HALO Sniper Rifle Update: the Beast is Finished!

As I've previously mentioned in these three posts, I've been building a replica of the SRS99D Sniper Rifle as it appears in Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST.  Another maker in the Midwest has been doing all of the armorer work for an upcoming, much-anticipated, no-budget fan film called Operation Chastity and offered to make my molds in exchange for getting to keep the first four castings.


Well just before Christmas, the FedEx truck dropped off what my grandfather described as "two heavy God-damned boxes" which he had to sign for in my absence.  When I got to the workshop, I was thrilled to unwrap no less than seventy-five pounds of silicone rubber joy* that looked like this:



Barely able to restrain myself, I had the first cast poured in no time. Then I pulled out some of the other castings and glued it all together. Unsurprisingly, it came out huge:



With assembly complete, the paintjob was exceedingly simple. First, the whole thing got a liberal coating of black primer:



Once that had dried, the next step was to task Mallory with drybrushing the whole thing from end to end (omitting the scope assembly) with Model Masters' steel-colored enamel:



She did a pretty decent job and, as you can see, drybrushing the metallic onto the edges really brought out the details:



Once the steel-colored paint was dry enough to handle, the next step was to add a gold-tinted insert for the scope lens and then pick out a couple more details here and there. Now it was all coming together:



Of course, it doesn't really look complete until it's being held by someone (in this case, my friend Matt):


Or better yet, wielded by a fully-armored HALO Spartan:




Now I've got to get back to work on the shotgun.

*I had to include the picture, because "silicone rubber joy" can come in so many forms, as evinced by a Google image search for that exact quote.