relatively smooth clear plastic rods, sand them lightly, then trim them down using a Dremel. A saw or knife works fine, but Dremel's for the impatient builder. Can't be bothered waiting 2 weeks, nor 5 minutes of sawing. Got to have my results in 3 seconds.

I found the tip of my beadmaker's pliers had the right diameter to make an indentation into the card face for the primer. You'll need something about 1mm in diameter. Press hard into the card face and you'll leave a minor depression. Use a 1/8" hole punch to punch out the disk and set that aside.

With your 7.5mm long rod sections, use some non-Elmer's glue like Loc-Tite to secure the disk to the end of the rod. The diameters shouldn't be flush, to simulate the rimmed edge of a shotgun shell. Lightly apply a coat of glue over the rim to thicken and seal the card edge. Your shells are almost done. On the other side, you can use a 1/16" drill tip to bore a small hole into the other end to simulate the packaged end.

Here's a photo of the completed shotgun shells on the left, and Dragon's shotgun shells on the right. Not quite the same, especially with the primer. It's only an issue if you really scrutinize the details up close. Far away, it's sufficient to work with for dioramas or piles of spent casings.

The front tips don't match very well, but comparing the results with other shells I've seen, a simple small 1/16" hole in the front is acceptable. My shells rather glow due to a lack of primer on the clear rods I used. They rather resemble red gummy bears right now. As a proof of concept, I think the results are acceptable. In terms of effort spent compared to just buying pre-made ones with more detail, if you're going to just toss them around, it's worth it. You won't need the extra little detail in your photos unless you plan on taking up-close images of piles of ammo.

J.Norad Reviews: Obitsu Multi Purpose Clear Stand MLST-AO1C

2010-08-28T14:25:00.000-06:00

Thanks to reader Sabine for pointing my attention to Obitsu's Multi Purpose Clear Stands. I've been using Gundam Action Bases at the moment to pose the girls, using the hip holding forks. It's great if they're wearing dresses, but it won't work well if I decide to give them pants.

I bought three clear stands for evaluation ($8 each, shipping included off eBay; MSRP 294 yen; $4 at Parabox, $7.50 at Mimiwoo) in the event I liked the performance of one, I would have two more ready to fiddle with without having to wait another 2 weeks for shipping. You can inspect the contents and possible configurations at Parabox's site.

Here's a comparison of the Gundam Action Base (left) and the Obitsu MPC Stand (right). Obvious differences is that the Gundam Action Base takes a large foot path and only mounts by crotch grab. The Obitsu MPC Stand is cleaner and is designed for a doll in mind. Nothing that you couldn't have figured out by the stand names already.

From the back, you can see the massive tradeoff for using the Gundam Action Bases. The question is why use the Gundam Action Bases now that you have the Obitsu stands? The answer is unfortunately simple:

Weight. Hotaru is doing fine supported in the air with the Gundam Action Base, elevated a good 4-5 inches off the ground. Lia, on the right, is limited to poses that keep part of her body touching the circular baseplate to offset the load from the thin and delicate arms. I've tried putting the Scout on the Obitsu stand and there's no possible way I could suspend him in an airborne pose with it. The thin rods are not suited for large objects and it seems like they'd either tip over or snap before they'd cooperate with doing aerial acrobatics with anything heavier than a tournament pack of Magic: the Gathering cards.

So, the Gundam Action Base is beefy to support weight, but has a limited use due to the grip. The Obitsu stand has great usage but is limited due to the strength of the support rods. What if we could combine the two...

I noticed that the rod ends from the Obitsu clamp fits into the Gundam support end, and snugly.

And so the Gun-bitsu Multi-Action-Base was born. Reminds me of that egg turner in Jurassic Park.

The setup lets me pose light weight objects in interesting manners. I'm no longer limited to clear runners in holding up props. The combined base lets me put objects higher than normal, and with a fair amount of strength and grip.

It's not suited for extreme weight, but I found that the Gun-bitsu stand is VERY good for posing the minigun. The minigun has been a tough item to pose due to the lack of a stand and the massive weight. The Gun-bitsu stand has a fairly mechanical look to it, and still blends in fairly well on a bright white background. It looks like it'll be well suited to propping up gun models in the future.

As for the Obitsu MPC Stand itself, it's great for posing light arms in addition to 27cm dolls. The Obitsu MPC Stand is best suited for 1/12 scale figures and anything the weight of 1.5 Magic: the Gathering tournament packs or less. For posing 1/6 scale figures, it's a toss up. The largest claw/clamp does not fit completely around a male doll waist, but you could put them around the thigh instead. Its not a good idea to have them doing anything fancy with the stand, as their weight will topple the stand.

As for female dolls, putting the claw around the waist may restrict the clothing's appearance, so you may not have the ability to have a free flowing look. It's still better to put them around the thigh. You can still do some interesting poses with it in either configuration. They're best suited for static poses and nothing absurd like a Guile flip-kick.

---=="""=._.=//Random Statistics\\._.="""==---
Price per stand: 4 good uncommon cards or 40 terrible common cards
Weight Limits: Less than 140 Magic Cards
Tools required: Phillips screwdriver, sprue cutters
Time spent assembling stand: 10 minutes (includes gate trimming)
Time spent figuring out how to use stand: 2 minutes
Time spent trying to make stand useful: 30 minutes

Rankings: MiniMS Stand vs Obitsu MPC Stand vs Gundam Action Base
(listed in order of best to worst for each application)
Stiffness: GAB/Obitsu/MMSS
Range of motion/posability: MMSS/Obitsu/GAB (Bendable wire beats liftarms any day)
Grip/Attachment/Support Versatility: MMSS/Obitsu/GAB (wires can be claws or racks)
Stability: GAB/Obitsu/MMSS (can't beat a crapton of plastic)
Aesthetics: Obitsu/MMSS/GAB (The MMSS stand can be used to store stuff, but then it looks ugly)

This Weekend's Project: 1:6 Scale Acoustic Guitar

2010-08-22T15:44:00.002-06:00

Every figure collection at some point needs a guitar for their accessory pool. It's one of the unspoken rules of collecting idolatrous representations of paganistic figureheads, er, I mean, toys. Your shelf's awesome quota gets fulfilled by 3% with each guitar with a ceiling of 15% maximum added value.

