BLAST INTO ACTION: CREATE A KILLER $5 SCI-FI BLASTER WITH DOLLAR STORE FINDS

hey today we're back to basics with Dollar Store blasters let's go [Music] hey it's been a while been working on my film I think I'm just gonna go in the dollar store I just drove by let's make a blaster maybe I don't know I never know what's in there so let's go find something bring home the loot make a blaster I think yeah let's go foreign [Music] got my loot maybe four or five bucks let's go make a blaster all right and let's get to making I mean I made enough of these I kind of have a rough idea but for me the the big aha moment was the um using those Dollar Store saws that you would never saw wood with but as a handle right because they handle on those guns no matter what configuration I put them in it looks like a gun contemporary gun it's just gone and then the handles are always kind of made for children so they look a little weird but that saw blade handle is futuristic it's ergonomic for the actor or the cosplayer and it's just a really nice solution and it's it's that thing where you put two things together that haven't been put together before and you get something else it really works for that so I'm a big advocate of the saw blade um so here I'm taking these apart and I want to put them next to each other and I realize that they won't be bifurcated they'll be both going the same way if that makes sense right because they're not meant to be one on top of the other the the little latch there is like on the left on both of them so I took off the snout because I want to flip the one around so those are bifurcated it's the word of the day bifurcated and here you know I'm just you got to be careful with this but using the Dremel tool to cut these apart is a lot easier and cleaner than with a hacksaw and it's never surgically clean but it's always clean enough so here you know what I'm doing here like these videos I always find deceptive because it looks like I'm just you know following a plan but really what I'm doing you can't see my face but I'm I'm realizing oh if I go like this that's the way it fits and it just kind of the piece will dictate to you what makes sense and what doesn't and then here you know game time decision I'm like nope that's not it and then I'm like aha so again you can't see my face but this is me going aha and then it's gonna give me a nicer base for the handle um so here this is just the poor man's you know sanding table it's just a bell sandal if you're going to do this be very careful but it's it's just very effective right I want to get everything smooth and everything flat and this machine is going to do that a lot better than if I do it by hand do it by hand is fine um and here I'm you know fine tuning it with the emery sticks sanding sticks I have sort of like a whole collection of store-bought sanding sticks and Dollar Store nail files and you know whatever gets the job done so here's the five minute epoxy I like buying this five minute epoxy from the hobby store because it's like I can always have it on hand as opposed to like when you get those like syringe style ones from the from the box store so here I'm just using five minute epoxy on this because I want it um to really grab right as opposed to you know super glue sometimes in these situations will not grab always clamp things together when you glue it like this I actually picked up not from prop building but I watch a lot of luthiers a lot of Guitar Building guys and every time that glue something it's like how many other clamps they can fit on that that's how many Clips they use clamps so I've kind of adopted that into my practice where when you're gluing something just as many clamps as you can fit on there you're going to have a better result all right so now I'm figuring out how to put this handle on there and then I I realize I have this other gun that I thought was a throwaway gun but now I'm like I have because I put the two guns together the way I finally did There's sort of like a flat surface at at the top right like a Barren area so I'm like oh let me put the scope on here now because it's tiny the scope and my sort of storytelling that I'm telling myself about what what does this do on this gun so in my design right I'm using air quotes that's a laser sight right so the gun now is a laser sight so now I'm just going to take some 150 some heavy grit paper and just going to tooth it up as we say and all you're doing here is you you want to scuff up um both pieces that you're gluing together so that there's little nooks and crannies I mean I'm sure there's a more technical term for that but so there's just little nooks and crannies for the glue to seep into and lock everything into place right so now um the connection of a flat surface to a flat surface is just never a great thing right so what I'm doing here is I'm just I'm just using these screws because I have them on hand you could use dowels you could use wire you could use a piece of coat hanger whatever just so that there's more of a a mechanical type connection to the piece right so it's going to be flat surface to flat surface but now with these little Nubs that I'm gonna epoxy in there it's a much more secure Bond and here like I said just because I had these wood screws on hand I'm just um taking off the Nubs and because this is going to be glued and I kind of want it to be rough and rugged I just file it a little bit and now and the reason that I I made the gun this way is is you know as as I move on and start to glue things on it's like that handle fits very nicely in in this sort of uh arrangement of all our parts right so that to me is always a sign of like okay so here you'll see right so if I was just