HOWTO make a fanciful "futuresque" handgun prop

BouncingBall's been building himself a fanciful fake handgun, and has documented the process on Instructables with a good HOWTO:

This is a project I've been working on for a few weeks now. I basically wanted a cool hand gun. I didn't fancy any replica movie props, and the law makes it hard to buy normal replica guns. so i made my own.

Link

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Kyle Armbruster

That… Um…

That looks like…

Well, let’s just say it doesn’t look like a gun.

It kinda looks like a pile of crap someone found in their house and put together at a right angle and pointed it at someone and said “pew pew!”
Enochrewt

I think it looks pretty slick. The guy said he didn’t fancy any other replica sci-fi type handguns, and this one certainly does look different. At first I didn’t like the look of the hand grip, but after looking at the pictures it’s grown on my in a lowtech, high future sort of way.
Guinness74

Make sure you put an orange tip on it to distinguish it from an actual gun…or you might get shot!

Come to think of it, you might get shot anyway. Even if the whole darn thing was painted orange.

It’d be interesting to see you take it through the airport though.
nanuq

“It’d be interesting to see you take it through the airport though.”

Guantanamo Bay is lovely this time of year.
ninjasuperspy

I like it. I’ve been wanting to mess with building a fairly serious raygun for a while. Now to go to some scrap stores and see if I can get my hands on surplus garbage for raygunning.
JJR1971

Let loose with the Byoo-cannon! Yeah!
The Unusual Suspect

To TSA screeners, a bottle of mouthwash looks like a bomb. You think this won’t look like a gun?
sweetcraspy

I think it looks really great. The moving mechanism is very clever and it’s amazing what a good paint job can do. I also am a little turned off by the handle. It’s that smooth leather scrap that hangs open on the top. Tuck that down, and it’s perfect.
minTphresh

what does this thing shoot, staples?
nicheplayer

I’d expect better photography skills from someone who can construct a piece like that. At least set it up against a white backdrop so its detail doesn’t fight with all that clutter on the desk!
mr_josh

Here’s what bugs me the most about homemade steampunk/sci-fi props: they don’t look like they can DO anything. I really like steampunk stuff, I think it’s awesome and it really fits with the stuff I used to dream up as a kid. But if you just cram a bunch of gear sets together with valves and levers and things… that just takes away so much for me. And this is similar. I see a lot of things that were just stuck on there for the sake of sticking them there, and there’s no logic or reason for why it’s formed the way it is.

In scifi, we see people with re-imagined devices and gadgets all of the time, but the best ones seem realistic… they seem like different ways of accomplishing something that we have in our universe… plausible and fun, not haphazard assemblages of parts. (And yes I realize that was a little too serious…)
Keneke

This futuresque handgun looks….dangeresque.

I couldn’t help it!