RTR Blog: Matt Builds a Phaser! (Prop Replica)

About a year ago I made the decision to get back into model building. It was something I had done to much joy as a teenager and that I picked up again in my late 20s. I built science fiction starships almost exclusively and loved every minute of it. Last year I dusted off an old Star Wars Rebel Base kit that somehow survived all these years and re-did a few of the small ships that came with it as a refresher. With my skills dusted off, I thought it was time for something more Star Trekkian.

I decided to fulfill a childhood fantasy by putting together and painting a prop replica model of a DS9/VOY era phaser. I always loved the design and as a kid I always wanted to have a screen accurate phaser. I ordered a prop replica kit back in March, just before the madness of the pandemic set in, and got to work on it shortly thereafter.

The kit was two solid resin pieces, the handle/body and the black emitter. This was my first resin kit and it could very well be my last. I spent a lot of time filing the tiny holes throughout the kit and sanding them down. Admittedly I got impatient and decided to leave some of the smaller ones and get into the painting.

I roughed up the entire surface with some fine sandpaper and then sprayed the whole thing with some automotive primer. It was a bit weird seeing the whole thing a red colour, but at the same time it kind of introduced a 'what if?' moment.

Once the primer was fully applied and dry it was time for the light gun metal colour base coat. It was a bit darker than what we see on screen, but I really loved the metallic quality and I think the darker colour works quite well. While that was drying, I painted the emitter black.

Next I masked off the setting indicators and hand painted those green. You can see some of the holes that I probably should have filled, but I think it turned out pretty nicely.

The next step was to mask off the control area and paint it black. Once that was done I hand painted the control buttons white.

The final painting step before clear coating the whole thing was to mask off and paint the bottom grip black. I was a bit nervous about this because it had some tricky corners to mask off, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Once the paint was all dry, I glued the emitter to the main body using two part epoxy glue. It took a bit of tinkering, but I got it positioned well and once the glue dried it was rock solid.

Once that emitter was solidly in place, I sprayed the entire phaser with a semi-gloss clear coat. The semi gloss finish was pretty much exactly what I was going for. It allowed the metallic finish of the gun metal to come through without reflecting too much. It also dulled down the gloss finish of the setting indicators and the controls nicely.

Even though it was a bit time consuming doing the prep work, this was a fairly straight forward build which I think turned out pretty well for someone just re-honing their skills. I'm not sure how eager I will be to do another resin kit in the near future, but who knows. There are several other cool prop replica kits out there to try so perhaps one of these days I'll add to the collection.

Stay tuned to the RTR blog, I've got a couple more projects that I plan to start soon!

For more great Star Trek content, check out our most recent RTR episode where we looked at The Next Generation episode Firstborn or our most recent literary trek review, where we looked at Star Trek Discovery's The Enterprise War!!