gluing the flat surface of the gun to the flat surface of the top of the handle that's just asking for trouble that it's going to snap off so by just putting those two little Nubs in there like I said I just use screws that I had on hand you could use dowels wire whatever pieces of plastic and then here I'm just using my little matte cutter to make sure that that's centered as best as I can have it and again you know that was glued down with a clamp much better so now I'm just sort of toothing it up and if this looks out of a place to you it's because it is the videos got mixed up but I'll take this as an opportunity to reiterate what we're doing is we're putting the epoxy on there we got it all nubbed up a little dap dap dap I'm gonna put it on there and and I think in that past moment what I was doing was doing a trial run which I picked up from the guitar guys so I don't know I'm learning something new here but you get the idea I'm gluing a thing to a thing and I wanted to stick so I'm toothing it up and clamping it down so now we got something so I got those two screws I know I'm going to be using Bondo but then I was like oh maybe this is opportunity to just add a little Greeley right so these are the evil Ted trays evil Ted grape maker on YouTube um and he has these trays I think I bought them at Michael's where it's like whenever I'm casting something in resin there's always a little bit left over so I'll pour it into these trays and then I just have a box of these grave leaves that are just really great especially for these situations so here because again we're putting two things together that aren't supposed to be put together it was just a little too wide so I busted out my poor man's table sander again and then there I just trimmed down the sides and then now this is going to be a better solution right because you have that whole face of the gun handle or the saw blade and I could have just filled it and sanded it smooth but now adding this little Greeley this little detail it just adds production value to the piece just makes it more interesting so here I'm what am I doing pop quiz that's right toothing it up so I like to just take a needle file just make little cat scratches a little cat scratch fever and that's all that happens is glue goes in there and then it's all sort of mishmashed on the other piece and glue will go in there and it's just going to help to bond everything together and again I'm using five minute epoxy because I just feel like with these kind of plastics injection molding stuff if you're just going super gluing stuff together flat surfaces it's just I don't know I've had I've had it be fine and I've had it come flying off so for me with the epoxy it's just kind of like making it um bulletproof pardon the pun not intended so here and again you know I always tend to just sort of go with it so those were floating around and off camera I struggled to get those positions just right but you know sometimes just struggle so now some just good old Bondo I got because this is a cheap dollar toy there's there's always lots of screw holes right where there's just holes in the plastic where screws are you want to get rid of those and then oftentimes when I'm sort of merging together to pieces that aren't meant to be merged together you get a lot of gaps or maybe there's just like a couple millimeters that are a little weird and the Bondo is just a great way to sort of sculpt plastic you know and I you know you always got to be careful with the kicker you could do too much and then it's you know it gets all firmed up before you can finish what you're set out to do and then if you do too little it'll never Harden but it's it is the perfect sort of solution for this so what I've evolved to doing over the years is because it's always like against the clock if you saw there I used my fingers and I used to use like uh you know like a pastry cone and I used to use like a little knife and I just found that it just stresses me out like I got to get this done before it hardens that I found that it's just easier to use my finger probably not the best way but that's the way that works for me find a way that works for you and then just own it and then when it's at this almost hard State that's when you can kind of take your knife for your your palette knife or whatever and just start to trim off all the excess so you don't have to sand that off so now I got a whole array of sanding sticks and sanding paper and files because you know you look at that that is not fun to sand right there's not the edges of that saw blade handle are like the only flat surfaces on this right so it's like files to get into the corner then I have different green little like Emery boards a different size little Emery boards and it's just basically just work your way around it and whatever gets the job done my palm sander is my go-to sander that I love but with this too many rounded edges right so there it's like oh that's a little high there's a lot of Bondo let me use this cheap dollar store near file that is really gritty just to get it down then once I get it down I use these um fine grit sanding sticks it's a process and then you know I don't know here I am 10 days later and it's done just deal with it sanding needles I was at the hobby store the other day picking up primer I think and I saw those at the counter I said let me give these a shot and uh they were I think they're probably great for model building but not so great for Bondo they're just a little too flexible for that but then you know got the good old-fashioned sanding sticks you know they look like coffee stirrers those work great and then once I start getting into the 220 that's like okay get ready to