Star Trek TOS Phaser Rifle

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BARREL

I started at the front of the barrel with the cone and emitter. The original cone part is laid out back to back so you can fold it and glue both sides together. That gives you the gray texture on both sides. I don’t like doing that with curved parts because the outside needs to be a little bigger to account for the greater surface area to avoid wrinkling. I figured this would be compounded on this bigger scale. So, I cut and glued the inner side of the cone. I cut out the square with the back texture and found the center by drawing a line between the corners. I cut out the center, then used a duplicate of the inner side to trace the pattern onto the square. I cut out the pattern and left a little extra at the joint. I attached the back side at one edge and worked my way around. When I got to the joint I trimmed the excess to get a nice seal. To connect these parts back to back I used double-sided tape. This eliminated any wrinkling glue can cause. And because this gun is printed on heavy paper parts can be repositioned without tearing if you are careful.

Double-sided tape and regular tape are things I have been using a lot of lately. There are lots of times this seems to work more quickly and easily than cutting and gluing new tabs or joints made of paper, especially where you don’t want the joint to have a “hump.” It doesn’t work in every situation, but it something to consider when building.

The emitter cone is a simple curl and glue, as was the barrel base that connects to the forward body. To get the end of the base mounted flush I used a wood dowl to push the part in and used the table to keep the parts level. I then used a BBQ skewer to apply Super Glue gel to the inside to lock it all in place.

The actual barrel was a real pain. The paper is very heavy and wouldn’t curl easily. The part is big so holding everything in place was rough. Naturally, I wanted the barrel to be straight and round so I kicked around a lot of ideas for making a core - filling it with foam, wrapping paper around a dowl until it fit, cutting styrofoam, designing chipboard formers, etc. In the end, I went with the simplest route; I worked a curl into the paper, slipped a bunch of o-rings over it to hold its shape, then used Super Glue gel to glue the edge together. I got a slight teardrop shape, like I usually do making cylinders this way. I put the barrel through the front cone and used my hands to get it more round, then glued the barrel to the round hole and slipped on the small gray “collar” part. This held its shape in the front. Then I glued on the front emitter. At the rear, I again used my hands to get the barrel into a more rounded shape, slipped on the rear “collar” and quickly Super Glued it to the base. Overall, it looks OK. The main reason I did it this way was because I wasn’t going for a hyper-detailed replica look and trying any of the methods I thought up was going to add a lot of build time. If I do make another one I’ll just find some PVC or cardboard tubing of the right diameter for a core.

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REAR BODY

The rear body of the rifle is a combination of straight angles and curved pieces. The original part is designed as one piece, but at this size that was unworkable. I kept the top and the forward cylinder mount wall attached and cut off the rest. I was going to cut off the short angled sides on the top glue them separately, but since the final angles weren’t too sharp I opted to score and fold.

The bottom angled piece is a mirror image of the top. All the seams were reinforces with some Super Glue gel.

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The side pieces had to curve a lot and I considered using my spares that didn’t have chipboard attached. But, I opted to go ahead and try the originals first. It took some force but I did get them into shape. Looking back I could have tried putting some water on the chipboard to soften it for shaping.

Starting at the top, I glued the sides to the flat front, then glued them to the top piece. All these seams were reinforces with Super Glue gel. When I went to attach the bottom piece, I discovered the sides weren’t going to meet up at the front and about 3/4 of the way down the sides. I’m not sure why because the front edge doesn’t have any big gaps or push out that account for it being that far off. It must somehow be because of the chipboard. I opted to salvage the piece by cutting some strips from my spare sides and using them to fill the gap. This is why I started at the top since that’s the side you see the most of. However, the final piece is one I can live with.

To get the rear panel on was also tricky because the chipboard and where the seams were made the end very rectangular. I started by gluing at the top straight edge, then the bottom straight edge. Then I started at the top rounded corners and slowly pushed the edges into shape with my hands. I glued my way around using Super Glue gel until everything was in place. The rounded corners aren’t as rounded as I would like, but they are pretty close and I got the right shape.

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I added a little detail by raising the grid on the top rear section. Finally, I glued down the eyepiece and the button housings that go on each side. I had to do a little extra trimming to get the housing to sit flush with the final curve of the rear body.

[Mirco]

Thank you for a cool idea: TV remote control integrated into a TOS phaser replica .

Looking good so far.

[THE DC]

This is really coming together. It is not only a clean built, but a nice, detailed instruction thread for those of us trying again in the future.

It makes the kit look enticing.

Thanks!

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HANDLE

The handle was next and it was pretty straightforward. Again, everything got glued to 1mm chipboard and I used files to score the folds. This time, to help with the sharply curved areas at the top and bottom I used a flat file to remove as much of the chipboard as I could where the curves were located. This made the material much easier to glue into shape. As before, I file the edges to angles to make a more flush seam.

The gray areas of the handle should be recessed but I opted to leave this version as-is. All the edges were reinforced from behind with Super Glue gel. Lastly, the trigger was glued in place. If I make another I’ll make the trigger functional.

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CYLINDERS

Making the power cylinders was a bit of a challenge. I started with the white and colored circles that are the ends of each cylinder. They are all stacks of glued 1mm chipboard. I glued the top (white/colored) pieces to chipboard and trimmed out the circle. Then I glued that piece to another layer of chipboard and trimmed again. I repeated this process until I got the correct thickness for each piece. Then, I glued the outside white/colored edge piece all the way around. Finally, I glued the colored pieces in the center of the white pieces.

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Have I mentioned I hate making tubes? Well, I do. Since these are big and highly visible I worked extra hard to make them as round as possible. I decided to make a buck by wrapping pieces of newspaper around a dowel rod until I got the right thickness. Next, I put a piece of double-sided tape on the seam and attached one end to the buck to hold the whole thing in place. I curled the piece around the buck until the seams met up and pressed joined the second seam to the first by pressing it down on the double-sided tape. This got me a nice, rounded cylinder. Finally, I sealed the outside of the seam with regular transparent tape. I slowly twisted the buck until the double-sided tape let go of the newspaper and the buck slid out.

I used this tape method instead of gluing a tab from behind at the seam because a lot of time the extra thickness of the new tab at the seam caused it to have more of a "V" shape than a curve that matches the rest of the piece. And, at this size the tape was a lot easier to manipulate than glued tabs. I'm sure there are much better ways to form these parts (custom formers, etc.) but I really wanted to be done so this is what I went with.

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To help the cylinders keep their shape I glued squares of 1mm chipboard to each end using Super Glue gel. I trimmed the extra chipboard off and glued each of those to the white and colored end pieces making sure to matching color to each end.