I actually just wanted a guitar for my Engineer. It's way better than the Gunslinger since I don't have to amputate an already half assed glove sculpt and make reinforcements to make it work. More of also just wanted the Engineer to be able to do the taunt kill with a guitar.

First, like a good Engineer, we'll need some schematics. Unfortunately, I couldn't be bothered drafting up any, so I did the next best thing: have someone else do it for me. Here's a great set of schematics that I used to build my guitar, courtesy of Christophe Grellier's guitar site. I scaled down his drawing to 69.5% to achieve 1:6 scale.

To start off, we'll need to build the body. I chose to make an 18mm thick guitar, so subtracting the thicknesses of two 4-card stacks for the back and front faces, we get 15mm of body height to make up for. Some Ronom Unicorns and Surging Sentinels were sacrificed to achieve the task. I split the cards into 15mm wide strips, then arranged them inside the stencil 5 layers thick. Use tape to hold the walls next to the stencil as you layer the insides with more cards. I ended up using 5 layers instead of 4 because I had excess material from cutting up 4 cards. More is better anyways.

Using the stencil, I made the front and back faces. I opted to use the back of the card as much as possible stylistically rather than paint the guitar. I wanted the "Deckmaster" logo to appear on the front, and the "Magic: the Gathering" back to be unobstructed on the back.

The neck was fairly simple. 8x Magic cards with a slight bend at the top portion. I honestly know nothing about guitars, so I'm going to call parts as I see it. I cut slats in the head part for the strings to feed through. The base is composed of 20x Magic cards, cut to a taper by simple diagonal planing with an X-acto knife. Same technique used on the Hellfire.

To make the bridges, I used some unspecified gauge stripped electrical wire and glued them to the neck. I trimmed any excess with diagonal cutters.

For strings, I used some white sewing thread. If I had silver wig hair, that would be better in terms of appearance. I think white thread works just fine. Coating the thread in some glue would help stiffen it. The threads were secured to the body and upper neck by glue.

I looped the strings around the tuners at least once, then secured them in place with glue. Key is to pull them tight during the process so they remain relatively taught. They won't be functional, but slack will be ugly and noticeable.

And there is the finished Deckmaster guitar. The entire process took about 2-3 hours with lots of down time for drying and not trying. Could probably make another one within an hour.

Here's the back with all the Magic: the Gathering glory.

Unfortunately, I don't have a 1:6 scale pickup truck or a campfire. Got the guitar and that's all that matters.

At long last, Coldsnap is finally playable. It may be a while before more firearms get developed, but some variety is good. Off to bludgeon people with a guitar!

J.Norad Reviews: 1:6 Scale ZACCA Panzerfaust 30/60

2010-08-16T19:24:00.000-06:00

Been a while since I've looked at some more ZACCA Bazooka Collection models. Today, we have the Panzerfaust 30 and Panzerfaust 60 in 1:6 scale. This is perhaps the best and worst blind boxed selection you could get from Series 1, depending on what you're after.

If you love Panzerfausts and need a lot of them for $4 for two, they're great. They surprisingly don't have Engrish text for the German warning text. Nice detailing. Unfortunately, due to the size, the sights on the Panzerfaust 30 doesn't flip up. The sights on the Panzerfaust 60 do, and the safety pin can be removed. Firing handle doesn't move though. They both have a bit of a dirty look to them, which looks nice.

Unfortunately, I have NO idea how most 1:6 scale figures would be able to use these. You'd need really specific hands to be able to hold one properly in the "ready to fire" position. I could barely get a decent photo of the Soldier trying to use one. The 30's easier to manage due to the smaller tube. You're supposed to fire the 60 like this. Good luck finding 1:6 figure hands that can do that.

The Panzerfaust 30 looks more like a club than anything. Or a tiki torch. Or a bamboo Q-tip. You'll probably be able to equip your WWII German army well with just these, or stick them in a diorama on a truck or crate.

Well, time to give the 30 to the King of BONK! with the built in "BONK-tastic action button" left over from the Shia LeBeouf figure. I hear Scout players actually have some skill aside from holding Mouse1 and W while equipping the bat. I don't think mine's one of those skilled ones.

BONK! Or should I say, "THUNK"

"Need a dispenser here! Need a dispenser here! Need a dispenser here! Need a dispenser here!"

"Need a dispenser..."

Ka-BOOM.

Anyways, I found the Panzerfaust 30/60 to be the most useful of the seven types you can get from Series 1, because you get two. This has the side result of being provided two sets of display pegs instead of one. If you're interested in also using the display boards as I have, they really help give you more mounting pegs to help display more objects per board. A lot of the space normally gets occupied by a large rocket launcher, but if you plan on displaying small guns and rifles, you'll want more pegs. On the backdrop, I've used 11 sets of pegs and clearly have room for more.

