Finishing up the VSS and Case

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.