BARREL
I started at the front of the barrel with the cone and emitter. The original cone part is laid out back to back so you can fold it and glue both sides together. That gives you the gray texture on both sides. I don’t like doing that with curved parts because the outside needs to be a little bigger to account for the greater surface area to avoid wrinkling. I figured this would be compounded on this bigger scale. So, I cut and glued the inner side of the cone. I cut out the square with the back texture and found the center by drawing a line between the corners. I cut out the center, then used a duplicate of the inner side to trace the pattern onto the square. I cut out the pattern and left a little extra at the joint. I attached the back side at one edge and worked my way around. When I got to the joint I trimmed the excess to get a nice seal. To connect these parts back to back I used double-sided tape. This eliminated any wrinkling glue can cause. And because this gun is printed on heavy paper parts can be repositioned without tearing if you are careful.
Double-sided tape and regular tape are things I have been using a lot of lately. There are lots of times this seems to work more quickly and easily than cutting and gluing new tabs or joints made of paper, especially where you don’t want the joint to have a “hump.” It doesn’t work in every situation, but it something to consider when building.
The emitter cone is a simple curl and glue, as was the barrel base that connects to the forward body. To get the end of the base mounted flush I used a wood dowl to push the part in and used the table to keep the parts level. I then used a BBQ skewer to apply Super Glue gel to the inside to lock it all in place.
The actual barrel was a real pain. The paper is very heavy and wouldn’t curl easily. The part is big so holding everything in place was rough. Naturally, I wanted the barrel to be straight and round so I kicked around a lot of ideas for making a core - filling it with foam, wrapping paper around a dowl until it fit, cutting styrofoam, designing chipboard formers, etc. In the end, I went with the simplest route; I worked a curl into the paper, slipped a bunch of o-rings over it to hold its shape, then used Super Glue gel to glue the edge together. I got a slight teardrop shape, like I usually do making cylinders this way. I put the barrel through the front cone and used my hands to get it more round, then glued the barrel to the round hole and slipped on the small gray “collar” part. This held its shape in the front. Then I glued on the front emitter. At the rear, I again used my hands to get the barrel into a more rounded shape, slipped on the rear “collar” and quickly Super Glued it to the base. Overall, it looks OK. The main reason I did it this way was because I wasn’t going for a hyper-detailed replica look and trying any of the methods I thought up was going to add a lot of build time. If I do make another one I’ll just find some PVC or cardboard tubing of the right diameter for a core.