Flash Gordon, Mongo Ray Gun

made from scratch movie prop weapon

I've been wanting a model of this ray-gun for my collection since I first saw the 1936 Flash Gordon movie serial when I was a kid.  I finally got around to building one (actually three). The model is entirely scratch-built from sheet stryrene and tubing.  The one I'm keeping for my collection is equipped with a red bar laser, the other two have rather bright red LEDs. 

I'm not sure how accurate my model is due to the fact that the only reference material I had was a few fuzzy BW photos & one colorized photo of Princess Aura with the ray-gun in hand. All scale and proportions are purely guess-work based on the approximated scale of the ray-gun in the photos. Since the prop was off at an angle in many of the pics it was hard to judge the proper proportions, so I estimated as best I could.  Since I built this just for fun and lacked any precise reference material I didn't put in my usual attention to detail and the model(s) a bit rough compared to some of my other work - even so, I think it came out looking pretty cool and should make an interesting display piece.  The twl LED based ray-gun models will go up for sale on eBay soon, but first I'll post an article on the prop / model on my website some time next week (6-17-14).