End notes:
MSRP's $4. If you somehow can get these for $4, they're great if they come with the display boards. Anything more than $4 isn't worth it, however, in terms of buying them for the sake of buying Panzerfausts. There's a few other brands out there with additional detail that ZACCA's display piece doesn't have. You could feasibly build your own Panzerfausts for cheap if you're not too picky about the warning labels. (ZACCA's actually are missing the large label on the projectile itself that has more instructions)

These things are disappointing unless you really wanted them specifically from the blind box. Compared to the other models you could get, the FIM-92, the Panzerschreck and even the near-unusable M202A1, this set's very unexciting compared in detail and actual content. They're just board and peg packs with bonus junk.

The Completed Reclining Chair

2010-08-14T18:10:00.001-06:00

After some mediocre cushion making, I've finished the chair. I used a less stupid technique of sewing the cushion for the back this time, by covering a foam block with cloth, sewing around 3 of the four sides of the perimeter, then flipping the cover inside out. I then stuffed the foam block into the cloth cover and folded the remaining material into the gap. Didn't bother sewing it shut yet, but it works fine for now and looks great.

Here's the completed chair with cushions, in the standard configuration.

Chair in "Long Day of Work Mode"

Chair in "This Week Sucked Ass Mode"

And the "Sitting Limbo Competitor Mode"

So there we go. I now have chair #2 to add to my collection of chairs made of Magic: the Gathering cards. Of course, now I can't build anything less challenging without appearing to be half-assing anything. I'd rather like to get some more furniture for the rest of the Team Fortress 2 guys so I can play a rousing game of musical chairs, but with firearms to settle disputes of "who gets the last chair".

I tested the chair in full recline mode on the Heavy, with his arms behind his head. Didn't go too well. Chair almost tipped backwards. He's fine with his arms on the arm rests. I anticipated that happening, but didn't expect it to go back that easily. I had angled the rear armrest supports/legs to cover the center of mass better, but it isn't enough for the Heavy.

Time to relax and figure out what's next on the project list. This project didn't contribute much to the gun tech pool, which was unfortunate. There's been a few projects I have on hold due to lack of feasibility. I could either scale it back (which is boring), or level up my tech pool with random projects until I figure it out (like how the TF2 dolls did). However, it did give me some new means of fastening thin moving parts together. Might be handy later.

Making a reclining chair, part 2! Now with padding!

2010-08-12T21:52:00.011-06:00

With some plans drafted for the chair sides, we're going to finish the chair. The goal I envisioned is to allow the chair to be dismantled if needed, so I'll be making some weird components. I opted to make some notches in the chair sides to fit the crossmember in the reclining mechanism as a means of holding it together.

Using the lamination techniques outlined a while back, I made some large boards 2 cards wide, one card tall and 4 cards thick using some excess X-Men TCG cards as middle filler (need to whittle down that stack) and a Magic outer covering. These will hide the joining mechanisms. Next bit of action is to make the posts for the armrests. I'll be making these in beam sections to be joined by biscuits and slots, rather than cut out large sections.

Each section is approximately 5mm thick, composed of 4 layers of 4-card thick sections. The inner section has notches cut into it before gluing. The alternative would be to cut the notches along the face, then peel the layers away. The former method allows better control over notch width and depth, as I can measure now and I know the thickness of 4 Magic cards.

There will be three parts to the armrest assembly: the front support, the back support, and the main armrest. After gluing the laminations together, they were sanded flush.

Biscuits and larger support elements were added to the members to allow better control of position when assembled. A similar method was done with the chair back.

With all the parts assembled, the chair is semi-completed. Just needs cushions. The project used up a good deal of cards, which can be seen by the dwindling stack of cards under my monitor. Both stacks used to be the same height.

To make the cushions, I wanted something spongy. Unfortunately, I didn't get what I wanted, so this crappy white plastic packing material I found at work shall do. I cut out a section roughly the shape I needed for the cushion interior.

With some useless fabric, I created a padded outer cover that would make the plastic less horrible feeling. Next step is to wrap it up in the cushion cloth. Something that looked like khaki was used.

This method is really half-assed. Since I won't be seeing the bottom of the cushion ever, I decided to assemble it by stitching it to the seat filler.

Repeat until you have this horrible looking square. Worst thing I've made in a while.

I repeated this method for the leg rest cushion, but with 4 layers of thick fabric, then sewn that to the larger cushion by means of a simple cloth. The middle cloth serves to prevent debris/legs/children from falling into the gap between the leg rest and the chair body. The straps allow me to secure the cushion to the leg rest assembly without glue, so I can remove it if necessary.

And that's the main cushion for the seat. Now, to go make the back seat cushion... then this project will be completed.

This Month's Project: Reclining Chair Mechanism

2010-08-08T17:07:00.000-06:00

This month's project is a reclining chair. Was going to originally make a wingback chair, but that wouldn't have been fun at all. To start the program, I needed a mechanism. A bit of digging, and I found this auto-reclining mechanism on a european supplier site:

Unfortunately, this was the only image I could find that was workable: semi-profile view and a clear view of all the components. It's simple but also a good start. Time to draft schematics!

I started off by attempting to draw the mechanism in workable views to get an idea of how the parts worked. Since I was using Magic cards to build this, I decided to build all struts and members with 3mm wide cards and 1/16" holes to fasten them to each other.

With the preliminary drawings done, I drafted some mockup parts to test out movement.

Leg rest mechanism folded. The initial build didn't fold neatly as I'd like, so I changed one of the angles on the curved arm to better fold the assembly.

Here is the mechanism extended. Worked out fine, except I didn't know what the round disc element did early on. Turns out, that piece allows the back rest to recline further. I learned that this mechanism lets you extend the leg rest by reclining back, without the use of a switch or lever.

With the main mechanism finalized, I proceeded to cut out two sets of parts out of 4-card thick stacks of Magic.

