Apoxie sculpt is everywhere!

So, I promised pictures last time, and I’ve got a few to go with my small update.

I used plastic epoxy to glue the barrel extension to what I already had.  This makes the barrel oval like in the game, and also gives a pathway for wires that will come later.  ‘Cause hiding wires could just turn into a pain.

After the epoxy sat for a few days, and I found some more time to squeeze in, I used apoxie sculpt to smooth the transition between the extension and the original barrel.  A plate will be added to the front later to hide the difference.

I also apoxied in the inlets.  I wasn’t happy with how they were turning out before, so I added apoxie over what I had made before and I can sand it down smooth after it cures.  Hopefully this will make a better transition between materials than before.  I want this to look like one solid piece by the end, not a bunch of glued together PVC!

I’m also taking a poll.  This is the piece I found to be the light diffuser inside the nozzle of the gun.  The plastic spoke is the perfect size…problem is…it’s encased in a hardened rubber (because it’s actually an after market scooter wheel).  I’m looking for a way to remove the spoke from the rubber.  I’ve heard cut it down. I’ve heard use a heat gun.  I’ve heard boil it.  Anybody have other suggestions to add to the mix?

Weekend Progress!

Progress is slowly being made!  I had time over the weekend to work on the Portal Gun a little, and I’m rather pleased.  I prepped the front of the barrel for wiring and also prepped the oval extension of the barrel for attachment.  While I didn’t do a lot of attaching (I had a sewing project to finish off which unfortunately had an actual deadline versus the Portal Gun does not), I did find a lot of pieces that I can prep and potentially use during my Fall break.  Yay!

I found:

A 2×3 PVC reducing coupler to use for the nozzle of the gun

An extra 3″ coupler in case I screw up

and

A YAK scooter wheel (the spokes will be the light filter in the nozzle)

While it doesn’t seem like a lot in a list, these were items that I have spent, quite literally, HOURS staring at the PVC and plumbing sections of Lowes (and Home Depot) trying to figure out what the best course of action was.  I think I finally just got fed up with trying to decide and we’re going to see how that decision turns out. Maybe the little man at the home improvement stores will stop shaking his head and wondering what a 22 year old college girl is doing staring at a wall of PVC for.

(Pictures to come!)

 

 

Hiatus

To those people who actually kept up with my posts, I apologize for being gone.  I took a two week trip across the nation, and now my 5th year of college has started (because apparently school is just that awesome that I’m not going to leave.)  I’m craving a time to sit down with my lonely pile of Portal Gun materials that are collecting a fine dust on my shelf.  Hopefully (fingers crossed here!!) I will get to put some hours in this weekend.  I need to make a hole for electrical before I add the additional piece to the stock to make it an oval shape like the one in the game.  Then I need to have a little chat with the Plumbing section of the hardware store to get pieces for the barrel.  And-a, and-a, and-a.  THINGS TO DO!  I promise I’ll give a shout whenever progress has been made, but until that point.  Au revoir!

Crème Brûlée

Crème Brûlée is by far one of my favorite desserts.  And so when I discovered that July 27 was National Crème Brûlée Day, I had to partake!  I found an inexpensive Crème Brûlée set at Bed Bath & Beyond for $20 and got some butane for the torch.  Needless to say, I was a tad bit excited about the whole idea.

Little did I know how much time goes into Crème Brûlée…

I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com that sported regular ingredients that I had.  All I needed to pick up was some heavy cream!  Beware that this literally does that 3 hours to make…at least.  I suggest making these the night before or morning of whatever you are making them for so they can sit and let the flavors meld.

