Well how do I put this? I was going through a thrift store one day and I saw this toy chainsaw that had a moving belt. I thought "That’s not a Nerf gun" and disregarded it quickly.
2 months later I was introduced to Gears of war for the Xbox360.
I grew very fond of the Lancer. I didn't really want to use any other guns.
Automatic with a chainsaw. I love it.
One day while I was playing Co-op with my little buddy Gabriel I put the game on pause and told him I was going to make a Lancer. He asked how and I didn't exactly know. All I knew was the seed was placed deep within my brain that I needed to make one.
That seed grew into an idea. I then found that same make of toy chainsaw over at ToysRus.
I was eyeballing it and realized it could be done.
I then brought it home. After taking it out of its package I realized this was going to be harder than I thought.
This is what I was looking to achieve.
This is what I was working with.
We've got work to do.
Without further adieu I present to you: The Lancer write up.
Now just to get one major thing out of the way. The breech system and plunger assembly are all the same as my original Longshot modification.
This write up is all about integrations.
We will start with integrating the chainsaw.
First take your Longshot and cut off the front where the bi pods are so it looks like this.
Now lets take a look at minimizing the chainsaw so it fits in place as smooth as possible.
See all the blue shit? Get rid of it. Should come out with a screwdriver and a little bit of force.
After removing these you should be able to just unscrew the gun and open it up. Don't worry about flying parts because everything is pretty well screwed in place..
Here are the internals with instructions on how to begin minimizing it.
Keep in mind you do not want to cut through any wires yet. Only plastic is what you cut here.
Take everything that was screwed into place and put it in a secure location in the chainsaw when making cuts.
Also be sure to cut off those stupid orange jagged things
After cutting it should look like this. You can see the stupid jagged things at the bottom.
Good now we need to add a spacer sheet of plastic between the Longshot and the chainsaw. If we do not the curve in the chainsaws back end will prevent clips from entering the mag well.
Here you can see the plastic before it was cut in two halves.
Now get a feel for where you want your chainsaw to be and make sure the rubber chain on the chainsaw has enough room to move. To help this I cut a small square in the front of the gun. I also had to shave down one of the pegs that held the front orange barrel holder in place.
Then sand down all plastic that will become glued shortly. Apply your glue and place the two separate toys together. Then position your chainsaw and Longshot in the most centered position making sure the chain comes through the direct center of the gun. Then whip out elastic bands and bungee cords to help hold it in place.
After the glue has dried you may want to apply another dose of plumbers goop to the inside of the shells where the two toys meet. This will help increase the strength of the integration. It's going to help make sure they stay integrated.
Now let’s keep minimizing. See this orange piece sticking way way out?
Lets cut it down nice and flush with the rest of the chainsaw/Longshot.
This can only be done to the one side. As the other side does needs the room for the motor and such.
Now cut out some thin plastic sheeting larger than the gap you just cut.
Don't forget to bore a hole where the one screw port is on the chainsaw part. (Picture of that later.)
Then sand down the sides of the plastic and the chainsaw where the two pieces of plastic will connect.
Then brush the loose particles away from the parts you just sanded add Plumbers goop squeeze them together. Then apply pressure anyway you like. I used a tub of bungee cords, bottle of wire pulling lubricant and fishing weights hanging off the top.
While the Goop is drying take your stock and cut it down. Cut it down to the plastic wall that prevents the clip from entering all the way in.
This was done out of pure cosmetics. A lot of this modification is like this. If you would prefer a more comfortable stock and have the ability to hold another clip then don't do this. If you want something that looks like a lancer then do these mods that actually sacrifice function for fashion.
12 hours later the glue has dried very well and now it looks like this.
’Now it is starting to look more like a Lancer.
Now we have a chainsaw mounted but there is still a large gap in the front of the gun. In the game the chainsaw blade actually rotates in the gun. So we have to cover up the top part of the chainsaw.
Now take some 1/4" plastic sheeting and make walls. Keep in mind you don't want the walls to big we are cutting a grip later.
