I've always wanted an M41-A Pulse Rifle. James Cameron's design from his ALIENS movie is timeless in its simplicity - fusing a Thompson MA1 machine gun with a SPAS shotgun cage, and dressing it with a functional yet sci-fi-looking shroud, complete with digital ammo counter (what a great way of showing yourself to the enemy!). And the gun even gets it's own scene in the movie, where Hicks explains to Ripley how to safely use the assault rifle and grenade launcher (and which she then uses to great effect when stumbling across a vast alien nest later on).
I've created this short blog as a source of reference to others that may want to do a similar thing to me; creating a relatively close approximation to a screen-accurate Pulse Rifle as possible, within a sensible budget. I'll outline some of my findings and research, plus the products and techniques used along the way. Hopefully one of you out there may find it of use in the future for your own Pulse Rifle build.
Over the years there have been a variety of different 'pro' recreation builds by individuals, kits and replicas available on the market. Some people go to great lengths to recreate a full-metal version of the weapon (the original movie shrouds were made of aluminium). More recently a plethora of quite accurate-looking 3D printed 'kits' have become available on sites like eBay. But the product that reminded me that I want a Pulse Rifle in my collection, ironically, was the release of the NERF Pulse Rifle blaster; a bright yellow plastic toy that appeared to be relatively faithful to the design of the movie prop, albeit created in brightly coloured plastic. It even included a functional ammo counter! I strongly considered this as being my jumping-off point, where I'd purchase the NERF blaster, strip it down and repaint it to resemble the movie prop.
Unfortunately I was too late to the game, and missed the sales window - only being made aware of the blaster's existence after production had ceased, and it was being sold on eBay for over £150 (if you were lucky!). This led me to a deep-dive into other possible alternatives, and I came across the Snow Wolf pulse rifle - an Airsoft replica with quite a few metal parts, a functioning ammo counter display, and what seemed to be a very faithful reproduction of the movie rifle. Plus it is a functioning, good quality Airsoft gun. It costs more than the NERF blaster, but I felt it looked like a much more faithful and interesting version of the gun, and was worth the extra expense. There were a lot of very positive reviews and comments regarding the Snow Wolf version, so I bit the bullet and bought it online. Yes, it features numerous plastic parts (most obviously the shroud and SPAS cage), but my intention was to dress these up to visually resemble metal components, even if they aren't.
Next stage was to begin research into exactly what I wanted to do with the gun whilst I waited for it to arrive...
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