This Weekend's Project: Playing With Switchblades

Bit of a long overdue Spy update: finally made a knife. My Spy has been forced to go "Revolver spy" since September 2008 since I never made him a butterfly knife. No backstabbing for him.

Until now.

Naturally, what fun is it if the Spy's knife is static? Of course it works! It's perhaps one of the most fun melee weapons I've made in 1:6 scale next to the Soldier's entrenching tool. I'll go over the finer elements of the butterfly knife if you feel compelled to make your own for your Spies.
With all projects, we have the obligatory schematic. The knife is made of three main parts: the blade, and the two halves of the handle. I've taken care of the hard work of designing the parts for you. All dimensions are in millimeters, since Imperial units are for things made by Texans with large wrenches. The handle is made of the usual Magic: the Gathering card, created by folding a card in half and gluing another folded card over the first. An additional two layers were placed on both sides of the handle half for extra rigidity.

The blade, this time, is actually made of metal. I opted for metal in this case for simplicity of a strong and thin blade. You can use sheet metal bought from a craft store, but it should ideally be 0.05mm(0.002in) thick. I used the aluminum sheet that comes from electronics breadboards that I had obtained from my college days. No idea why they package a sheet of aluminum with them, but hooray for me! Draw out the blade with a marker and trim it out. You'll need a 1/16" drill bit for the hinge holes. For the hinge pins, a paper clip will suffice.

The silver paper circles are actually there to hide and retain the paper clip pins. They won't fall out normally, but it's nice to know they won't later on. You can optionally try to dull the blade so you don't do what I did and accidentally stab myself with it. But hey, if you're smart enough to make this, you have every right to make it as functionally sharp as possible.

Now with his own knife at last, he can do what all of us have been doing since the Sniper/Spy update: camping and trying to stab snipers and katana wielding girls. (The katana is incidentally from Final Fantasy VII Advent Children's Sephiroth figure, if you wish to obtain your own. It makes a surprisingly great 1:6 scale item despite it being 1:8.) Happy stabbing!

I'm going to gut you like a cornish game Aeris.

Desk Vignettes #4: A Spy's Guide to Getting Girls (part 1)

Since the oven's kaput til Monday, stopping Scout sculpey fun, here's some Sniper/Spy love.

Sometimes, it seems like it's too late to snag that girl. The Spy has ways to get around that.

To best increase your chances, it helps to dress to impress. Best to hide that shiv when you do it though. Nothing scares a lady off like a guy holding a knife.

Strike up a conversation.

Know what she likes and try your best to get her interested. In this case, Hotaru can't resist the idea of six long, hot and heaving barrels of minigun.

Victory!

Weekend Project: Things That Start With "S"

Today's incidental theme is stuff that starts with "S" that aren't going anywhere. The Spy's gloves stand at the sanding and priming stage, sitting somewhere on a shelf, slowly setting. His suit still stands semi-complete, sans stripes. Sometime, I'll sew some stripes using some similar colored stitching.

The stove isn't starting, so I can't bake the sculpey to finish off the head sculpt. This skinny head sculpt is for the Scout, having now decapitated Shia LaBeouf. Since I'm waiting for the weather to clear for my gas stove to regain the ability to spark on again, I also made the Sandvich. Not a very stupendous or difficult sculpt, but I had leftover sculpey that wasn't solid from the humidity. It'll join the Sniper coffee mug in the accessories pile.

Here's the Scout with his cap, stolen from a Soldiers of the World figure. The cap's the wrong shape and style, so I should sew a proper one. Can't do that without the head properly cured though.

Progress as it comes.

This Weekend's Project Progress: The Heavy Weapons Guy

Well, I had difficulties continuing with the Heavy Weapons Guy's minigun. I've come to accept that I improperly scaled it to 1:5 than 1:6 scale. Might have to scrap it and redo it properly. However, that doesn't mean that I still can't make headway on him. First, a pic on this weekend's progress, then some notes on the construction.
I still need to work on the gun. The hands aren't properly done yet, and need some epoxy and a coat of enamel for the gloves. If you're wondering about the suit, I can't find maroon cloth. Pink was the best I could get close to, and it's not too off from the in-game model. Actually, it's fairly off, but I tried. I still like how the suit came out, and I'll probably be fine redoing it in maroon. I'll do the stripes for the suit using a colored pencil if I ever get the suit made. The suit still needs some fasteners. Debating using buttons instead of velcro for a better look.

The head sculpt was fairly straightforward. Just two hours of work, and not a lot of problems. However, my sculpey had started to harden/dry out/become useless without slave labor kneading it soft after being exposed to hot and weird weather lately. I should just buy a new box and throw what I have left away. My hands can't handle the additional effort needed to make it workable.

The cigarette comes through the paper mask, and is removable. It's a simple piece of wire with half the insulation removed and jammed into a premade hole in his mouth. The mask was assembled in a similar manner, using insulated wire poking through the mask.
I decided to experiment with the Heavy's body by using a different, more expensive body. I chose The Ultimate Soldier's line of figures, (Retail $35, I paid $23) a British Paratrooper from WWII. For $35, you'd expect something really articulated, but he's actually worse than the $8/$5 figures I bought. Only one elbow point as opposed to two, and barely any waist movement. However, the joints are superbly stiff and he has a lot of heft to it. Not to mention, his shoes are smaller and his right leg is for some reason shorter than his left. Terrible flaw. Always something wrong with the right leg for every figure I've bought.

The default hands were unable to hold anything but a mop and bucket, so I decided to go for it and slice a finger free. Lo and behold, he can now hold a pistol. I got so excited I did it for both hands, so he can gangster wield 1911's now. I'll have to sand down the fingers before I apply epoxy so he can permanently have finger dexterity.

More progress when it comes. However, I like him without gloves right now.