To fasten the parts, I bent paper clips into U shaped staples. To lock the parts, I threaded the paper clips through 1/16" holes drilled with a manual hobby drill, and bent the ends like the ends of a staple.

Paper clips worked well in holding the struts in place, but there's a noticeable lack of support along the axial direction of rotation due to the small area. To rectify this, the two sets of parts will need to be linked with a cross bar to keep the parts centered.

This diagram served to plan out how the parts would overlap. Since there's quite an amount of parts, I needed to sort out how they'd overlap and how they'd be joined to the main frame parts. After some gluing and shimming, we get the following result:

Well, that worked out way better than I hoped. I didn't expect this thing to actually work out at all, structurally with Magic cards. Time to draft schematics for the sides of the chair!

From here, it's all "wing it". I modeled the chair off the actual chair's finished appearance, with the exception that mine's a lot more crappy. And I've also designed zero other reclining chairs ever in my life. Won't stop me from continuing on with this project.

Next time: we make large slabs of cards and sew some cushions!

This Weekend's Project: Annual Hip Surgery

2010-07-25T20:37:00.009-06:00

This weekend, I tackled on a problem that's been plaguing the girls since their first iteration: deficient hip structures. The current build utilizes ball joints. I had some time to think of a new solution, assisted by the plethora of new construction methods I've learned from building the Team Fortress 2 doll set.

The hips have been a problem for one reason: they required to bear significant load on a small region of material. The hip requires a good deal of stiffness to resist torsion, bending/fractures, and friction to keep position under load. Prototype build 1 utilized screws and pins to hold the hip together using a hinge joint linked to the body by a pin. Really primitive, and the movements were restrictive and counter intuitive to the user.

Hip Iteration 2 played with ball joints. I had them aligned in two configurations (cup axial and perpendicular to the ball/shaft) and under three total designs. The problems with the ball joint were apparent: Friction was unreliable. To obtain the correct amount of friction, I had to balance the diameters of the ball with the socket ( often done by shimming with scrap paper) with the friction of the ball and the connector shaft.

Here's the current build. Note the paper used to shim the gap between the socket and ball.

The goal was to allow for maintenance by allowing the leg with the socket to be removed from the ball, and if needed, the ball could be removed from the shaft. This was critical back then due to the way the ball was constructed: poorly. I required a method of allowing maintenance in case the ball sheared apart or deformed significantly, or if I required a complete mechanism overhaul. Handy that I designed for interchangeability and easy modifications back then.

The ball's biggest problem was that despite being able to craft them with a relatively decent degree of accuracy diameter-wise, they were very difficult to make respectably spherical. It was more like building an octagonal cross sectioned polygon. When moved, the "sphere" had more friction in some positions than others.

The second problem was the nature of the material itself. Paper does compress to some degree, and the irregular sphere deformed a lot. It deformed from moving around the socket, with the thicker sections of the ball compressing the socket, making a depression with low friction. The whole setup was susceptible to expansion effects. I noted a fluctuation in friction over the year, attributed best to humidity. Naturally, water will expand paper. The socket was made of Magic: the Gathering (for the smooth finish to assist movement) and the ball was made of 110 lb cardstock. The dissimilar materials caused a more drastic change of dimension than if they were similar. I'm presuming the 110lb cardstock deformed the most, but I have not been certain.

As a result of the problems, I encountered another problem: shaft torsion. Friction was uneven from the ball/socket and ball/shaft interfaces. Some cases occurred where the friction was fairly strong and a degree of torque applied to the system did not transfer to overcoming static friction of the system and went to torquing the shaft. As a result, I had a fair degree of axial play that no amount of shimming could correct.

Now we have the major problems identified:

ball irregularity
friction irregularity
shaft torsion

we can find a proper solution. For normal 1:6 scale figures, the answer is simple: hinge joints mounted to the hip by a rotational shaft/disc system. But I don't have the luxury of the strength of plastic, nor the design space to allow for that. Any part failures required some degree of destructive maintenance to access the failed part if I chose to go the traditional route. This is where Iteration 5 comes in.

Iteration 5 is similar to the traditional hip structure in that it uses a hinge joint and a rotating shaft connected to the hip in a "T" fashion. It however opts to put the rotation within the hinge than at the hip. Iteration 5 uses the strength of the screw hinge system to allow for easy adjustable friction and bypasses the ball-and-socket system and its resultant problems. Shaft torsion has been reduced by shortening the connector shaft. Less length, less torsional effects.

The system has the shaft inserted to a 6mm deep cup located on a notched region on the center movement disc. Disc is shown above the finished assembly. The hinge system resembles a "Pac-man", with an arc removed to allow for clearance of the cup. The cup moves along the arc, limited by the hard stops. Friction is easier to control, as there's only one factor for the rotational aspect. However, the engagement is less (10mm from the ball and socket, 6mm in this configuration) so the shaft needs to have extra friction to hold the same positions as the previous iteration did.

After some initial tests, I decided that my design was worth implementing, at least to one of the girls. Since I'm rather fond of Hotaru having legs, and Aelia isn't really doing anything important, I chose Lia as the test subject.

To construct the legs, I did the usual bit of tubes and shells. I however tried a new method of filling out the spherical void needed to cover the screw/nut part of the hinge: solid hemispheres.
These were made with the handy paper solids maker from long back. I built them in cylindrical steps and sanded them down aggressively with a Dremel. The tube and shell method will be glossed over here since it's fairly simple: glue tubes and reinforce with a sheet of Magic card.

So, how do the finished legs/hips look?

"Don't get any ideas, I'm technically only 2 years old."

