Jayne Cobb's gun from "Firefly" and Serenity

As a follow up to my previous "unboxing" post of Jayne Cobb's gun, I now bring you the finished version!

Jayne Cobb's big ol' gun from Serenity

And if it looks big and massive in the pictures, we'll that's because it is. It's a few pounds of solid resin and feels gooooooooood when held. I wanted to get a bit more creative with the colors and maybe try some antique brass in some parts, but the client wanted it "as is in the box art" so....I refrained from my more creative ideas.

If anyone is interested in purchasing one of your own, visit Geek House Creations.

Suicide Squad Trailer is all Harley Quinn

I was iffy about Suicide Squad until I saw Harley Quinn. And a sinewy heroin thin joker.

Jayne Cobb's Firefly Serenity gun prop unboxing.

Jayne Cobb's gun from Firefly cast in solid resin

I just got back from vacation and while sorting through two weeks worth of mail and packages, I get to this! Jayne Cobb's gun from the hit show "Firefly". It's a pretty rare gun, and I've not seen any other online. Seems to only be available on Amazon from K&M Stock.

Opening it up, we find a big ol' solid gun. Honestly, I was a little shocked that it comes in mostly one piece. There's four piece all together: 1) main body 2) left handle 3) right handle 4) long shell extractor.

Good news is that it's a solid feeling piece. If you're someone who likes a little heft in your prop guns, well, this is it. You could pistol whip your way through Comicon crowds with this baby.

From handle to barrel, it measures 14". Not bad at all.

Four parts, easy build.

Trigger Guard flash

The parts are mostly well molded with perfectly find detail for solid piece. There's some flash around some parts, mostly the top barrel and the trigger guard assembly. Nothing that a good Dremel tool or hand filing can't handle. A good rub with fine sandpaper too might help get rid of that glassy smooth resin texture.

Can't wait to get to work on this piece and add it to my growing Firefly gun collection. This complement my "Mal's Gun" rather nicely! I'll follow up with some pics of the finished piece. Stay tuned!

The Order 1886 Steampunk Grenade

Click to zoom

My first real 3D Print, printed and painted. It's the "Steampunk" grenade from The Order: 1886 with a few modifications by me. It looks great and feels really, really good. 

I've not seen one for sale out there so as far I know it's  Geek House Creations Exclusive! If anyone is interested, you can get it at the Geek House Creations Shop.

I recently decided to invest in a 3D Printer-- the Flashforge Creator Pro. 

DIY Steampunk gauges with ICE resin mix tutorial

While I've been insanely busy with teaching myself CAD and working on my 3D Printing (more on that later), I decided to post a bit of a throw back to some good ol' hands on work. Here's a quick-n-easy tutorial on DIY Steampunk gauges using ICE Resin. I got much of this technique from Thomas Willeford's excellent book, Steampunk Gear, Gadgets, and Gizmos: A Maker's Guide to Creating Modern Artifacts. I hope to do a short review of this excellent book in a future post, but for now let's stick to the gauges. 

The main ingredient here is self-leveling ICE Resin. You can get it on Amazon for about $20, and a small kit will last you quite a bit. ICE Resin is really easy to work with, hardens very clear, and is pretty forgiving. I've used one other resin mix before and ICE Resin definitely wins out.

I start with some garden hose caps for the big gauges and some small closet handles found at my local Home Depot. The closet handles are just small eyelets about 1/4 inch deep. 

Home Depot Steampunk supplies

I had to give the gauges some backing to support the paper gauge faces I'd later add on, so I used some trusty Magic Sculpt to raise the backs up a bit. Simple enough.

Here's where I wish I was better at remembering to take photos while working on stuff, but I let my descriptions suffice. I had some pics of gauges that I got off the internet and printed at the right size. I cut out the prints and put them in as gauge faces. 

So....then...I mixed the ICE Resin according to the directions. Pretty easy and straight forward. I'm pretty horrible at following mixing directions, ask anyone who has ever seen me try to bake, but seriously this is pretty much idiot proof. Just half and half in a plastic cup mixed with a wooden stick. Wait about 5 minutes, according to directions. Actually the longer you wait, the less trouble you'll have with bubbles. So be patient. I know it's hard, but try. Go talk to your loved ones for a few minutes and then abruptly cut off the conversation when the timer goes off. Then I just gently poured a little resin in each gauge and set them in a covered container overnight. 

The result is some pretty cool little gauges that you can use anywhere in your favorite projects. Note that the one in the upper right hand of the photograph below has some bubbles. This picture was taken before they were put to bed overnight and I've happy to say that the bubbles dissipated by morning. 

And that's it. If it looks complicated, it really isn't. Hope you found this helpful and I'll follow up on some of the items mentioned in this post in later posts. Magic Sculpt alone deserves high praise and of course, Mr. Willeford's excellent book deserves a post all to itself since it's the book that started it all for me. 

Five Nights At Freddy's Custom Lego

So here's one that means alot to me. My son is getting into the act of creating and making by working on his own custom Legos. Even though he just started not too long ago, I think he's showing some real talent. This is his first custom lego and it's from the cult game Five Nights At Freddy's. It features a completely sculpted head! And if you think this is good, wait to you see his Nathan Drake from Uncharted.

Fallout 4 "Pip-Boy" Edition Pre-Orders now on Amazon!

Fallout 4 "Pip-Boy" Limited Edition Pre-Orders are now on Amazon! Get yours here!

If you don't know, Bethesda is releasing a limited number of Fallout 4 games with an official "Pip-Boy" that fits a device, metal case, maps, and lots of extra goodies! These limited editions are $119 on Amazon and given that any PC game runs you about $69 and Pip-Boys go for unofficial "Pip-Boys" sell for at least $100, you're coming out well ahead. I tried to get mine last week on Amazon and hesitated. By the time I came back from lunch and decided to pull the trigger, they were gone!

I am so glad they are back that I got mine as soon as I saw it available. Word to the wise: these will sell out!