If you watch Mythbusters or have seen his speech on TED, you know that Adam Savage is a bit obsessive (ok, crazy). But sometimes, you have to admire his obsessive nature...especially when it comes to completely re-creating (probably even better than the original) Bladerunner gun wielded famously by Harrison Ford in my all time favorite movie.
I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible:
(Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer)
I made a crazy accurate scratch-built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had great picture reference but shitty size reference, it was 20% too small. Fuck!
I even had it chrome plated at one point and I weathered it:
In 2006, the screen-used original surfaced after 25 some-odd years and sold at auction last year for $256,000.00. Supposedly to Paul Allen [That myth has been busted -- Mark]:
It's 95% finished. My hand-built baby. About 30-40 hours of labor spread out over (at least) 6 years. An original Steyr-Mannlicher .222 target rifle receiver and magazine and a Charter Arms Bulldog .44, both demilled and gunsmithed by me (working with hardened steel -- FUN!) with custom machined aluminum and steel parts (barrel, grip, butt) and made as close as possible, in every respect, to the original. Painstaking.
That is all I have to say on the subject (probably not). I can't even describe how good it feels to hold it in my hand.
via Boing Boing
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