bring it home and usually I never feel like I'm finished sanding I feel like you could just sand and sand and sand so it's like at a certain point you abandon it you say okay you know I did that and then what will happen is you'll you'll start to prep for paint and be like oh dang miss that spot gotta get that so just do my best right so there's 500 grit and that's sort of like the final final pass and you see here within this process you know it's all you know diligently trying to get every single Spa right so it's like at a certain point you just have to say okay well I did my best right so here the 500 sort of for me the last pass here I have my shop vac just because it's again so dusty and so like rounded and weird angles that I'm just sucking out dust blowing out dust and then finally before I paint little isopropo alcohol and the reason we love isopropo alcohol is just because you can really give something a bath and it evaporates you know within a couple minutes you could paint as opposed to like if you did this with water you'd probably have to I I probably would let it set for a day before I went ahead and painted it and then you know use the hair dryer to speed things up sometimes I use the heat gun but that's a little too hot but the hair dryer hair dryer is a great tool so here's a primer first coat is a primer that's self-explanatory and what the why I always like to use gray primer on the very first coat is so then you can see like all the voids when I used to paint houses the holidays right it's all that stuff I have to fix so I have the spot putty and again right like all that sanding and really taking my time to sanding and you still miss all these spots and again like I said with the Bondo I used to use like a knife for this and I don't know I just got in the habit of just putting on because I always have the you know these days you always have the rubber gloves or the nitrate gloves on hand so I was like you know what just use my finger and the reason again why I use the finger is in my case for whatever my deal is it's just easier for me to move quickly and accurately with my finger I would prefer that I used a knife but that's not my situation and then now uh the the trick here with this is using the fine sandpaper and then you just want to sand off everything but the little void that it covered right and that that can be a little bit of a hat-trick sometimes because sometimes you'll just sand off the whole thing or you'll sand off the whole thing and the void is so minuscule um that it'll look like you sanded it off but you didn't but that's like how accurate this stuff is and then once you put your final color on there you'll be glad you did that and again another pass with the shop vac I blow it out suck it in and then now I hit it with a gloss blast black and this is going to be my base coat right so I'm going to paint it Chrome and black is always a good base for Chrome but also I want to have little details that I want to be black right like so those little I don't know what they are those like little muzzle things around the Shroud I want to keep those black in that uh saw blade handle there's that nice little sort of um detail of I don't know what they are they're they're just like those lines you see there in a second so I definitely uh want to put some some masking tape over those lines and this here this Yellow Tape is the Tamiya masking tape it's a little expensive but it's one of those things where you know I don't use a lot of it but when I do use it it's so Superior to trying to like if you're trying to do that with like some hardware store Blue tape would not be good and lots of times you pull off the paint right so this tomato stuff is the is the bomb so here I'm just going to hit you know just a hardware store silver because I know I'm gonna really dirty this up and it's and if you want the Chrome look you know you stop there but for me I'm gonna really dinge it up but I want this to be my base Coast as if you know this thing was passed down maybe three generations so it was at one point beautiful silver but now it's just a Digi very effective weapon right and so the secret to getting those nice crisp lines unfortunately is you just got to let your paint dry right so that base coat you gotta let it dry 24 hours if once you start speeding that up and getting impatient with that it's fine but your masking tape is going to peel off the tape it just does right so if it's really important to you to have a masking job just you know bite the bullet and wait 24 hours so here is my oil uh water-based oil paints which I find to be the best for weathering we just got you know if you see my channel I do this all the time I've got the blacks got the burnt Umber got the uh burnt sienna and I just put a whole wash on here just slather it on right and I found the most effective way to do this is you don't have a plan right like if you start thinking oh a little more here a little it's like it it doesn't look as good it's just like I put a lot on I take a lot off put a lot on take a lot off oh what happened there that's a happy accident keep that and it's basically just setting myself up to have as many happy accidents as possible appreciating when they do and then just moving on when they don't right so that already looks better to me might not to you you might like it shiny so here with the with the bird Umber I I try to just go very gentle with that because I like it to look like rust and then here you see I'm just adding all these different Easter egg colors which is weird but it's not I've been doing this for a while so what I like to do with these is like I'm just patting these on I'm going to take off like 99 of this right it's