As far as the servings sizes go,  this recipe says that it’s for 5 servings; however, I filled 4 personal sized Crème Brûlée ramekins and then put the rest into a 6×9 porcelain baking dish…so really this could easily make 10 personal sized Crème Brûlées.  Just a prewarning…

Creme Brulee

By: COOKALOT

Prep Time:  10 Min
Cook Time: 30 Min
Ready In:  2 Hrs 40 Min

Original Recipe Yield 5 servings

 Ingredients

• 6 egg yolks
• 6 tablespoons white sugar, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).
2. Beat egg yolks, 4 tablespoons sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl until thick and creamy.
3. Pour cream into a saucepan and stir over low heat until it almost comes to boil. Remove the cream from heat immediately. Stir cream into the egg yolk mixture; beat until combined.
4. Pour cream mixture into the top of a double boiler. Stir over simmering water until mixture lightly coats the back of a spoon; approximately 3 minutes. Remove mixture from heat immediately and pour into a shallow heat-proof dish.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. Refrigerate for 1 hour, or overnight.
6. Preheat oven to broil.
7. In a small bowl combine remaining 2 tablespoons white sugar and brown sugar. Sift this mixture evenly over custard. Place dish under broiler until sugar melts, about 2 minutes. Watch carefully so as not to burn.
8. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Refrigerate until custard is set again.

Sanding Dust is Everywhere!

Last week I broke out the Apoxie Sculpt to shape out the rest of the barrel.  It’s an interesting material since it’s a two part mixture that is pretty easy to work with.  It molds much like clay and I liked shaping it with water like regular clay.  The nice thing is that after 24 hours of curing, the Apoxie Sculpt is completely hard and can be sanded down, painted, etc.  It’s great!

The only thing I have to say about this is that shaping it takes a lot of time.  Lots…and lots…..and lots of sanding.  And once I sand this down, then comes the filling in divots and then back to sanding.  I think I need to find a brick or SOMETHING that I can hold to shape with, because this foam block just isn’t getting the straight lines I need as quick as I want them.  Good thing I found a place that’s easy to clean after sanding!

One step forward…then shimmy on back.

You know those days where you try so hard to be productive and move forward, and things just don’t pan out?  Today seems to be one of those days.

First off: Work.

Lost my To-Do list, had to start a new one and had forgotten most of what was on it because, well, it was written down.  Problem is:  I’m still responsible for what was on the list.  Great.

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Second:  Portal Gun

Today my Apoxie Sculpt and Acrylic tube came in the mail!  I was so happy I sang Blue’s Clues “Mail Time” while getting my packages.  Yes, I was that person.  Problem was, apparently the acrylic tube I ordered was ENTIRELY too small of a diameter.  I was nervous about the 3″ diameter tube since the smallest part of the build so far is also a 3″ diameter PVC, but the next size down was a 2″ diameter.  Now, holding that piece in, there’s no way that’s going to work.  Meaning, time to swap and wait to ship it back and wait for the new order to come in and all those blasted shipping charges.  I think I’m going to wait, though, to order the 3″ acrylic tube to see if there’s anything else I want to order to ship at the same time.

ALSO, I was looking at more reference photos and figured out that the core is not actually round.  It’s actually an oval shape.

So, I think I’m going to take the 4″ PVC cutout from the top and attach it to the bottom and fill in the difference.  Thoughts?  Should I even worry about this?

The acrylic is too small, and I'm thinking about changing to an oval shape.

The PVC cutout is a bit too tall at this point if I was going to go that route, but it can always be cut down.  HELP!

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Third:  Small-Batch Baking

So my roommate is finally home from her business trip, so I decided to bake celebratory chocolate cakes from the book…problem is, I still haven’t gotten this CAN baking down yet, so the baking times are double the book if I’m lucky.  I did try cooking in a water bath this time since the last cake was crumbly dry.  That definitely helped the moisture in the sponge, and didn’t seem to change the cook time too much.  But still, the cook time is a major issue.  And the frosting wasn’t turning out right by separating, the reconstituting, then separating again.  It was a mess; I got impatient and put it on while the cakes were still warm, and sheesh it just turned worse.  I didn’t even take pictures of it because I was so embarrassed  of how it looked.  But after waiting 2 hours to have a cake that is literally the size of a bean can…you get impatient.