Now take two other pieces of 1/4" plastic sheeting and connect them to the bottom of the original pieces so they press into the chainsaw keeping it in place preventing it from bending left and right. This is your final chance to perfectly center it. Then take another small piece of plastic sheeting and cut it so it covers the gap in the front. Sand down the corners so it is easier on your hands. Once finished it should look like this.
Now trace out and cut where your hand is going to be holding the gun.
Before you go and cut anything be sure to open up the actual chain part of the chainsaw and remove the red wheels they are unnecessary and will only get in the way.
After the cut you will notice the handle is very scratchy.
Smooth it out as best as you can but don't worry we will be taking care of that later.
Now cut off the Blue rail on the top of the gun and remove the yellow sight.
Once those are finished the gun should start looking like this.
Here we will need a cool looking barrel for the lancer. Take the Longshot pistol and get the orange tube and front decorative piece from it.
In the bottom picture you can see the two lines that are going to act as guidelines for when you cut out the slits like in the original Lancers barrel. If you don't know what I am talking about, refer to the picture at the beginning of this thread.
Now the Lancer doesn't exactly have a connector nub on the front that allows another gun to attach so we are going to be getting rid of that here.
1. Cut along the line of the nub do not damage the shell!
2. Shave down the insides so it can fit the Longshots secondary barrel Shave down the nubs in between the arrows to fit the pvc.
3.Place 1/2" pvc coupler inside and cut down the coupler where you need to. Make sure the cleaner side is facing outward.
4. The clean looking front.
Now lets take a look at building the Lancers sights.
1. This is where we cut off the rail.
2. Trace the shape of the old rail holder on the 1/4" plastic sheeting.
3. Make sure it sits flush with the existing tubular nub.
4. Draw a line across the center.
5. Cut it in half.
6. Draw a line across the center.
Now cut into that line the same thickness of the washer you are going to be using. This part is probably done best with a hacksaw with a very thin blade. I did mine with a band saw.
Cut through the bottom of the washer to make it more buried in the Longshot then take some plumbers goop and put it in the crevice on one side only. Then place your cut down washer into the crevice and apply some kind of pressure for better adhesion.
Now lets take a look at adding the front sight.
1. The gap that needs to be filled.
2. Fill the gap with two pieces of 1/4" plastic sheeting.
3. Take a 1/2" cpvc coupler and cut it in half. Sand down one end so it is flat. Glue it into place. I used a combination of super glue and plumbers goop.
4. Side view
Now lets take a look at the electronics of the chainsaw. My major goal to accomplish was to get the chainsaw engine sound running at the press of a button and have it revving when pressing the Long shots trigger.
First we need to drill a hole for the red button to go. The red button should be within fingers reach of the trigger. So the chainsaw can be started but not revving. I decided to place it under the bolt handle closer to the front on the right side of the gun. This way I can just put my finger to the bolt handle and slide down to it to activate the chainsaw. The hole is located here. A nice empty space in the gun with no moving parts.
Make the hole only slightly looser than the red button that would activate the chainsaw. This will allow the button to freely move back and forth when being pushed.
The trigger for the chainsaw is a wire that connects to a torsion spring. When the torsion spring is bent the end of the torsion spring connects to a piece of metal that is connected to another wire which completes the circuit. Take the torsion spring/wire and the metal piece/wire and attach them to the longshots trigger. Here is a picture showing a few things about the inside of the Chainsaw.
Here is where the torsion spring and metal piece will be going. With a cutting wheel, cut a line into the trigger of the Longshot so the torsion spring can move up and down without popping out of place. Be sure to feed the wires through the shell of the Longshot back to where the chainsaw is located. Now both wires have been extended using small electronics wire. I prefer using the stranded over the solid wire because it is easier to work with and very flexible.
Now in this modification you are going to need to run wires through your Longshot. Take your dremel and make small holes where necessary to run wires through. This will help keep them in place and keep them out of the way of all the moving parts of the Longshot.
We will be coming back to the chainsaw a little later on. The reason for that being the chainsaws mechanics are on the left side of the shell and all the buttons and Lonsgshots trigger is on the right.
