29th Century Phaser

As seen in the following episodes of Star Trek: Voyager:

  1. Relativity
  2. Future's End Part I
  3. Future's End Part II

I probably spent about 10 hours total on this piece.

The following paints were used:

This phaser was seen briefly in a few episodes of Voyager. It's a nice, clean little piece. I purchased it as a two piece kit, consisting of the handle, and the emitter. Clean up was a no brainer. The emitter had a tiny little seam around the edges which was easily sanded away. The handle required a little putty around the base to hide some bubbles in the resin, and the base of the pouring sprue.

I primered with black Plasti-Kote automotive primer, and wetsanded. This was one of the first props I made using Plasti-Kote paints, so I was a little unsure about how to handle a few details, and consequently made some mistakes. When painting the handle, I chose to rest one side of it on top of a paint can cap while spraying the other side. After the one side was dry, I would flip it over and do the same thing to the other side. This technique is flawed, because the paint usually ends up sticking to the can top, leaving some chunks taken out of the paint. If I were to do a build up of this piece today, I would drill a hole in one of the surfaces that will be hidden in final assembly, sink in a wood screw, an suspend the piece for painting. This allows for a uniform coat of paint to be applied over the entire piece, while negating the need to set it down for drying.

The emitter was painted with krylon gloss black enamel. I set the emitter down on it's flat end, and just hosed the thing down with paint. It had a really nice wet coat of paint on it, and that was it!

The paint thickened up the kit pieces enough so that I didn't even bother using epoxy to secure the two halves together. I just slid the emitter into place.

Lastly, I hit it with a couple of coats of Krylon Krystal Clear. Frankly, I hate the stuff, but this was before I discovered the plasti-kote paints. The clear is a little fuzzy in some places, but all in all, I think it turned out really nicely.