I spent the last couple weeks ordering parts, thinking through how I was going to bring the Hand Cannon Revolver Design to life. It was time to get to work.
There are three basic parts to this build: the handguard, the grip, and the electronic shot counter. The electronics are definitely going to be the hardest part of the build. They'll also be the coolest if I can pull them off.
I began with working on the handguard and new sight setup.
The base for this space gat's handguard is a tube smoker. You read that right. We're starting with some perforated steel tube that's used to add flavor to someone's brisket.
After a bit of world-famous Uncle Fudd Dremel hacking the tube smoker was converted into a laser revolver handguard ready to serve as the foundation of all sorts of goodness.
Tube smokers don't come with iron sights. Since we can't leave our Infinity System protagonist without a way to aim. I found a shotgun heat shield with iron sights to fit a top the tube smoker-turned space laser revolver handguard.
"Tube smokers don't come with iron sights." - Uncle Fudd
It turns out that shotguns are longer than revolvers so I again needed to do some cutting. I also had to bend the sides of the heat shield out a bit to fit over the handguard. Below are two pictures that show how they fit together.
The black burn marks on the front of the handguard above are from some experimenting I have been doing with aging the revolver. Unlike my other builds, this one needs to look well used and jerry-rigged by an under-skilled gunsmith who only had spare parts to work with. I'll continue to find ways to age or rough up parts of the Hand Cannon as well as select parts they are more common than they are ideal.
The handguard and heat shield will take a bit more work securing it to the revolver, smoothing out hard corners, and making space for the various electrical components. The big cuts however, are now complete and the general shape of the Hand Cannon is coming into view.
Plan Update: the initial design included a Streamlight RM1 mounted underneath the barrel, slightly offset to the right. I ordered a set of universal tactical mounts (shown below) with the intent of using them to attach the light and the handguard to the barrel of the revolver.
The mounts did clamp tightly onto the barrel and held the Streamlight RM1. However, as you can see below, the setup is unreasonably big. I can't fit the tubesmoker handguard over the mounts so I need to come up with another way to attach the handguard to the revolver and another light source. I'm thinking about taking a clue from the Space Force 6 build and using a smaller scout-style light.