I’ll try again another day since the flavor was there, it was just a wreck of a mess today.  Maybe baking the can cakes a day ahead would help…

Old-Fashioned Yellow Cake with Maple Buttercream Frosting

So having to take a break from the Portal Gun until the mail arrives with some supplies,  I decided to start on the Small-Batch Baking book…apparently at 10:30 on a Sunday night.  Not sure what made me decide that was a good idea, but here we go.  As my first choice, I started from the front of the book and flipped until I saw something that I readily had the ingredients available.  I landed on the Old-Fashioned Yellow Cake (page 42) which suggested several frostings, of which I chose the Maple Buttercream Frosting (page 61).

Now, before getting started I must preface this whole project with 2 things:  1. I’ve worked as a cake decorator in two separate places, and as a result 2.  I now hate cake.  I can have about one bite and then I’m done.  But,  everyone else likes the cakes, so I continue to make them.

In any case, here’s how I made it:

Old-Fashioned Yellow Cake

Need:  Two  14 to 14.5 oz cans to cook in and a baking sheet to put them on

Ingredients:

1/2 cup all-purpose flour, sifted, plus more for flouring the cans
3 tablespoons buttermilk
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
Yolk of 1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F with a rack in the center.
2. Spray in cans with Pam and then lightly dust them with flour, tapping out the excess.  Place them on a baking sheet for easier handling.
3. Mix the wet ingredients together plus baking soda.
4. Mix the dry ingredients together.  Slowly add in the wet ingredients until blended smooth.
5. Spoon the batter into the cans, divided equally between the two.
6. Bake at 350°F until a toothpick can be inserted and removed with no residue.  (The book said about 25 minutes, my one can took about 35.)  I usually wait until there is a golden brown color around the edge of the cake.

So while that is in the oven, it’s time to make the frosting!

Maple Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon pure maple syrup
2 teaspoons packed dark brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon instant espresso powder
5 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup confectioners’ sugar

Directions:

1. Place the maple syrup, brown sugar, and espresso powder in a small bowl and stir until espresso powder dissolves and the mixture is smooth. (I didn’t mix them like this, but looking back I wish I did. Instead I have espresso grains, which adds an interesting texture that’s not really unpleasant, but then again…it’s midnight.)
2. Place the butter in a medium-sized bowl and beat with a hand-held electric mixer until it’s fluffy (about 30 seconds).  Sift the confectioner’s sugar into the bowl and mix until smooth.  Scrape down the sides and add the maple syrup mixture.  Beat until smooth.  (I thought the frosting was still a little dry, so I added a splash of COLD water, and mixed until smooth.)
3. LET THE FROSTING SIT!  (I didn’t do this because I wanted to get to bed.)  After mixing, the frosting gets warm and slides off the cake, leaving you with a sad, naked caked after a couple minutes.  So let it sit (The book recommends letting it sit out for 2 hours, or i say you can pop the frosting in the fridge for about 20-30 minutes and you should be fine.)  Any leftover frosting can be kept for up to one day.
4. Spread on your mini cake and enjoy.  I added a little bit of espresso grains for garnish.

Now, in my opinion from my little slice that you can see in the picture, the frosting was excellent.  It had great flavor, I just wish I had dissolved the espresso first.  The cake itself was sadly dry and crumbly.  I thought the mixture seemed like it, and I probably should have added a splash of water, but I thought I would try it by the recipe first.  So maybe a change would be a splash of water to the mixture and maybe cooking it in a small water bath to keep the moisture in?  Possibilities for the next time!

Hummus

When I was getting started with the first Small-Batch recipe, I realized I needed a can to cook in.  Having no empty cans, I decided to whip up some hummus entirely to have the can.  This is a recipe I picked up…somewhere, I can’t recall where, and have changed the proportions to my taste.  Spread on some toasted pita and Enjoy!