Gratuitous upskirt photo time. The new joints solve a cosmetic problem of filling in a small unsightly gap between the thigh and the hip structure. I've left the port covers for the fasteners unsanded for easy access/maintenance.

"Hooray! I can... do the same things I could do already..."

As for evaluation: they are fairly stiff to allow the legs to retain their position. I'm going to see how humidity effects affect the system before retrofitting them to Hotaru and Aelia. Lia will be testing the system and finding any flaws over her next few months. The system does have drawbacks. The mechanism only works for fairly large sphere/hinge joints (mine was 18mm in diameter, and does not work for smaller diameters) and there's a good chance of the torque from moving the legs unrooting the shaft from the hip. I had to re-attach the shaft to the body after noticing the new hips had twisted the shaft out of place.

Painting the Hellfire

2010-07-19T21:09:00.008-06:00

I've always hated painting.

To paint the Maliwan Hellfire, I've had to buy some blue paint to experiment with. I have not owned a pot of blue enamel for about 8 years. Now I have 3. Two of them were useless. I decided to pick up Blue Metallic Flake, since the gun has a shiny blue coat of paint in-game. Probably the most useful color. The above image documents my attempts to get all the colors for the gun. For this painting disaster, I actually required the following paints:

Dark red
Blue Metallic Flake
Aluminum
Black
Grey

I needed a light blue, a deep blue, pinkish red, black and dark grey. The pinkish red was for the glowing red parts of the gun, but I didn't find any means of making a neon color from what I had. So red it is!

For the light blue, a mix of about 40% blue metallic flake and 60% aluminum worked well. An even balance got me a teal color that didn't fit. Dark blue came out with something a bit more obscene: 5% red and 95% blue metallic flake. Any more red and it becomes purple. Some parts required a dark grey, and since I ran out of Gunmetal Grey, a 60/40 mix of grey and black worked fine.

To mix the paints, the surface of an untreated/unsanded Magic: the Gathering card works great. I sacrificed a Crazed Goblin for this noblest of tasks.

The hardest part was probably getting the paints to not look like crap as I tend to do. The dark blue metallic mix tended to run the most and I had trouble getting an even coat. The rest worked fine. To make the finer details in the parts, I etched/scored panel lines with my ever-dulling X-acto knife, and filled it in with a 2 micron achival art pen. Art pens don't like being used on enamels, I learned. There goes another $3 pen! Something clogs up the tip that I can't remove or fix.

The most pain in the ass details were the red glowing parts. In my case, red solid matte lined things. A coat of gloss should fix that. But I'll need to buy that first. Instead of painting them directly on, or making a shallow recess for the paint to remain in, I chose to go the lame route and make pseudo decals. I wanted something on the gun to look somewhat straight. I have the painting skill of a 3 year old child holding an active firehose. If it's not supposed to be going all over the place, I'll need all the assistance I can get.

I painted a sheet of regular printer paper red, then cut 0.5-0.7mm thin strips.

With that, I trimmed them down to length, and applied them to the gun using reckless blobs of adhesive and really fine tweezers for the small red squares. Looks better than any paint job I could have had someone else do for me.

After a lot of painting, panel lining and gluing red things, I finally finished most of the parts. I didn't get to paint my favorite magazine, Mag 3, because it turns out, I mucked that part up and didn't get all the details made. I'll revisit that later.

Hellfire Construction Progress - July 12

2010-07-12T20:33:00.006-06:00

Construction on the remaining Hellfire SMG bodies has begun. Body 5, designated HX, has been completed. All that remains are Bodies 1-4: the TD, KKA, TEK and RF designations. Body 1, despite being the most mediocre in game, is by far the most difficult to build due to the fragile sight mounting region, with the windowed frame. I had difficulty constructing the top sight rail for body 4, and that consisted of just a slit with two holes.

Figure 1: Patrol SMG Body Schematics

Here's the remaining schematic for the Patrol SMG series. A lot of the details need to be supplemented by in-game screenshots. I've detailed all the necessary information I need to get construction going, which means some of it will be ambiguous to the causal builder.

Today, I'll be documenting construction of the modular rail system used for the Maliwan Hellfire.

Figure 2: Starting the Laminate Tracings

This portion details the construction of Body 3: the TEK series. With the diagrams from the previous section regarding the rail details, I've traced out the TEK body and overlaid the internals on the tracing. A slot for the magazine 5mm deep and 9.5mm wide can be seen in the tracing in Figure 2. Provisions for the rails have been shaded as a guide.

At this stage, I've gone into a color-type card system to help differentiate pre-glued card thicknesses. Usually, I use 4-card thick stacks documented here, but this project necessitated the use of 2-card thick laminates. Conveniently, I have a crapton of X-Men TCG cards to use. As a result, you'll be seeing a lot of multicolored sections. Magic: the Gathering colored parts are 4 cards thick; X-Men blue means 2 cards thick.

I'm taking advantage of thicknesses by carving and peeling layers off laminated cards to avoid cutting multiple tracings.There's a small recess for the magazine on the outer layers, about 2 cards thick, shown in the above figure.

Here's a view of the layers assembled partially, allowing you to see the individual thicknesses used to make the rail system. A narrow 2mm wide "rail" goes on the bottom and interfaces with the grip's "T" shaped rail. The regions in contact with sliding parts were left unsanded, to let the default coating on the cards have less friction and wear when sliding. Once the layers are assembled, there's little hope for repairs.

Test fit of Stock 3 and Grip 3 on Body 3.

Another view of the sliding rails.

For attaching the Fire elemental accessory to the body, some structural assistance was required. I was essentially gluing two rounded objects together, leaving little point of contact. To minimize future re-gluing repairs, I opted for metal rod reinforcements. 5mm long rods were made from a paper clip, and holes were drilled into the surfaces to be mated. Loc-Tite glue kept the pins into the holes. Once the two parts were joined, the metal pins would reduce problems associated with shearing to a minimum.

