The Steampunk Gun: a blog around building steampunk guns. Steampunk is the genre of science fiction set in the Victorian Era, which is one of my favorite periods. This is a new project I’m starting to build steampunk guns and other props, and write about my process.
This blog will be a work in progress documenting that process, so it may not be super polished or complete at first. But I hope it will be interesting or helpful to some people anyway.
I’ll show you what I’ve done so far and describe the techniques and processes I’ve used so you can make your own on your own terms, using whatever materials you like. Eventually I may move into building other things as well, like automatons or jewelry cases, but for now it will be mostly weapons.
Hopefully more to come! Thanks for reading.”
A steampunk gun is a type of prop that is often used by cosplayers, enthusiasts who dress up as their favorite characters from books, television shows, and movies. Steampunk is a genre of science fiction that makes heavy use of steam-powered technology. The goal of the steampunk cosplayer is to create an accurate replica of the prop or weapon from the movie or book they are attempting to recreate.
Steampunk guns are usually made out of wood and other various materials such as metal and leather, but you can use whatever you wish. There are some things to keep in mind when making your gun so that it will look good no matter what materials you decide to use. When creating your own steampunk gun, consider the following points:
The material you choose should have some kind of texture. Smooth finished wood looks nice when it is used on furniture or cabinets, but it just doesn’t work for creating a realistic looking gun. You want something with some kind of grain or texture that will give it depth and make it appear real.
Tape down any loose pieces. It’s best to make sure all your pieces are stationary before you start gluing them down. If you don’t have clamps, you can always tape them down yourself to hold them in
From what I can tell, that is the most awesome steampunk gun I’ve ever seen. It’s also one of the more elaborate projects we’ve covered on Make. To make it, you’ll need to be handy with a soldering iron and have some basic skills in metalworking. I’m guessing that if you are reading this site, you probably have those things.
More than anything else though, you need to be able to draw and design things to scale using your CAD program or whatever it is that you use. The final result is quite large, so if you’re not sure of your measurements, do some test cuts before going for broke on the steel.
As for the rest of us who don’t have 3D modeling skills but still want a piece of this project, there’s always Vektor Zwei from our friends at Sparkfun . It’s a bit more low tech than the other options at only two-thirds scale and runs off of four AA batteries instead of being hooked into a wall socket, but that means it’s under $100 as opposed to over. And it could make a lovely centerpiece for any table or bookshelf.
Good steampunk guns are hard to find. What? You say that you want to make your own gun, and you can’t find any plans on the internet? Well, that’s because not many people make steampunk guns like ours, and we want to keep it a secret. But don’t worry, I’m here to help.
I’ll walk you through all the steps of how to make a gun from scratch, and if you follow this guide exactly you can’t go wrong. I’ll even give you some ideas for what you can do if you have different materials or a limited budget. After all, resources are scarce in post-apocalypse Britain; maybe your Dad’s garage burned down with all his welding equipment in it.
So without further ado, let’s dig right in!
This is the most comprehensive how-to manual for steampunk, homemade weapons ever written. It will be referenced again and again.
I painted all the parts a flat black: I used a rattle can from WalMart. Then I started to work on the details. I first worked on the trigger guard and butt stock. I didn’t have any brass in stock so I bought some sheet brass from a local craft store and cut it with tin snips, filed it smooth and then bent it around a form. Since there are no set dimensions for these parts, you will have to do a little measuring and mocking up on paper first.
When you’re satisfied with your mock-up, go ahead and bend your sheet metal around the form. You’ll have to use pliers to get the shape right because sheet metal is pretty thin and delicate.
An important thing to remember here is that sheet metal is very flexible. It’s easy to over-bend the metal and make it too small, so don’t use too much force when bending or shaping the metal.
Once you’ve bent your sheet metal into shape, you’ll want to prime it before going any further. Primer is basically very fine sandpaper that you can spray onto your work piece.”
The default way of making art is to start with a finished thing and try to make something that looks like it. But sometimes you can get more creative and powerful effects by starting with a process and seeing where it leads you. “Pictures are made by fools like me,” said Picasso, “but only God can make a tree.”
If your goal is to duplicate some existing object, you’ll probably fail, but if your goal is to invent something new, you might succeed. This can be an easier way to make interesting things, because instead of having to discover everything yourself, you can build on the work of others.
When I realized this, I got interested in geometric art. You start with a few simple shapes (like triangles and circles) and then apply transformations that preserve the basic structure—translations, rotations, reflections—to see what kind of art you get. (Stephanie Kwong has an example.) Here’s an example where I used these rules to draw pictures of fruits:
I started with the concept of “apple” rather than any particular apple and tried to capture its essence using only simple transformations. The result was a kind of judo move: instead of wrestling with the problem directly, I found a clever way around it