Let’s get into some body work I am sure by now you guys will be noticing the gaping holes in the gun.
Well let’s patch them up. here are some photos on how they were patched up.
1. I took some thin plastic sheeting and covered up the three upper holes on the top. I found that they took away from the Lancer look. The plastic sheeting was put on the inside of the shell.
2. A small thin plastic sheet was placed over the hole and gooped into place.
3. Another thin piece of plastic to cover up hole where handle led into.
4. Big custom shaped plastic piece to cover hole in the back of chainsaw.
5. You will get to see this real soon.
I also needed to cover up this big gaping hole in the top. I was able to cover it up by using thin plastic sheeting. I used two pieces. Don't mind the brown on the side I will be explaining that later.
For now let’s start out with the lighting.
I got my Led’s from http://www.superbrightleds.com/
This tool came in handy. Find out what resistor is needed.
First let me say that I accomplished what I wanted out of lights but I made it 4X more complicated than it needed to be. You will understand later.
Here is how I did it.
Here is what I am looking to accomplish with the lighting. I photo shopped Lancer lights onto the Longshot.
First we are going to be looking at the front part. It sticks out of the gun in a small tube like way and it gives off a light that is diagonally downwards. I was thinking pretty hard on how to accomplish this look. This is how it’s done.
1. Take a 3/4" pvc coupler and reduce it down to a size you can work with Make two of them and make sure they are as identical as possible. Be sure to have the side the lip on the outer edge.
2. Cut to size a piece of 1/4" plastic sheeting that will fit in the coupler. Sand down the exterior with a thick grit sand paper, then move to a medium grit sand paper and then a thick grit sandpaper. This will help give off the light effect. This technique is called "Frosting". Drill two holes in the sides using a pointed sanding bit. Take two blue Led's and bend the prongs to the shape you would like. For this we are looking for an "L"shape. Then cut the prongs to size. The longer prong is the positive, the shorter prong is the negative. Be careful though. Try to only bend once, these things weren't designed to be bending in all directions it is a very thin metal. Also remember to keep the positive one a little bit longer. Also draw a rectangle of where you would like the light to shine. Put hot glue in any gaps between the interior of the lighting assembly and the exterior. Once you know that the Led's will fit perfectly in placer take some clear nail polish and apply it to the sanded area that Led will be pressing up against. This will allow more light to flow through. Once that dries continue to the next step.
3. Hot glue the Led's into place.
4. Here you can see the wiring connection. Take some thin wire and have a wire run to the positive side of the Led prong. Then I added a wire from the negative of that prong to the positive of the other Led. Then connect a wire to the negative prong of that Led.
5. Here is me testing it with a temporary resistor to see the look.
6. Pretty.
We will be adding the resistor for this circuit later. Now how are we going to attach this to the gun and where?
1. Drill hole here.
2. It drills into another side of the gun where there are no moving parts.
3. Place positive and negative wires through hole.
4. Position and super glue/plumbers goop the lighting assembly to the gun.
Do the same for both sides try to keep them in perfect parallel to each other.
Solder in the proper resistor once the goop has dried to the positive wire.
We will be completing this later.
Now lets talk about the long strip of light.
1. Take a transparent blinds rod. They can be found in the blinds/shutters/curtains section at the hardware store. They are like $5. Trim it down to size and take some light reflective tape and wrap off the areas that won’t be showing outward to the exterior of the gun. Sand down that end in the same fashion you did the other piece. Also wipe down the cut ends of the rod with clear nail polish. Once that dries take your Led's bend the prongs and cut them to a convenient size. Electrical tape them into place.
2. Now add the appropriate resistor to the positive of each Led. To do this you are going to need to solder them into place. For this you will need a soldering gun and some electrical solder.
3. Then solder in some wires and cover the joining with heat shrink tubing.
4. This is where the light rods are going to be going.
5. Here you can see where the light rod is going to be in the gun.
Now for this to work you need to cut down 1 of the 2 nubs at the bottom of the remaining stock. You are also going to have to cut down most of the plastic wall in between the two. This will allow room for the Led's prongs.
