The Steampunk sniper rifle plan

Right, the Steampunk Sniper Rifle. It evolved from another idea…..

Sometime ago I considered making a replica Boba Fett blaster (I’m not even going to explain who that is, if you’re reading this and you don’t know who Boba Fett is, seriously??). I looked at image after image of his blaster, researched what it was based on and read other blogs people had written about how they had made their own. I even went as far as buying a £2 toy revolver from ebay. The actual blaster looks like this…

You can see that it’s actually based on a deactivated WWII British flare gun with an added stock and some other bits and pieces added on. I was going to base the Steampunk rifle on this revolver, extending the barrel and adding a stock but I was put off by the actual revolver chamber and I had more of a magazine or even lever activated look in mind so this was shelved. I looked at other Steampunk guns on other sites, such as

http://www.mazahor.com/steampunk/guns/steampunkrifle1_17.jpg

http://www.svenweiss.com/2010/04/04/stc-2-001-steampunk-rifle/

http://gurutree3d.blogspot.de/2012/01/steampunk-rifle-texture-progress.html

http://www.turbosquid.com/3d-models/steampunk-rifle-ma/413273

They really are awesome and there are loads of images and ideas out there.

This is my first foray into anything steampunk, and I really didn’t have an idea how it should look. I had a vision of a long barrel, probably made from copper pipe and a wooden stock. And that was about it. I’m really working on a budget and looking for recycled materials. I found a couple of planks of wood that were used as part of a compost pin at my old house laying around in the garage and glued them together back to back to double the thickness to around 45mm and left it there for a few days while I looked up rifle stock designs. Again, I looked at loads of images like the one below…

I then realized that I was getting too bogged down with how ACTUAL RIFLE STOCKS LOOK!

I sketched out a few ideas for size and shape on the wood I had, still trying to stay away from realistic shapes. I mean, a rifle stock has to be functional, sit against the shoulder and be within a certain size range, but I was struggling to fit a design within the size of wood that I had. I could always add more wood to the stock end to extend its height but due to my lack of tools I really wanted to stay away from having to do it (if I had access to a table saw I could guarantee accurate cuts that would glue together properly, but I don’t). Therefore the aim is to get the stock and the forward grip from one piece of wood.

I looked at copper pipe next and settled on 15mm. My local DIY shop does it for a couple of quid a meter, but there is also a heating company on my way route to the bus stop to work so I’m going to ask them if they have anything laying around…
Pipe diameter any bigger than this would look wrong for the width of wood I’m using.
The plan is to sit the pipe on the top of the wood and either glue it in place and then hold it in place with copper/brass strips. I can see there being a length of wood beading on either side of the barrel to round off the top of the rifle body. It all depends if I can figure out a away to cut an accurate groove in the top of the body to sit the barrel in…..
This is what I plan to do later this week.