 

Hummus

Ingredients:
1 clove garlic
1 (19 oz) can garbonzo beans, half the liquid reserved (Seriously!! Garbonzos are dry! You’ll probably need this!!)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons tahini (1.25 to 1.5 tablespoons if concentrated like at the end of the jar)
1 teaspoon salt
black pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoons olive oil
Paprika for garnish

Directions:

1. In a blender, chop the garlic. Pour garbanzo beans in the blender. Place lemon juice, tahini, chopped garlic and salt in blender. Blend until creamy and well mixed.  If hummus seems dry, add a splash of reserved liquid and blend again.  Repeat until desired consistency is found.
2. Transfer the mixture to a medium serving bowl. Sprinkle with pepper and pour olive oil over the top.  (…or I like to garnish with paprika, but either is fine!)

Foam core

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Yesterday I made more headway on the barrel of the Portal gun.  It’s actually shaping into something!  So after grinding and doing a little shaping in the corners, I went about connecting the two PVC pipes into a single piece.  Using some cardboard squares for spacers all around, I taped the pieces together (both ends) to hold their position.

These spacers ensured that the 3" pipe was evenly set within the 4" pipe.

Then came the fun stuff!  I decided to use Great Stuff expanding foam to fill the voids and secure the placement of the pieces.  It’s lightweight and really quite effective.  The little old man at Home Depot was very concerned that I didn’t know how to use the expanding foam (I have used it before but he was trying to be helpful) and suggested using the window and door sealer version of Great Stuff instead of the regular kind.  It expands less, and therefore there was less of a chance of me completely screwing this part up.

Note: expanding foam..well..expands. So make sure you put something down to catch the excess!

After the foam sets, it’s solid, but still easy to cut.  I shaved down the excess to start to get an idea what the angles would be.  I also decided that I would order some apoxie sculpt to finish off the barrel instead of bondo, simply because I’m working with such a small area that needs finishing rather than later steps where I’ll make the shells of the gun.

I then set out on marking the four recesses on the top of the barrel.  Since I knew the drawing I had were not to scale, This was purely guessing as far as measurements went.  I knew the two center ones were slightly wider than the exterior ones, past that, it was guess and check to make sure it spaced well.

X markes the barrier locations.

Then came the foam core barriers.  I couldn’t find any styrene locally, so I just used foam core like in school projects.  When I ordered the acrylic tube today, I noticed that they sold styrene as well, so for an extra $1.50 I have the option of redoing the barriers when that comes in.  Now I’m at the mercy of the mail.  The barrel won’t get any more headway until some things start showing up in the mail.  I might start working on the back end or one of the shells this week, depending on my ambition levels after work.

Not the prettiest thing in the world, but it's taking shape!

Until next time!

 

Measure Twice, Cut Once…..Right?

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So it’s been a week since my first post, and I FINALLY found some time to work on the Portal Gun.  Work was…special…today, so I decided to come home and destroy something make progress on this project.   So I sat down (or really stood in my kitchen since it’s my only work space) and tried my hand at getting used to my new Dremel.

Before breaking out the power tools,  I needed to mark out where I was cutting.  This should have been the easy part, but once I looked at the drawings,  I realized my scale was off…so I pretty much picked a number close to my original measurements and looked at the pieces to see if it seemed right.  After redrawing a bit, I was ready to get started.

While a Dremel probably isn’t a lot of people’s first choice in cutting PVC, I wanted to try it out.  Granted, I’m not exactly the go-to person for power tools, so of course there was a lot of guessing and trying to keep a check on the heat of the Dremel (it kept getting extremely hot…meaning I was probably doing something wrong).  I spent several hours without getting much headway, so I gave up and headed to Walmart for a handsaw…and I checked at the Dremel bits and realized 1. There were other bits than the cutting tool to cut through PVC that I had and 2. If I turned up the speed from 5 (the lowest…because I was terrified) it might work better.

Lo and behold…turning up the speed was precisely what would have saved me hours of even more standing.  (As for 1…I just managed to make a bigger mess and some areas that will have to be filled in.)

Tomorrow I plan to clean up the edges and see how I feel about the proportions of everything.  I may move the 3″ PVC cut to between my two existing markings.  We’ll see.

And as a reminder…because I found this out through PVC shavings in my eye and up my nose:  Wear protective glasses and a cover for your nose and mouth…whatever you have.