Temporarily rigged up to see how it looks.
Now we will be looking at the rear light of the gun.
1. Here you can see the stock is reinforced but only with one piece of 1/2" Pvc this time to make room for everything. This side of the stock is actually gooped to this side of the Longshot. The other remains separate.
The top hole circled in green is where the light is going to spill out. The other hole we will be talking about later.
Cut a piece of 1/4" plastic sheeting to match the arrow like shape on the stock where the hole is.
2. Now drill into the side of the plastic and use the clear nail polish again.
3. Get a blue Led in there. Hot glue it into place. Then wrap in reflective tape.
4. Add the appropriate resistor, solder where necessary and then cover in heat shrink tubing. Put it to the side we will get back to it later.
Now its time to get into some body work.
Take your gun and lay it down in two halves look where edges are and look where adding Bondo can make it looking like one piece after a good sanding.
There is going to be a large gap in the chainsaw. This is where the left hand is going to be when holding the gun.
The problem is the extra space in between the plastic of the "blade I guess" is uncomfortable to hold. To remedy this, take some O-ring lubricant or your lubricant of choice and wipe down the inside of one of the chainsaws sides. Then place the chainsaw back together and hot glue where you would like to see some support or extra grip for your hands. Then once the glue has dried and created a little wall inside the chainsaw shell, apply Bondo. Then apply Bondo glazing putty.
1) The gap I was talking about.
2) Applying the Bondo.
3) What it looks like after you have sanded,applied Bondo glazing and spot putty and pulled the two halves apart.
There is also going to be a large gap in the top of the gun after chopping off the handle/rail and removing the yellow sight thingy. I covered that up by using thin sheet plastic. I used two separate pieces to accomplish this.
1) This shows the two pieces of plastic I cut and shaped to fit in the groove.
2) This here shows what it looks like after some Bondo + Sanding + Glazing and spot putty + A bit more sanding.
Now to finish off the front lights I took a small piece of 1/4" plastic and super glued it to another big piece of 1/4" plastic. I hot-glued the bottom end onto the frosted piece thats going to give off the light. I filled the surrounding area with Bondo. After the Bondo dried I pulled out the 1/4" piece of plastic that was only hot glued on and I then sanded it down and applied Glazing and spot putty. After that I ended up with something looking true to the idea.
Now let’s talk about painting. The reason I want to paint first is because once all the wires are connected, the gun is going be pretty hard to work with considering there 3 lights on each side of the gun and the chainsaws electrical stuff/motor and such are on the opposite side of the Lancers internals. More on that later.
For the first time I have decided to work with vinyl dye. After seeing Bob 2 at Apoc and Griffins Longshot I knew I had to work with the stuff.
So I took it apart and cleaned it up then took it out to the garage and started painting.
I started with Flat Grey. Then just started misting with a combination of flat grey and flat black.
The handle is purely black. Everything else is a combination of the two. The clips are also Black
I took them apart completely and spray painted them inside and out. Vinyl dye does not stick like Krylon so I figured it was ok to use on moving parts and it hasn’t troubled me since I painted them.
I then did some painting by hand adding details to the gun here and there. I got a couple tips from Direct threat and used them after I used the hand paints I sprayed it down with a 2 coats of Krylon triple thick clear gloss.
More pics to be shown on the paint at end of write up.
Now how the hell are we going to rig up all these lights to the Batteries?
Well what can I say? Turn your Longshots internal walls into swiss cheese if you have to just keep the wires out of all moving parts.
I am going to give you all fair warning. I fucked up on the lights. The idea was to get all lights powered by one 9 volt battery and have one switch to keep things simple. On a single circuit involving one led, and a 9 volt I needed the resistor with the code (Orange, Orange, Brown, Gold) The part I fucked up on was I put that specific resistor on every Led thinking it would work on a parallel circuit. This was not the case. Now instead of going back and redoing every single light bar I just decided to have four 9 volt batteries and 4 switches. I was not happy about it but I wanted to get this project over with.
