In your mind, what is the 'Blaster' ?

[zerochance]

Okay, first to explain myself.

I'm new here and I wouldn't be surprised if this question has been asked before, sorry if I missed that discussion. I tried searching, couldn't find much.

Why I'm asking. I'm a hobby gunsmith and of course a big fan of Blade Runner. That leads me to the obvious internal question of, 'Why don't I build a shooting version of the Blaster?'

I see that Eltee is already working on that. . .

But I'm the philosophical type. I can't actually pin down just what the Blaster is. And until I do so, I can't really build a shooting version of it. I've studied Coyle's excellent dissection of the prop and my hat is off to him for his hard work and dedication. I know the Blaster was built from a Steyr SL rifle reciever and a Charter Arms Bulldog revolver. My hat is also off to the original prop maker for going to so darn much trouble in the first place. Obviously a lot of pride in workmanship went into the Hero Blaster.

The revolver it seems to me was needed for convenience's sake, they needed to be able to fire blanks and pyro rounds for production.

But what REALLY is the blaster?

Is it a revolver? Pretty much the staple arm of film noir. Every film noir detective would carry a revolver. It would seem appropriate for Deckard to carry a revolver. Though it does seem to me like effort was made to conceal the revolver guts of the blaster.

Or is it a cut down bolt action rifle? Replicants are tough, maybe they figured out you needed to be packing a lot of firepower to take one down. This would seem to be backed up by the obvious presence of the bolt handle on the Steyr. The Blaster is never rapid fired, leaving it subjectively possible that the bolt action is worked 'off camera'. And the forward position of the 'magazine?' Did it hold bullets? OR was it just a battery pack? The gunsmith in me is troubled by this because having a rifle with such a short barrel would be pointless and make one H**l of a muzzle blast.

But it has all those LED's on it too? They almost suggest 'status' lights. Is it a Gauss gun? Maybe it electrically fires a solid projectile? This still 'works' with the bolt action- it could be a bolt action gauss gun. I'm leaning toward this theory which shoots my idea of making a 'shooting' version of the Blaster full of holes. I'de have to stick with Eltee's solution. . .

I realize that this is all entirely subjective, but I want to hear the thoughts of the community.

[CessnaDriver]

I own revolvers, semi auto handguns, bolt action rifles, semi auto rifles so as a shooter myself, what does the Blade Runner gun tell me?

It's a hybrid. Primarily revolver with that side mount "laser" sight, perhaps it would be a complex holographic sight that only the operator can see from that perspective. I like that idea.

And something like that needs a lot of processing electronics so now that is why we have the lights and that is what the magazine box is.
There isn't any rounds in there. Makes no sense they would be there anyways.

The bolt action section really makes no sense at all and I struggle to define it's function. Some sort of function that we certainly never saw on film, something exotic and perhaps even a less then lethal option. This is a law enforcement weapon and something like a taser would certainly be useful to a cop. So you load a charge, and it fires that pin and gives the target a good jolt of future tech whoop ass of some kind. LOL

That is how I see the damnable mystery of this prop's fictional function anyways.

[phase pistol]

In the script, Deckard's weapon is called a "laser gun."

in the early scene where Leon shoots Holden, an animated black beam was tried (Leon's weapon was supposed to be a "black hole gun."

If you look at Syd Mead's preproduction drawings, a bizarre sci-fi looking gun had been designed for Deckard (I think it looks like a hair dryer...)

All this makes me think that a decision was made, when filming had already begun, to just make the weapons be ordinary projectile firearms. I think they originally were meant to be more science fictional beam weapons of some type.

I don't think Deckard's rifle/revolver "blaster" prop had too much specific thinking given to its literal functionality. It just "looked cool."

Also keep in mind that only a few years before, Star Wars pioneered the idea of using off the shelf World War II pistols, with maybe a couple of greeblies glued onto them, to stand in for beam-firing laser blasters.

Karl

[racprops]

Have you read this article??:
http://www.racprops.com/issue4/brblaster/

Phil and I tried to figure a system for all the parts as a whole.

I liked the Gatling front loader idea; the clip feeds rocket rounds to the revolver chamber from the front eletromagnetly, which is why power would be important enough to carry a lighted weapon into combat.

The idea of a rifle grenade in the upper chamber forced into the barrel via a tip up feature seemed to work until we learned the Worldcon bolt only travels about ½ to ¾ of a inch, which makes even less sense…

Rich
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[andy]

Welcome to propsummit zerochance.