Semi completed TEK body. Details were achieved by carving out large sections, then assembling strips of card or cardstock into the cavities. The raised elements in the center of the body were achieved with a single layer of cardstock on a MtG card. At this scale, small bumps can be modeled by the thickness of cards. Some details require etching or peeling a layer partially. Some details require carving, as demonstrated below.

The rear section of the body tapers on Bodies 2,3 and 5. The TEK series tapers from 5mm to 3mm. To handle the taper, I've marked off the material required to be cut, using a black marker. This body belongs to the KKA series, Body 2.

Magic cards behave like plywood, and this can be taken advantage of in carving sloped surfaces. You can use the edge of a knife to slice away at the card stack, thus revealing the individual layers that comprise the card. Approaching the surface at a shallow angle, you can peel off layers lightly.

When you carve, you'll see lines due to the different layers of the individual cards. You can use these lines to judge your surface's flatness by seeing how uniform the lines are. You ideally want straight lines and uniform separation. However, any deviations can be solved by light sanding or gluing a flat surface on top of the slightly uneven one. I'm just going to sand it down, since minor unevenness won't be very noticeable.

Here's the current assortment of parts, semi-grouped into part number. I'm debating making 5 total grip sets and having 5 individual SMGs, but I'll never need all five assembled at once ever.

Here's all the parts available so far, separated. I'm missing five of the 20 parts and it's still workable for a good assortment of combinations.

I'm getting rather fond of the TEK body. This configuration's the TEK 400, with the less popular "Thumper" magazine. Unfortunately, due to the way the grip is designed in the actual game, most 1:6 scale figures cannot properly hold the weapon. A similar configuration would be the FN-P90. Not a lot of figures can hold that gun properly.

Depending on circumstances, I'll either move onto priming the parts for painting, or attempting Body 1 and Stock 1: the most pain in the ass parts to build.

Celebrating July: Maltese "Build a Modular SMG Month"

2010-07-05T15:23:00.009-06:00

Finally got around to working on something for a change. There haven't been any other projects worth pursuing, despite playing a game that offered 13 million gun possibilities. A different scope or magazine does not mean an entirely different gun. We call that an "accessory". Borderlands was a rather disappointing run after you realize your weapon never matches the level you're at ever, and the best loot gets acquired long after you're bored with the story missions. "Hooray! I got me a TD52 Cobalt Tsunami! I can use it on that fun mission that I can't play now because the mission was a one time event!"

Anyways, enough of that mess. I've secured my first trophy, Sledge's Shotgun, since that gun was notable in appearance and function. However, my second trophy is distinguished by in-game function only and has 750 variants (150 if you remove magazine choices), and is visually identical to a generic version. It's the only other gun worth considering: the Maliwan Hellfire. In particular, I'm interested in the HX (body 5) version, Cobalt material grade. To better explain the scope of this project, let's bring on some diagrams!

Figure 1: The Pain Begins.

The above drawing is the preliminary planning for the gun. Since I don't want to build 150 versions of this gun, I'm going the modular route and building interchangeable parts. There's 5 different bodies, 6 stocks (counting no stock), 5 barrels, 5 magazines and one grip to choose from. (Maliwan by default is grip 3 for SMGs, therefore there is no option for that to choose from). This gives me an idea of what I'm looking at in terms of total parts to build.

The next phase of building is taking reference photos and scaling profile shots for use in drafting up schematics. Only problem is that there's no sense of scale in the game to use, and the gun wasn't designed to be ergonomic, based on preliminary fit tests. This resulted in an understanding that the g43 standard I've been using omitted a critical weapon category in determining scaling: bullpup configurations. I have not factored in ergonomics for bullpup rifles, which the Patrol SMG fits in, shape-wise. With some rough estimates from other rifles, I've accepted that a comfortable bullpup config has a 1:6 scale length from stock end to middle of the trigger of anywhere from 6-7 millimeters. This value gave me more variance than I liked. I settled for a reasonable and comfortable 6mm distance and set out taking screenshots.

Figure 2: Welcome to Hell. Fire.

I'm focusing on the HX designated body 5 for now. Bodies 1-4 will be built later. Screenshots were compiled by running through a glitched Armory level and picking up every Maliwan SMG in every chest for a good sample population, then chucking them all to the ground. Could have gathered them with the save editor, but that's no fun. I figured out the naming conventions for patrol SMGs in the process, which are detailed in Figure 1. Body 4 for Maliwan SMGs was the rarest for me, as a side note. The following diagrams were drafted for the key parts:

Figure 3: HX body laminate construction

Figure 4: Barrels

Figure 5: Body 5, Barrel 4

Figure 6: Magazines and Grip

Figure 7: Stocks

With that out of the way, It's time to build stuff. Figure 6 details the actual mechanism used to connect all the parts together. A T shaped rail integral to the grip will hold the barrel and body together. This piece required reasonable uniformity in spacing throughout. I found that a 2mm wide rail 2 cards thick retained enough strength to not shear off during repeated use.
The stock uses the same mechanism to hold into place with minimal wobbling. Here's a photo of the individual layers of stock 4. The middle layer has a notch to accept the mounting rail part. All sections are 4 cards thick.

Gluing stacks of card together is trivial to explain by now. I'm confident you all can glue 12 cards together and cut them. Parts here were built with some modifications to the diagrams from Figures 3-7.

Test fit of the HX430 config. No barrel has been built for Barrel 4 yet.

