Star Trek Phaser

Got a commission to build a Star Trek phaser from TNG for a Sci-fi themed birthday that was coming up in two weeks.  There is something about me, crafting and short deadlines that get on really well together =D  I started with a good old fashioned Google search and sketched up a design from there.  Since I'd be making this one in my home workshop I figured balsa-wood would be the best material to work with, since all I had was some scalpels and a dremel.

I started by making a 1:1 scale drawing of the phaser and cutting the balsa-wood to the right dimensions.

From there it was a matter of carving out the phaser from the wood.  This was done roughly at first then more and more of the basic detail cut out once I was happy with the shape.  The handle was the trickiest part to get right so that it curved to the shape of the hand.  I also had to cut everything deeper than the design called for as I knew I would be covering the model in Polyfilla to smooth it all out.

Card was then cut out to give the front more shape and the whole model was cover in a layer of Polyfilla.  It about this time that the sanding started.  The phasers on TNG always have a clean, plastic look to them so I knew that I'd have to get it perfectly smooth.

More details such as the buttons were cut out of card and glued in place.  The front nozzle of the gun was cut from some left over balsa-wood.  Again these where all smoothed out

Then came the most time consuming part of the build.  The handle grip.  Dremeling out the groves was easy enough, I just have to take care to get them perfectly straight.  It was the sanding and smoothing out that took hours.

Finding the correct colour for the phaser just took a trip down to my local Game Workshop.  Weathering was nothing something that could be done here as it's Star Trek and everything is new and clean.  But that not to say none could be done. I added a small amount of wear on the grip as well as the rim of the buttons.

Over all I'm happy with the way it turned out and I got the scale just right, which was one of my biggest concerns.  But most importantly the client love it and that's all that matters.

What I learned from this, balsa-wood is both a god send and a curse!

-Matty