The Man Cave: Halloween Weaponry

This year I've decided to be Han Solo for Halloween. While Kathy has been wasting time with the vest, the pants, the shirt, the boots, and the belt, I've been busy creating the most important (and manliest) part of the costume:

the GUN.

Han Solo costumes are tough. You have several signature items that make or break the costume: the vest, the boots, the red-striped pants, and the gun belt are all mandatory. Get them right or go home.

A little online research yielded just two options for the adult male: a crap-tasticly cheap costume built to the same rigid standards as the kiddie-costumes found in discount stores, or a very well-made, accurate, and ridiculously expensive black-market costume made in and shipped from Singapore.

My challenge was clear: create a Han Solo costume from scratch, at a decent price. I began by doing what I always do when faced with such a challenge: I put Kathy to work on all the hard stuff, while I concentrated on the fun part. As usual she has done a fantastic job tackling the lion's share, but enough about her. Let's talk about me.

I found the gun at a local thrift store for $1. It began life as a wildly-colored Nerf dart gun. After checking to make sure it wasn't loaded I disassembled the entire thing and removed all the inner workings except for the trigger. As luck would have it, this yielded a black tube which I re-purposed as gun sight. (Because as everyone knows Han Solo's gun has a sight.) Next, I sanded off all the kiddie-warnings about not pointing it at people's eyes and stupid stuff like that.

Finding a cone-shaped object for the end of the barrel was a challenge, but eventually I found the perfect object: the cap from a tube of bathroom caulking. With a hot-glue gun I attached the improvised sight and barrel-end. Then I spray painted everything black. To give my gun a convincing touch of realism I bought some model paints and painted the handle a woody brown. The barrel and sight I painted gun metal blue.

It turned out great. Final cost:

Gun = $1

Black Spray Paint = $3

Two bottles of model paint = $5

It's not an exact reproduction of Han Solo's gun by any means, but it's still pretty awesome....and I made it all by myself.

I wonder how Kathy is coming....

Next Man Cave: the BIG REVEAL!!