Giz friend Adam Savage, in our estimation, can make just about anything. Here he explains the path he took to turn a toy gun into an astoundingly sharp Blade Runner pistol replica.
I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It’s lovely and terrible. (Years later the internet would teach me that the six-dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal Street in New York City and cannibalised for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer.)
I made a crazy accurate scratch built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had great picture reference but shitty size reference – it was 20 per cent too small. Fuck!
I even had it chrome plated at one point, and I weathered it.
In 2006, the screen-used original surfaced after 25 some-odd years and sold at auction last year for $US256,000. Supposedly to Paul Allen.
The last picture is the final iteration. It’s 95 per cent finished. My hand-built baby. About 30 to 40 hours of labour spread out over (at least) six years. An original Steyr-Mannlicher .222 target rifle receiver and magazine and a Charter Arms Bulldog .44, both demilled and gunsmithed by me (working with hardened steel – FUN!) with custom machined aluminium and steel parts (barrel, grip, butt) and made as close as possible, in every respect, to the original. Painstaking.
That is all I have to say on the subject (probably not). I can’t even describe how good it feels to hold it in my hand.
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