It sounds like you have a pretty good grasp to the guns concepts as is known. The gun was made as it was pretty much just because they found the disassmbled Steyr receiver in a gun shop and thought it looked cool. I think they may have originally thought about using the Steyr itself as the base weapon (notice they kept the double trigger aspect as well), but the round would have loaded at the outside front of the gun with the barrel cut off, so they had to use another gun for the base to be able to fire the pyro rounds and blanks. Since Charter Arms Bulldogs were pretty cheap it is likely that is why it was chosen. But, you are also correct that they seemed to try and hide the revolver aspect and also modified the Steyr parts to make them seem like a different type of gun all together. This is a case I believe that they started with some gun parts and did what they could to make it look even cooler, and had no concept of it's funtion to begin with. So the form does not follow the function in this case, and they may not have ever came up with a concept of how it did function beyond what we saw in the film. It is pretty much up to us to figure that out now.

I think the best thing for us to do when trying to come up with a theory for the gun is to forget what we know about the function of the prop itself. Forget it's origins, and where the parts came from and try to see it as something all new. In the same way that the guys who come up with the lightsaber cut aways do. I think that is the fun part of this is to allow ourselves to not be constrained by any ideas that came before, and just "blue sky" rethink what this weapon could be.

Andy

[racprops]

I think they went with the Charter as it is the ONLY pistol with a removable trigger guard that allowed them to easily insert the front trigger and with its aluminum trigger guard frame is also easier than steel to cut.

We can come up with all kinds of ideas, like the upper Steyr receiver is a sensor that only allow the gun to fire at replicants and will not fire on normal humans...

And that the ammo housing and clip is the power cell that powers the plasma bolt that the gun fires, so LEDs as power indicators would be needed and it would have a fast changeable power pack (IE the clip)

And that the green LEDs are both an Invisible Laser (front) and the back one lets the shooter know (When lighted) to put on special glasses to see the target spot.

The cocking lever could be the charging arm that activates the weapon or allow a double plasma charge to be chambered for extra fire power.

The small switch in the ammo clip controls the target laser.

There I think I have covered everything.

Rich
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[joberg]

Welcome aboard Zerochance...If you do a search in the "Blade Runner General Discussion" you'll happen to see a thread started by Vader: "How the Blaster Works". Interesting subject for sure (Gauss is the prefered idea)

[Vader]

Here's a direct link: HOW THE BLASTER WORKS - Some Theoretical Speculation Hope it's helpful!
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[zerochance]

Yep, after reading Vader's article, I'm still leaning toward the gauss gun theory. It seems to be the best way to tie all of the components together. Liked his supposition about the second trigger arming the explosive projectile. I hadn't thought of that and the presence of the second trigger was bothersome. The projectiles do seem to alternately explode and not. Certainly late in the movie where Deckard fires at Roy and misses the blaster makes a huge hole in the wall and a visible puff of smoke. Could be a good explanation for the greeble -jewelers knife- on the side, maybe that thing arms the projectile after it has left the muzzle?

Sadly, even at pure genius performance level I doubt I could make an electrically fired blaster that did little more than spit a projectile at about a bumblebee's pace. Even then the thing would likely have to be plugged into the wall outlet to pull it off. At best a really nasty capacitor might give you one or two half hearted shots. If i'm not mistaken, firing a gauss weapon requires a series of timed switches on the order of what it takes to detonate a nuke. Not something the average garage tinker is going to pull off and doing a web search for the parts needed is likely to result in having your door kicked in. <Grumble> Maybe I'll have to settle for just making one that has a convincing muzzle flash? Maybe a jet of smoke backlit by a strobe in the muzzle?

[Vader]

The timed switch design is simple, but has its own inherent difficulties.

The cleverest design for a Gauss gun accelerator that I've seen to date has the barrel form one single contiguous coil, and a continuous current run from a linear rail inside the barrel into the projectile, through a coil inside the projectile (reverse-twist to the barrel coil), into the barrel coil running towards the front of the barrel.
That way, the entire firing cycle is done in one single electrical pulse. The projectile itself switches "off" the barrel coil behind it as it runs through the barrel, and the coil inside the projectile adds to the acceleration and hence the efficiency of the system.
This is a lot trickier to build than the timed switch design of course (and it would still require a truly formidable capacitor), but I must love its elegance.

What I particularly like about the design with regard to the Blaster is that as the projectile leaves the barrel, the acceleration circuit is broken, which can be expected to result in some arcing. This in turn could account for the muzzle flash and report.

On the whole, I think you're right: we're not up to building such a device yet. But perhaps by 2019...?
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