Tonight’s project was learning to model a Colt model 1848 Baby Dragoon percussion revolver. It was one of the first handguns small enough to be carried in a pocket. Since the barrels were wrought iron these things were super heavy and had to have very thick walls to withstand the pressure of the black powder inside. They also didn’t use carriages, each chamber on the cylinder had to be loaded individually by hand. A lead ball was rammed on top using the support rod passing through the cylinder (It must have taken forever!) Finally, the percussion caps were fitted over a tiny hole on the back side of each cylinder.
With that amount of work just to reload it, you’d better have good aim. Interestingly the kits sold with these weapons included lead molds for casting your own bullets. It might be fun to render the whole kit one of these times.
I really like old technology though, every part of this gun makes sense which made it fun to model. It has a few material types. I rendered it with glossy textures but I think once I pull it into Substance Painter I’ll choose a more realistic finish.
I’m starting to see the limits of gravity sketch. It’s great at stuff like car bodies or boats but it falls down a bit when you want to make things that really need to have shapes cut out of them. It’s very hard to make a hollow model or keep things lined up. Still, I’m happy with these results!
I based it on these:
https://coltcollectors.com/colt-model-1848-pocket-percussion-revolver-aka-baby-dragoon/