Team Fortress 2 Sentry Mod

President Bushing

I was determined to get the Gatling guns looking as realistic as possible while still staying close to the original design of the Team Fortress 2 Sentry. Nevermind that if one of those rockets were fired in real life then the entire gun would probably tip over!

The problem with demanding realism though is that you then have to spend time ensuring you get it – and with the Sentry mod that meant spending some more time on the PVC tubes that form the barrels of the Gatling gun.

The problem with the PVC is that it isn’t very thick, so the walls of the barrel look unnaturally thin when looked at up-close. Without wanting to waste what I'd already cut, I decided that the best thing to do would be to increase the thickness of the original tubes rather than start again.

In order to increase the thickness of the tube while still retaining the uniform shape, I decided to drill some PVC bushings. You can chart the process in the pictures below.


When all that is done the finished bushing was then shoved into the PVC barrel and fixed into place with an epoxy resin, creating the thickness that I was looking for.

Now all this is correct and the barrels look closer to how they should, each Gatling gun was fully assembled and dusted off. Clearing the dust off doesn’t sound important, but getting it completely clean is imperative to make them ready to be primed and painted!


Unfortunately though, that’ll have to wait until later – there was still an awful lot more construction to be done. Plenty more woodwork too.

Head on over to the next page and we’ll look at cutting the support for this chassis and the start of the paintwork…