River’s Alpha Meson Blaster

Almost as prevalent as her lipstick is River’s Alpha Meson Blaster which can be seen in “Gridlock”, “The Big Bang”, and “Day of the Moon” as well as numerous other episodes. With the 3D printer back up and running with little to no problems I wanted to continue working on the Doctor Who props in hopes of having a large selection that could be molded and cast in resin. The other reason is that it will keep me occupied when the weather isn’t compliant with slinging fiberglass or resin. The model I used can be found on Thingiverse here: The above links are a total of 6 pieces, what I like about this is that it is designed to go around a short length of PVC pipe which helps to line everything up. The pistol grip is also keyed to go under what we’ll call the upper receiver for the pistol so it’s a pretty straightforward and simple build. The one downfall is that the pistol model above does not include the sight on top, luckily someone else caught this and created the sight for it which can be found at the second link above. Here’s a pic of the printed pieces borrowed from the creators pics:

The link below is a remix of the two models above that has been converted to a 3 piece print. Here is a link to Rob Clark’s pictures from The Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff with some great close ups of the pistol: One benefit to the first model is that with all the individual pieces you can clean them all up much better. Presently I am working on finishing the paint for River’s pistol and starting to print another to do in the black scheme as seen in “Gridlock”. I’m thinking I will create my own decals for the nomenclature on the side of the pistol so it looks good as I’ve seen a lot of props where someone just used a marker to put the letters on and you can tell. Great way to take a prop that would be nice to the crapper.

The weathering was done a bit differently this time around. As I was prepping this for paint I used several coats of Gap Filling Primer to help reduce the visibility of the print lines. After that several coats of gloss white enamel went on. Once everything was dry I took some 180 grit sandpaper and just started hitting the edges with it until the gray from the primer came through. Did that over the whole pistol and think it looks really good and if you think about it, it’s how something like this would wear. I’ll post more pics of it once I get the decals and stripes done on it but here it is so far.