I have started a “quick” build of the Unkempt Harold from Borderlands 2, using a few of the extra castings from my Jakobs Pistol build. I’ve actually been working on this for a little while, so I will be going through the steps fairly quickly.
I am building this mostly out of wood, like I did with the Jakobs pistol master. I am using a combination of poplar and hard maple. Here is the gun frame, and the forward barrel section. The grip and the cylinder will be castings from my Jakobs pistol build.
At this point I’ve attached the frame and the barrel section together, done lots of filling, sanding and priming, and added all of the screws and bits.
Here I have secured the cylinder int the frame with two dowels from the bottom. The cylinder is one of the castings from my Jakobs pistol build. I have modified it by filling in the groove around it, building up the rounded edge, and making those odd little half covers over the indentations, complete with tiny rivet heads.
The two side cowls are made of light cardboard, formed like pepakura, over two wood side pieces that dowel onto the body of the gun. The cardboard is stiffened on the inside with fiberglas tape and super glue. I’ve used this method to form thin parts in the past. It makes very hard, sturdy parts very quickly. The two parts were then smoothed out with a little bondo and spot putty. I then cut in the little panel lines, and added the rivet heads.
At this point, I have applied the black undercoat. Now you can see that I am using the Jakobs grip on the Unkempt Harold, mostly because I had a spare casting from my Jakobs pistol build here.
Here is the second coat of darker metallic, after masking out some areas for lighter metallic. You can also see the lighted vents, or whatever they are supposed to be, on the cowls. I had airbrushed those on some time ago, they were underneath masking all this time.
I’m getting closed to finished with the Unkempt Harold! I’ve got the stripes and stars painted, and just have a little more wear and weathering to do. I’m at the same point on the Jakobs Smasher here.
My Borderlands Unkempt Harold is all finished! Please enjoy the photos. I have also finished my Borderlands Jakobs Smasher here.
Here’s what I have learned from this build:
On this build, I used a mix of poplar and hard maple. It too a lot of extra time to fill and sand out the grain in the poplar. Although the maple is harder to work, it is worth the trouble when it comes to finishing, with no visible grain texture.
I had a lot of fun using the toothpaste masking technique for the first time to simulate paint chipping, and I really like the way it turned out. I’ll be keeping this trick handy for future builds.
