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DSR1 - candyman style


Candyman

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Carbon fibre or glass fibre are both commonly thought of as polymers (yeah, i know they're technically composites) easy to work with. Resin in general is also easy to use. ABS sheets can fairly easily be manipulated.

 

Polymers don't necessarily need to be cast you know.

 

No, I haven't tried using them. Yes I do know how to use them. Yes, for small scale things. No I'm not some stupid kiddy who thinks he knows everything so cut me a break for making a suggestion. I didn't know what the actual thing was made of so I asked a question.

 

 

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Carbon fibre or glass fibre are both commonly thought of as polymers (yeah, i know they're technically composites) easy to work with. Resin in general is also easy to use. ABS sheets can fairly easily be manipulated.

 

Polymers don't necessarily need to be cast you know.

 

No, I haven't tried using them. Yes I do know how to use them. Yes, for small scale things. No I'm not some stupid kiddy who thinks he knows everything so cut me a break for making a suggestion. I didn't know what the actual thing was made of so I asked a question.

 

CF is actually quite hard to work with; the fibres are more dangerous than the glass ones cause they can get into your lungs and the matted sheets need to be baked into the resin in an autoclave. Glass fibre is useful for certain applications but is much harder to work with than simply carving wood or milling metal. You always need a mould to work with either which is a whole extra process to go through. Mould making in itself is pretty much an artform unless you have industrial tools.

 

I have used resin in the past for a lot of things but its better suited to display peices which is why glass and carbon are used to reinforce it for practical usage.

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I have worked with fiber glass... it's not fun. And to make it strong, you have to lay down a lot of layers, and as CobaltSky pointed out you still need a mold. I've worked with resin, again, molds are needed and the end result typically is no where near as strong as machined aluminum and unless cast thick enough, would only yield display pieces. I have also worked with ABS sheets and styrene, and if you had any kind of compound curve you'd need a master to vaccuform it onto. Not doing it with vaccuforming would mean you'd have to painstakingly heat it by hand, or worse yet, glue sheets together (worse because it'd be structurally weak). Plastic sheet fabrication wouldn't really have any place in this project either.

 

Furthermore plastics like that most hobbyists would have access too are best used on small pieces. A large piece like the DSR1 would require extensive reinforcement with metal plates and rods as a piece of that size would be too heavy and fragile if made using polymers to hold together without metal reinforcement.

 

Candyman could have made some of the parts out of wood, but that still wouldn't have been as strong as metal and wouldn't have yielded as nice a result.

 

Nope. For the project that Candyman has completed here, he went about it the right way. It may seem over engineered as clearly a lot of work went into it and he exhibits some very impressive and clearly innate metal working skills, however, trying to complete this project to the same caliber, may have proven to be more difficult and expensive if fabricated using Polymers than with aluminum.

 

 

 

 

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Glass fibre is useful for certain applications but is much harder to work with than simply carving wood or milling metal. You always need a mould to work with either which is a whole extra process to go through. Mould making in itself is pretty much an artform unless you have industrial tools.

 

I have used resin in the past for a lot of things but its better suited to display peices which is why glass and carbon are used to reinforce it for practical usage.

 

With glass fibre this is not necessarily the case. I was on my school's Rocketry team, and we used sheets of glass fibre and resin to connect our fins ((constructed of glass fibre)) to our rocket's fuselage ((Carbon Fibre :P )). In this case we were simply using it as a joiner, so if you wanted to form a body out of it, yes you'd need a mould or you also can vacuum bag it over a shape ((Still kind of a mould, but of an easier sort in my experience.)). It would be more difficult to do it out of glass fibre or cf if you are set up with milling tools already, but I know that it was much easier for me to build something out of glass fibre than metal as I'm better set up for it.

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With glass fibre this is not necessarily the case. I was on my school's Rocketry team, and we used sheets of glass fibre and resin to connect our fins ((constructed of glass fibre)) to our rocket's fuselage ((Carbon Fibre :P )). In this case we were simply using it as a joiner, so if you wanted to form a body out of it, yes you'd need a mould or you also can vacuum bag it over a shape ((Still kind of a mould, but of an easier sort in my experience.)). It would be more difficult to do it out of glass fibre or cf if you are set up with milling tools already, but I know that it was much easier for me to build something out of glass fibre than metal as I'm better set up for it.

Even using fiber glass as a joiner you'd still have a hard time getting the material to give you the same overall aesthetic and structural strength. Also, I'm assuming that you weren't carrying you rocket around by the fins and only the fins, and you weren't putting it under constant stress day after day. Fiber glass may work well for your hobbyist application, but it probably won't work well for a skirmishing weapon.

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The strength was enough to prevent damage to the rocket after a dismal failure of a flight. The rocket went ballistic on us and managed to snap a piece of steel wire, bury the nose cone 20+ cm into the frozen ground, and inspire some rather creative extemporaneous swearing from me. The fins, as we found them at the crash site, were unaffected and we launched ((successfully)) another few flights that day.

 

Though that would not qualify as 'constant' stress, the low impulse/high energy impact with the frozen ((Read: hard)) ground is probably greater than anything one would experience airsofting, bar running it over with a truck etc. etc. and so forth.

 

We did manage to achieve the same overall aesthetic ((At least to my eyes)) and though I would not recommend trying to build a weapon out of glass fibre ((If it does break it could lead to some rather serious cuts, possible lung problems, &c.)) it would be possible, and you could very well make it strong enough to skirmish.

 

Now, should Candyman work in glass fibre or carbon fibre? Not unless the weapon calls for it ((Or if he wants to, of course)). The beauty of his work is that they are such quality replicas, hand-machined by a skilled craftsman. He should stick to that, in my opinion, and leave the resin/non-metal stuff with the five-quid high street springers where it belongs ((Excepting those cases where it would be following the real steel, as mentioned above)).

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Hmm, I tend to think of glass fibre as being good for large objects like boat hulls )fibreglas is the same thing as glass fibre I take it?). CF is great if you want a lightweight and strong item such as 2 dimensional RC car parts (sticking to what I know best), or larger moulded items like bike handle bars and car body panels. Its also very expensive, and for that reason alone it isnt really an option. CandyMan is a machining and wood carving god, and his rifles demonstrate that fact beautifully. Ever thought about carving wooden figurines and such dude, then flogging them on ebay or down the local market?...

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Think what you would get from collectors on ebay, you could make few more DSR-1s ;)

Saddly he would make exactly £0. Selling airsoft, airguns, crossbows or replica weapons on ebay is illegal in the UK, and its illegal for a UK seller to advertise on foreign ebay sites too. You can sell all of the accessories though, so he could at least sell some custom stocks, and maybe muzzle brakes (dummy silencers), but nothing more. Thankfully though there are plenty of forums on which to advetise, if he could force himself to sell one of his babies... ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Heh!

 

I just bought a case identical to that one for my L96.

 

Have you noticed that, when you pick the case up by the handle, the top part kinda pulls apart?

I'm going to find a couple of small over-centre catches to fit to the middle part of the case and hold it together a bit better.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Got me a case! and my website is all back online now!

 

http://www.ukmonsters.co.uk/dsr1/dsr262.JPG

 

http://www.ukmonsters.co.uk/dsr1/dsr263.JPG

 

That gun is so beautiful! :o Excellent job. Totally kicks the cr*p out of my SCAR. :P

 

Sorry for the necropost, but this just can't be ignored! :D

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