Marginal gains

I built two cheap and cheeful MP5 'tag guns earlier this year and left them unlensed. Having done the quickest, dirtiest thing I could when building I left the original muzzle flash bulb in place and stuck the emitter where they originally had cheapo laser pointers fitted.

Sadly the range was predictably awful and they've not got much use as a result.

This afternoon I opened them both up, swapped this round putting the emitter in the 'barrel' section and the muzzle flash where the emitter used to be. I also swapped the muzzle flash bulb for an LED.

These gun bodies both came with faux suppressors that slide on the end of the barrel and now all I need to do is put a lens a suitable distance down these and it'll make for a basic lens unit. I'll probably leave it removable for easy transport.

I'm not alone

My Spartan Design Predator tag gun has stopped working (it's gone silent) and I've taken it apart to troubleshoot. It seems I'm not the only one who loves using hot glue to gunge a project together.

I fear the sound board has died, but I'll have to dig the board out of its gluey embrace to really know. Which is the downside, it makes later repair or modification a bit of a pain.

Back to basics

While I love making 'technical' props this weekend I'm off to try out a new LARP system that uses NERF guns for combat and fancied painting some up. So I bought a Rapidstrike which was on special offer, dug a Maverick I had kicking around out and painted them both up with Poundland spray paint. The paint is cheap but it's cellulose rather than acrylic which I prefer for adhesion and toughness. It also comes in small cans which you end up finishing. I hate buying expensive paint and only using half of it because the nozzle gums up.

I stripped the guns right down, masked off some of the original painted areas and left some of the original orange on the moving components as they get scuffed up easily. The Rapidstrike was slightly fiddly inside but not terrible and it seems to work afterwords.

In the end these have come out really nicely. The different shades mean they're not just matt black lumps and stripping them down first really helps with definition and coverage.

The orange parts are quite nice highlights and leave a little visual clue they're still toys. Although I wouldn't want to test that by waving the Rapidstrike around anywhere public.