Hey gang, and a big howdy to "ReturningSon"! Been forever since I've chimed in here. Been so busy on non-Indy matteres, lol. "ReturningSon" sent the white casting over to me for the daunting task of making it presentable. I'd like to share with you some of the progress pics from start to finish.
"A lot of work" is right! This darn thing was a nightmare of a casting. I'm by no means a professional model builder, but dag, this thing was rough. But when it comes to single-piece solid castings, you get what you pay for. I was cautiously optimistic about this thing and I've expressed this to by buddy but he had faith in me and I didn't want to turn him down. As I'm not too familiar with the details of this gun I tried to do my best with the little reference I had. It isn't perfect, but it's the best that could be done in the amount of time and the nature of the casting. I could have spent months more on it, but it would have been a waste of time and wouldn't have been worth it. All things considered, I'm pretty happy with the results and so is "ReturningSon."
First in line was cleaning up the casting a bit by filling in the offending bubbles. The worst area by far was the trigger guard with was totally chewed up and literally was a swiss cheese.
I decided to carve around the trigger mechanism to make it look like an actual moving piece. Carving around the cartridge was no fun. But worth the effort. The idea is to make it look like a real gun made of multiple working components.
The barrel was originally solid so I had to hollow that out also. I decided to only hollow it out about a inch deep but in a cone-like shape to give a forced-perspective illusion of a completely hollow barrel. Once painted, the effect is pretty convincing.
All the cast touchups done, time for a basecoat.
I decided to get rid of the molded bullet shells because they looked too fake and were in bad shape (too many bubbles). I opted for a little cheap ingenuity (more on that later).
I almost like the raw unfinished iron look of the basecoat so I was apprehensive about giving it a clear-gloss coat. I was afraid it would end up looking like a cheap plastic toy, but I pressed onward and decided, that's how Indy's gun is so I gotta go with it. Luckily it came out ok.
As for the bullet shells, they are actually brass washers! Cheap, yes... but you can't get any more real than that.
Many thanks to "ReturningSon" for this little venture. It was tough, but fun.
