Steampunk Rifle Mod

This was my first Mod, and I received a lot of help on it from my boyfriend. He's not into Steampunk, but he's into Guns, and helped me a lot. 

My goal was to create a Steampunk Sniper Rifle. I had an idea of what i wanted, but had a hard time of figuring out how to get it there. I wanted it to look good from a distance, with lots of intricate details up-close, and to be lightweight for carrying and durable to be handled and banged around.

One of the things that you have to know is that I forget to take BEFORE pictures. I get so excited to get started I tear into it and then go... "oh, oops. Forgot to take a picture."

So, lemme draw you a visual picture. Imagine a Chinese pump-action BB gun, with a crooked barrel and excessive rust, with a chipped and painted wood stock.

That's what this started as. 

Okay! 

This is said ugly stock. As you can see, it is covered in a clear coat, 10 layers of crappy poo-brown varnish and scrapes, pits and muck galore. We stripped this wood of this stain, At first i tried turpenoid. Did not work. So we moved onto a sheet of sanding paper. Worked ok. Moved onto an Electrical sander, worked better. Granted it also melted layers of varnish and showed us the repulsive and pitted original pine-wood stock. Waa!  

Still determined to work this out, I forged ahead.

This delicious walnut stain was perfect. The color would go well with the Copper I planned to add. However, the day was windy- do NOT stain things in the wind. Took a bit of sanding to shake the twigs and bubbles.

The mockup of the stained stock and the PVC parts. We worked to get the lengths right, the tube dimensions acceptable and the pieces to fit together before we cemented it all together. 

We painted all the PVC in two nights. We used a Valspar brand Copper Flake- that stuff clings to everything and leaves a nice, matte finish. 

This is the painted PVC tubes, finally sealed together. The Barrel and Scope are not adhered to the Gun stock securely. In this photo, only one bolt holds the gun together. This mock-up showed me what needed to be added, and I got to work on it right away.

The Leather hand grip helped secure the barrel even better. Hand-tooled myself with an acanthus pattern, it worked in the detail I was looking for while keeping the gun functional.

The Current final Photo shows off the leather Acanthus cheek pad I hand-tooled as well. I also wrapped the scope with copper wire, and added brass stud accents. She's been out to a Faire once so far, and did admirably. She still needs a bit of detail. I plan on adding some copper-leaf accents to the stock and filigree to the barrel. I'm also entertaining the idea of adding gauges and tubes- not necessary but will increase the Steampunk quotient.

Hope you enjoyed! See you soon!