Test fit for Stock 3, in the HX 330 config. Stock 3 and 1 are the most unstable to build due to their low amount of material.

Stock 3 consists of two rods with notches that fit onto the retaining rail for mounting the stock. Not doing so would allow it to shear easily. Other options involved drilling holes and reinforcing with paper clips, which is what I did for the rear part of the rods.

I've started on the details for individual components, after being satisfied with how the parts fit together. At this stage, I've completed magazines 1,2,3,4, barrels, 1,2,3,4, stocks 2,3,4,5 and body 5 and tested for compatibility with each configuration. Time to etch out the grip details.

The grip has a few uneven layers that need to be carved. I took care of the larger noticeable side profile depressions by tracing them on with the template shown in the middle. I used an X-acto blade to cut out a groove, then peeled off the card layers gradually until the desired thickness was achieved.

After some carving, this was the end result.

The HX230 is looking better with the semi-finished grip. At least it matches now. Time for some part roundups.

HX 100, with barrel 1

HX 220 with barrel 2

HX 330 with barrel 3

HX 440 with barrel 4

Stock 5 was built, but I wanted to illustrate the parts with similar numerical groupings. Barrel 5 and magazine 5 have yet to be completed. After those are completed, work may begin on the other bodies.

J.Norad Reviews: Mini MS Stand

2010-06-20T21:20:00.008-06:00

Just for giggles, I bought a Hobby Base Mini MS Stand. They're not useful for 1:6 scale figures, that's for certain. However, it's a good opportunity to try it out and let you know what it's useful for. Mine was purchased for $7 at a local store.

Straight out of the packaging, all you need to do is bend the support wires and jam it into the base. The packaging shows pliers being used to bend it. Fortunately, I don't have the finger strength of a 3 year old camel with osteoporosis and could bend the stand easily. As you can see, the stand can hold some decent weight with the stand prongs. It may be usable for some of the crappy Transformers toys you may own. It is quite suited for Halo figures, and any other figures in the 5"-6" tall region.

Their height makes them great for airborne effects. Not so much use for my applications, as I have little in the 1:18 and under range.

It does make for a good showcase stand for guns. Might use these to help review other purchases. They may find use for photo setups. Assuming I can think of interesting photos.

As for a 1:6 doll stand, it's unquestionably ill-suited as predicted. It can't hold the Scout up at all unless he's standing straight. It's semi decent for propping up Lia in a generic pose. It's not as obtrusive as the Gundam Action Base, but the tradeoff is apparent.

After about 4 days of not trying, this is the best use I could muster with the stand. Guess it's my new official moving airborne ordinance stand. It does fill in a seldom used role that I'll try to mess around with more often.

The Soldier Reviews 1:6 Scale ZACCA Panzerfaust 3

2010-06-20T18:38:00.005-06:00

Attention, maggots! Today, I am holding the power of the an semi-belligerent god in my hands; a privilege allowed only by the best soldiers. I have here a Panzerfaust 3, issued by ZACCA, and have the special task of presenting my field report of it in action.

As you can see here, there's two parts to this model. A rocket, which the designers decided to not make the separation where the rocket meets the launcher, but at the head of the rocket so that you can't have fun dioramas of a fired Panzerfaust and the sorry gory mess of a bastard on the battlefield. For shame, indeed.

The markings on this model for once were copied properly without misspellings or disemvowelment. There aren't many other features on this model, but the warning and instructions are clear enough for dim-witted recruits like you.

The model is light and can be comfortably and securely held in the hands of an expert soldier, and fits soldiers of the Dragon, Ultimate and Worldly units. There's little fear in breakage, as the rocket is solid and doesn't have any small parts that easily snap off on impact.

Now, J.Norad instructed me to demonstrate my killing skills in this outpost. I have yet to encounter the Blu spy he spoke of in this area. No shapeshifting, cloaking yellow-bellied fiend will get past me today.

I haven't bumped into anyone, so I guess he must be good. I'll have to keep my eye on things here.

I've found the Blu spy, er, he found...gluuuuuuurg...

========================================================

The ZACCA Panzerfaust 3 is a solid model that for $5 is alright. I don't recall any other competitors that make a 1:6 scale model of it. It's not a particularly popularized RPG to have major companies make versions to sell, and I'm pretty sure it's a model you can not have in your collection and not regret missing out on.

There's not much in terms of paint application on the model. Just two labels and a safe/fire indicator. It would have been an excellent model if the designer made the detachable section purely the rocket and not rocket+front of launcher. As a display piece, it's fine. As a prop, it loses many points for execution as a result. I do give it points for being holdable by 1:6 scale figures without any awkward moments or problems.

As a display piece, it's very robust with two parts. It also looks great. I've had the Soldier hold it instead of his regular Valve rocket launcher since it fits him well. If you're not a fan of the RPG nor can find it for under $5, don't bother. There's others in series 2 that blow this out of the water though.

J.Norad reviews: 1:6 scale Toys City MP7 and G36

2010-05-31T17:53:00.006-06:00

Seems like the economy is semi recovering. That means free cash flow for firearms procurement! Today we bring you a review of Toys City's Heckler and Koch 1:6 scale MP7 PDW and the G36 rifle.
To start off, the packaging is quite superb. Reclosable plastic with an insert card backdrop, and all the junk's visible if you for some reason like displaying MOC stuff. But who cares about MOC, we're here to enjoy stuff. Before we open it, let's take a look at the strangest thing about this purchase: the backing.

Seems that Toys City was thinking (or rather, NOT thinking) that German gun = Nazis. They conveniently forgot that the MP7 debuted in 2001 and the G36 program started around the 1990s. Good old Chinese packaging. Here's a closer look at the silliness that can only come from China.

