Before it comes up: No, I don’t have any records of the first weekend of work.
In commemoration of the promotional relationship I’ve earned with Orange Mod Works, I’ve begun work replicating the Concept Artwork OMW published to their Facebook page.
While the wide variety of textures on the artwork make for an interesting render, it’s not something that would likely appear on a “production model” OMW Recon. On top of that, it makes things painfully complex for paint. Considering this, I’ll be simplifying the main colors to Matte Black, Medium Gray (either Matte or Metallic), and Metallic Aluminum (some details left out of the lineart):
Weekend 1 basically consisted of prepping parts for paint and giving all the black and gray parts a base coat of flat black. The muzzle went missing that week, but otherwise the main shell, plunger cap, clip, and clip lock slides were all successfully coated.
Once the base coat cured, it became apparent that not all of the logos were cleanly sanded off. On top of that, the deep recesses in the clips caused some issues. Week 2 began with sanding down the logos and cleaning up the clips in preparation for the next and final base coat before detail painting:
With that out of the way, it was time to start engraving the hand grip. I’d initially intended for the grip to have that angular “swoosh” sandblasted into the sides, but the thin walls of the grip and lack of time at the shop meant I’d need to find another method. I’ve not the tools nor experience to engrave this emblem myself, so I figured my time would be better spend building up, rather than carving down. The plan was to add a plate to each side of the grip to give the appearance that the sides had been carved into.
First step: make a template to work off of. The amount of work involved in making these grip plates fit seamlessly meant it wouldn’t be something worth producing in large quantities, so I didn’t bother scanning parts into the computer. The template started out as a rubbing of the original grip:
With the template complete, two plates were cut out of expanded PVC foam board (Both sides were cut from the same template, once reversed):
The wonderful thing about PVC foam board is how well it takes to superglue. Superglue’s generally a weak, brittle adhesive, but it does a great job of melting the foam board into place. Adhere to pieces of expanded PVC foam together and they’ll break anywhere but where you glued. Anywho, next step was affixing the plates to the grip. Everything was affixed with plenty of superglue to seal any gaps and firmly attach these plates to the grips. Priming grips see a lot of contact – we don’t need these plates popping off:
I’ve left the the priming grip alone to allow the glue time to fully cure. Before paint, the grips will be sanded down to ensure everything is fit together seamlessly. For now, enjoy this last image to show off this week’s progress:
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