like I've just found that just these little flecks of color because all my props are are for films right not necessarily like cosplay or for the Shelf it's like there's something that happens when you're color correcting or when you're lighting with these little flecks where it's just little points of interest very tiny like grains of sand almost and then here is you know if you follow my channel I'm all about the bloody hand so what I always do is put a blood on the hand and it's like the soldier like the the brave man or woman it's like they were such an epic battle that their hands were bleeding and they fought on and I got 99 of that will be gone but just that little Fleck makes me happy so here is the rub and buff the silver metallic wax and all this does is it pulls back up some of the highlights right because I have what I have I have like a clear coat on here like a matte clear a wash of black and brown and you know all this stuff so the the wax just brings up the highlights and then here I have this blue which I only have this because I was at a hobby store and I was like I've never seen this before so I bought it so what I like to use this for is whenever I have a gun barrel like you know how you get the blue on the end of something that is has extreme heat and I typically would do this with like a translucent or or like an anodized blue I've been doing it lately with this um wax and then that looks pretty good right it's pretty effective so still on the fence of of which technique I use I think here maybe I go a little too far but it's it's fine it is what it is right we're just going with it so now the nicotine spray I love the nicotine spray so this is just water-based very thin and sometimes like I'll just spray it like over spray it because this is the one paint that looks good when it runs I don't know why but it does so here I use the hair dryer and this dries really quick too but what's cool about this is It's water-based right so what you do is oh I forgot about this so the rotten Stone so I'm really grunging this up right three generations of grunge but it's such an effective weapon it gets passed on and kept alive so here same thing with the weathering it's like so now I have that that thin coat of nicotine on there and water it's water-based so I'm just rubbing it off I'm not really thinking about like oh this would look good or oh this spot here is just just rubbing it off right running rough shot over this and the idea is sort of like I don't know the the soldier gets home and they got to clean up their weapon real quick and yeah and then just drying it with the hair dryer and I'm thinking yeah I think that's it like tap out it's done Beauty shots and then there you see what I was talking about like so that blue look how hot it is like in this in this film look that I put this in right here it's like you never know what's gonna pop or or you do if you get better at predicted those sorts of things but that even looks like a spaceship so yeah this was this was a cool one right it's like you never know what's gonna happen I'm very happy with the way this turned out and it's worth noting that whenever I I make something just for fun just not for a specific project they always seem to come out better right because there's no pressure there's no expectation so it's important to just keep making this stuff right it's like I maybe will use this for a project in the future or in a project in the future I'll have an idea and because I've already gone through the process with this build I'll make a better version for that project that that matters right that'll be out there but um but yeah and again you know it's like I make enough of these and I had a specific thing in my head where I was like okay I'm gonna put these two barrels this way I just love the saw blades right that's a and again that was a dollar store thing that I just kind of found but it's like rather than just a traditional Gun trigger just that little thing of putting the saw blade type handle changes it entirely it makes it unique and brings a lot of value to the production uh but what I was saying is like so the idea I had in my mind about how I was gonna put these two together once it was in front of me it made more sense to do it this way and I'm yeah it just it really just came out good I don't mind saying so I guess the only thing left to do now fire it up all right so let's make a little room here what we got I never know how these things turn on I'm gonna say I'm the oh right on this one this okay [Music] let's put the double barrel action well as always I hope you found this video useful please like share subscribe leave a comment love to read the comments and be sure to check out the merch shop this is we got the hats we got the shirts uh buying that really helps the channel I got film Quest that was just at film Quest got the hat from them like I said I like to practice what I preach my merch really helps um smaller entities and it's just fun to wear a hat that nobody else has well just remember I am just here to help make sci-fi [Laughter]

Channel: createscifi

Views: 59,752

Keywords: sci-fi prop, sci-fi diy props, gun, howto, how, build, tutorial, cosplay, prop building, Low Budget, How To, prop, scifi, making, blaster, how-to, blasters, sci-fi, short film, star wars, star trek, Low-budget Film, low budget, zero budget, budget, no budget, special effects, laser gun, How to make a scifi gun, nerf, nerf war, nerf gun war, dollar store, dollar tree, nerf guns, guns, space gun, oc cosplay, futuristic weapons, dollar tree diy, dollar, sci-fi props, dollar store diy

Id: xmRPxZhj1mM

Length: 26min 16sec (1576 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022