The way the lights work is that there is 1 9 Volt battery in the back end on each side of the stock. These 9 volt batteries power the single Led in the stock as well as the 2 Led’s lighting up the bar near the stock. Here is a photo of what one of the stocks look like.
-The other two 9 volts are located in the front of the gun under the firing barrel. If you sand down the space you can get them to fit.
Switches: It is important to know that the walls of the stock of the Longshot are not very thick. So it is a very good idea to put some 1/4" plastic sheeting behind any areas you are going to be drilling through and using nuts and such. The switches have a thread and a nut on the back. Drill a hole in the appropriate place for your switch and the just push the switch through and throw the nut on the back end.
I picked up both the 9V connectors and the switches at The Source by Circuit city. They are a push on/push off switch. Make sure you don’t get a momentary switch by accident! The switches are soldered into the circuit to disrupt the flow of electricity. I have four switches in total. One switch to take care of the back two lights and one switch to take care of the front light X2.
Make sure your rear connections are right.
- The three positive wires coming from the three led's in the back are all soldered to the red wire coming out of switch.
- The three negative wires are all soldered to the black wire coming out of the 9V battery connector.
- The red wire coming out of the 9V connector is leading the push button switch.
If those are correct your rear parallel circuit should be complete.
Now make sure front connections are right.
-9V battery snug under main barrel. Red wire goes all the way to the back of the gun through a series of holes you are going to have to drill to keep wires out of the way.
- The red wire connects to a second switch.
- Then another length of wire runs from the switch all the way back to the front of the gun where it is soldered to the resistor of the front lights.
- The negative of the front lights is soldered to the black wire coming out of the 9V connector.
Now let’s talk about chainsaw electronics!
Now as far as the red button goes, remember the red button to push to start up the chainsaw?
lets rig that up for good. Take the little circuit board piece it comes with and the grey rubber piece and the red push button and put them in place. Have them in a position where the button isn't depressed yet. Then carefully hot glue it into place. It should look like this. This photo was taken before I did the batteries. It also shows how I was able to bring all those wires under the clip guide in the side of the longshot.
To make this really simple I just bought a small pack of alligator clips with wires pre-soldered into them.
I attached the two white wires to the wires that come from the red button.
I attached the two green wires to the wires coming from the Longshots trigger.
Here you can see the clips with some E-tape wrapped around the bases ensuring the wires can never touch by accident. You can also see a small sheet of thin plastic at the highest part of the chainsaw blade that is holding it in place. This is going to help prevent the chainsaw from being pressed up against the top of the gun possibly breaking it.
Do one last final check and make sure everything works the way you want it to and everything is in its place. Look over your table and make sure there are no pieces left behind. Then carefully put the gun back together keep an eye on the wires and make sure you have none protruding out the side. If you have one or two don't worry about it to much. Start to put the screws back in your gun but do not tighten them fully! Look around your gun where wires might be popping out and use a flat head screw driver to push them back in. Once they are in, tighten the screws.
Same goes for the stock.
See that hole circled in green?
Thats the hole for the new screw you are going to put in.
To make sure the stock stays closed we have to put in a new screw to help tighten the lower end.
So I went to the hardware store and picked up a long machine screw, the appropriate nut, acorn nut and rubber washer.
I don't have a photo but you will see it in the photos. Its in between the push buttons.
It goes like this from one side to the next. Machine bolt + small rubber washer + Both sides of longshot stock + Rubber washer + nut + Acorn nut.
Then you are finally finished.
Know that by completing this mod you now posses the best barrel tapping weapon that exists to date.
Photos:
Range is similar to my other Longshot.
Videos :
Lancer video Low quality.
Lancer video High Def.
Huge thanks to my buddy Eddie who helped me out with the lights.
Thanks to Captain Slug for discovering Vinyl dye.
Big thanks to Direct Threat for introducing me to painting by hand. (It’s the more peaceful side of modding)
Thanks to Raven for partly inspiring me to do this.
Humongous thanks to Cliffy B for developing Gears of War. (Looking forward to the next one)
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