Wednesday, September 21, 2011

First Post, First Raygun!

1920's introduced us to the retro styled artwork that I have learned to love. Buck Roger's toy raygun sparked the mind of the young and restless to a time in the future of martians and space surfing.

One day whilst looking up Star Wars information on the internet, I happened upon a wonderful site and distributor of what now consumes most of my time. This site was home to a prop company named Weta, from New Zealand. Some of the artists from Weta assumed the alias of Dr. Grordbort and began making rayguns. However beautiful Dr. Grordbort's rayguns are, I cannot afford to spend $700 on each of them. At 18 miles per gallon on my 95' Lincoln Town Car, money runs pretty short here. It didn't really take me too long before I realized how bad I NEEDED one...so if I couldn't buy one, then I had to make my own.
This was my first legitimate build. The body of this one is made from a lamp that I bought at a thrift store, using some of the scrounged up quarters from all the burrito runs to Taco Bell. The barrel of the gun is made out of an old candlestick. I found the CO2 canister on the ground in Memphis which would act as some sort of pressurizer if this raygun was actually functional. To my dismay, that technology is not available to us yet.


As far as the washers that are on the candlestick barrel; these were just leftover parts from previous projects. However, one of my favorite parts of the guns has to be the handle. It was made out of an LED flashlight that I got for my birthday and had no personal use for it. However, adding a filter onto the end and a brass piece over where the switch was, it turned into the perfect handle. I definitely think that the bold "LASER" inscription on it adds to the raygun's futuristic feel.
I am so pleased with the way this one came out! This gun, along with a couple others, are available for purchase on my Etsy account.

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