Building your own life-sized Bolter!

Fellow Servants of the Emperor!

You surely agree that the holy Bolter is the appropriate Tool to spread the word of the Emperor among the stars. 

I recently visited a styrodur (hard foam, XPS) crafting workshop held in Hamburg by Gerard Boom aka GeBoom from Shifting Lands, which allowed me to fulfill a long standing dream: building my own bolter!

Gerard is a fantastic person and a great tutor especially for working with hard foam, of which he does not only know all the tricks but is also freely sharing them! I can honestly recommend attending his workshops. You will be able to work on a project of your choice and get Gerard's advice on it! Also, check out his online shop where he is selling great tools (which I could all try at the workshop for free) and even a book for building tabletop terrain with hard foam. 

So I had two days to build a bolter. First I cut several parts with a hot wire cutter:

Things coming together:

The ammo clip still missing:

And the muzzle of course! No problem thanks to Gerard's circular cutting tool:

End of day 1: Everything glued together:

Day 2: Detailing:

A comparison to the original:

At the end of the workshop the build was done: 

If you look closely, you can see the evidence of my poor first attempts at cutting hard foam with the hot wire cutter, especially at the hand guard. 

But nothing that can not be fixed with some filler at home:

After carful sanding, the bolter was ready for paint:

Base paints done:

And now to the fun part: aging!

And, here the final result:

For the Emperor!

Thanks GeBoom!