Sunday, May 11, 2008

Rifle Nozzle

As before, I've fallen behind in posting progress on my Mangalore Rifle. Progress has indeed been made, it just has not been documented.

In this post, I'll share some work I did on the nozzle. As readers will know, the molds for the rifle did not come with a nozzle tip. I have one picture of a stunt rifle that shows what the size of the tip is, and also that it appears to have some kind of nipple on it. I found a vitamin bottle cap that looked to be about the right size, and decided to use that as a base. I was still unsure how I was going to handle the nipple. I looked at some reference photos I have for a screen used HERO rifle, and found that instead of a nipple, it just has a big hole. I guess that makes sense. So I opted for the easy way out, and decided to make a hole instead.

Anyhow, here's some pics.

I started off with the cap, and took it to the belt sander to sand down the text on the top. Sadly, the cap was slightly concave, and only the text around the edges sanded smooth. I didn't feel like knocking an eigth of an inch off the cap to get to the text, so I just left it as it is, figuring I would fix it in a casting.



Which reminds me. The reason I decided to cast this in the first place is twofold. First of all, I wasn't sure if paint would stick too well to the plastic cap. Second, it's much easier to attach to the gun if it's solid resin. As it is, it's essentially hollow. I suppose I could have filled it with resin or something, but that sounds like a lot of trouble. So I cut out a red cup (remind you of any college parties you've been to lately???) and used that as my mold box.



The mold came out beautifully.



More to come on the cap shortly.

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