Going in circles

Paintball exists so that people can play at shooting each other without using real guns. Somebody released a video game where you play at pretending to shoot each other from the comfort of your front room.

Now I've been gifted these two paintball style light guns from that game and plan to convert them to Lasertag so we can use them to run around in the woods pretending to shoot each other. With a pretend version of a pretend gun.

All very circular.

They are really cool looking though and without the paintball reservoirs on top make an excellent base for some scifi blaster pistol style guns. As with a lot of these light guns there are a plethora of switches set up nicely and the original light sensor assembly will probably make a good base for a Lasertag emitter. Because this was some kind of standalone game they even have a battery holder in the grip, which I may re-use if there's plenty of space elsewhere in the body.

Apparently the 'slide' on top shoots back when you fire, but I suspect that will be a casualty of having to fit a Lasertag circuit, sound board, speaker etc.

Making Magic Wands

I've made a few prop magic wands and a friend asked if I could write up  the process. You don't need much apart from a hot glue gun, dowel and paint.

Start with a 30cm/12" piece of 8-9mm dowel.

Put a point on one end and some texturing on about half of it. I used a dremel, but a rasp, file or in a pinch sandpaper will do the job.

Next, use a hot glue gun to build up some organic looking lumpy bits to mark the ends of the handle section. You will want to do this in a couple of goes, allowing it to mostly cool in-between. If you try and build it up too quickly it will just run too much.

The glue tends to try and run off so use a low setting on the glue gun or keep turning the dowel.

Once you've got a kind of hilt and pommel, let it set for a good half an hour or so. A big accumulation of hot glue like this can take a while to cool completely.

Next, paint the glue with some standard acrylic paint in some kind of accent colour. This helps the woodstain we'll use next to stick to the glue, it tends to run off without. Also, it provides some shading so feel free to mess around dabbing it on. I've not found straight lines and geometric patterns to work very well.

Once the acrylic is well dried, use some external woodstain to cover the bulk of the wand, holding it by the tip.

Once that half is dry do the other half. This wand is quite dark, deliberately. You often get better shading with a lighter stain.

Finally I used some glue to add a little glitter at the tip. You wouldn't want to do this with every one, but this felt like it needed brightening up.

Using this method you can make a few variations on the theme so each wand is unique. I did 25 for a LARP once and had a little production line going.

More IKEA stuff

I have plans for this simple IKEA step stool, but first it needed something on it to protect it. It's not as orange as it looks in the photo, it's actually red.

We need guns, lots of guns...

For Lasertag next year I want an assortment of guns to choose from. For our first couple of years we've been making do with just some pistols. Having made the Skorpion machine pistol, I'm moving on to these two.

The Mossberg body is a cheap Airsoft springer which is nice and solid but light. It fits nicely in my partner's hands so I can see her using it a bit.

The AK47 is a cheap kid's toy which I bought after one of the other taggers bought the first one and deemed it good for converting. It's almost full size apart from the stock and comes with a passable sound/light board that I might try to re-use to keep the build super-easy and cheap.

The AK will definitely be a quick and dirty conversion so will only look good from a distance but I want it to NPC the Fallout game we're doing in the summer. Bashing it about and grunging it up a bit should make it look the part.

Once I've done these two I may splash real money on a good metal rifle body as I'll have some gun building under my belt and hopefully have learned some of the pitfalls.

Don't expect it to last

It's a £3 broken water pistol of finest pound shop quality given a coat of paint and some glue to fix the busted bits.

It looks kind of cool but never ever kid yourself it'll last very long. It may be dead by the end of the LARP I built it for.

We love IKEA too

Having made the brain in a jar I needed something to act as a stand for it. I also wanted to make the business end something that I can re-purpose for multiple props, as a brain in a jar is always useful.

For the first go at the stand it needed to be compact and quick to throw together. It occurred to me that some time back I bought a set of metal desk organisers from IKEA so that I could turn one of them into my medical scanner. Being clean and white gave that a strong 'medical' look which would work for the brain too.

So I fitted a square acrylic base  the same size as the IKEA box to the brain and mounted it to the box with four bolts. This is a nice generic fitting that will allow me to bolt it onto something else later if I feel like it.

The box has precious little inside, an Arduino Nano, socket for the mains PSU and on/off switch. It is however big enough for an RPi if I want to make it speak later.

Here it is complete and running, although the video doesn't show the colour cycling very well.

Brain installed on time and under budget

I have a brain in a jar. OK it's a little lacking in any means of support right now but look at the pretty lights!

I love cheap stuff

Not quite sure what I was going to make next for a bit of fun, this weekend offered up glorious bounty. Tiger is great for random stuff although I'm sure somebody will be along to tell me how awfully unethical their business model is or something.

I however now have several foam brains thanks to this. At least one will end up in a jar.

Also we bought a ridiculous, slightly broken but cheap water pistol from a petrol station. A good spot by my partner that should be excellent for all manner of daft campy sci-fi LARP once painted up a bit.

One day it may shoot lasertag. Just because it's there.