Partisan Props: colt

Ebony and Ivory

These 2 are a piece made as a favour for a friend of a friend as part of a cosplay costume. I had a really tight budget of just £10 for the two so unfortunately I knew they would not end up looking 100% authentic but I gave it my best shot in the time I had.

Unfortunately I could not find any toy Colt 1911s within the budget so I had to make do with a couple of Berettas, which in hindsight I regret doing as they took a lot of work to convert to look near a 1911 which then had to be modified again and in fact probably cost more to make than if I had gone for a desert eagle or colt at over twice the price.

First step was to reduce the size of the trigger guards and straighten them out, I did this by heating a knife and pushing it into the plastic to deform it.

Here trigger guards have already been melted and also the handles have been build up using paper mache then sanding it down, Ivory also has some cardboard templates stuck to it.

The handle needing more work.

Smooth!

Then the slides were cut off and the cuts sanded.

My friend gave them a coat of black paint each.

He also found some wood which I promptly marked out and cut to size as the middle of a 1911 slide sandwich.

The 'bread' being 2 strips of MDF cut and sanded, also with a black base coat.

Dimples were dremeled into the magazine release buttons.
The customer wanted Ivory's handle brown so it got a quick coat.

Both slides assembled and sprayed, still in need of smoothing.

The slide's grooves were cut using the fibreglass disc on my dremel copy.

I engraved them with a dremel.

The slide and magazine releases got a lick of brass paint.

The fore ends were made by gluing some 1/8" MDF together.

Ivory's was then sprayed and glued on there.

I also drilled some holes in the handle to add the screws which hold the slide on.

Here I cut out the barrel porting parts of the slide and glued them on.
Also the grooves of the fore end were marked out.

SPRAYED!!

I cut out the magazine extensions out a plank from a builders pallet.

Screwed on to one side only so that the gun can be dismantled.

I hot glued on the slide locks.

Ivory compared to the Beretta base gun, what a long way we've come!

Engraved and brass painted.

Ivory's hammer cut from an old pizza shop sign, this stuff is really hard to cut and dense.

I was going to add screws to the fore end but it would mean cutting through them all and as I was already low on time so I chose to use a wood drill to just touch the surface which gave the desired effect. Then a grinding bit in the dremel cut in the groove.