I'm pretty certain you can buy these from their product selection, so you can recreate the anachronistic pairing this product suggests. But anyways, off to the goods!

The set comes with what appears to be a G36C, complete with mounting rails for the included flashlight and the sling attachment (which can be removed). Quite a lot of detail, including the ambidextrous cocking lever that swivels both sides, and a folding stock. It also comes with three magazines that can be stacked together. I however found that the studs for stacking were too short to stay together when placed on the rifle. They'd come off easily. I attempted to extract the bullets from the magazine, but failed. Good for those who already have problems with losing pieces, bad for those who want empty mags for dioramas.

Another thing of mention is the folding stock. It's held in place extended by a small tab which wasn't molded properly, so it doesn't really stay in place. When I have anyone pose with it, stock against shoulder, the stock tends to swing out. Rather annoying. It doesn't require a lot of force either.

The MP7A1 is a delightful product. There's no official markings on the grip that identify the gun, likely due to licensing. Something that is inconsequential, but a factor that may influence your decision in buying this. The stock extends and the foregrip drops down (and moves past the hard stop due to the parts being a bit oversized, so it swings about 100-110 degrees instead of 90). You can mount the flashlight to the front rails, but it was a pain in the ass. For both front rails, I felt like I was going to snap them off trying to mount them.

I was disappointed in the choice of sights included. No iron sight option and only the optical sight. The optical sight itself is questionable in quality. You put it on by snapping it on the rails, but after a few tries, I noticed the plastic had worn on one of the clips. Probably won't last too many dismountings. You could put it on the G36C if you like (or more, if you CAN without snapping stuff). The only spot the optical sight seemed to grip was the original spot it was mounted on the MP7. So that leaves you with the fun option of optical sight and no sights!

The gun comes with four magazines: two 20 round mags and two 40 round mags. Like all 1:6 scale guns with removable mags, with pistols being notorious, the mag is initially impossible to remove. A few thousandths of tolerance does that to a fit. You'll need to shove the 40 round mag in and wear the inside down a bit before you can even attempt to use the 20 round ones. If you make the mistake I did and shove the short one in first, be prepared for some delicate flathead screwdriver surgery.

I must admit, I did buy this pack just for the MP7. Before this set came out, there was only one way to get a 1:6 scale MP7, and that was buying either a loose one or the Sideshow Cobra Commander it came with originally. Due to the thin parts used in the stock sliding rail, I opted to not make my own crappy version. (It would have totally been crappy. This is one of those situations where buying is better than making. Look at all those rails!)

I had very little interest in the G36C it came with originally, but came to appreciate all the little details it had. The sling clips on with a tiny clip, which as cool as that is, I'm certain it'll break first over any other part of the toy. There's some text on the side that seems to also appear on the actual gun, which was nice. For a pack I bought originally for the MP7, the best aspect turned out to be the G36 packed with it.

If you're still on the fence about buying this pack, I would recommend it only if you really want the MP7. There's better and cheaper options for the G36. It'll have to do for my collection.

==Random Statistics==
MSRP: ~$18 (I paid $17.87 shipped, ebay)
Pieces I'm certain will snap off when looked at weird: 5
Pieces that actually snapped off within the first week of fiddling with it: 0
Minutes spent removing the 20 round mag with an X-acto knife edge: 5
Minutes spent using a flat head screwdriver when the X-acto knife didn't work: ~10
Damage caused to the MP7 removing the mag: minimal
Years the Nazis didn't have the MP7 to help them in WWII: 56 years
Unnecessary Nazi women officers on the packaging: 2

Enough Walking!

2010-05-02T19:59:00.005-06:00

Well, it's been a while. Haven't built anything because there isn't anything worth building. That, and the fact that I am attempting to enslave critters so they can brutally crush the lives of innocent creatures that I deem unworthy of enslavement. AKA Pokemon.

For the uninitiated, the latest Pokemon game comes with a pedometer that you can use/abuse to unlock extra stuff on your game. Calculations have put full unlock requirements at around 2 million steps. I was wondering for a while how awesome it would be if you could somehow put that thing on the Team Fortress 2 scout and just let him go. Bugger runs around way more than I ever will in a day. This very mediocre comic was the end result of thinking of other means of having the TF2 guys manipulate the pokewalker. Most of us probably have done method #3 since #1 simply doesn't cut it.

"It involves WALKING? I don't follow."

Gold Paint Looks Terrible

2010-02-23T20:52:00.004-06:00

Here's those pictures of the painted Sledge's Shotgun I semi promised I'd get around to taking. Perhaps one of my worst paint jobs ever. The front uses a mix of gloss black and copper to get a brownish tint that's barely noticeable. The wooden stock uses a mix of "rubber", red and some peach paint. Happens a lot when I have no paint handy that actually resembles the color of wood.

I'm quite happy with this photo, since there's only so many ways to showcase a break action gun. I've already had to photograph this feature three different times. You can only prop up the gun with clear tubes for so long before giving up.

Sledge's Shotgun is a very big shotgun. About twice the length of the Scout's Force-a-Nature. There's a lot of discussions out there noting the similarities between the two guns, so I won't bother discussing them here. I unfortunately discovered that the Scout's Shia LaBeouf body cannot actually wield Sledge's Shotgun. 'Tis a pity. Looks like only a select few of my TF2 collection will be able to wield the power of a Jakobs. I was looking forwards to using the Scout's Bonk! action button to slam the blade into things.

There's only one discussion around here in The Vortex, and the topic is "who's got the bigger gun". In this case, it's who has the bigger knockback. Unfortunately for the Scout, he drew the short straw on who goes first.

And with all discussions, there can only be one winner.