Antique blowtorch (really... no heads)

[cathuria]

My grandpa died a couple years ago and we just got around to excavating his two-car garage full of the junk he had collected for nine decades. My dad & brother thought I was a bit daft when I lunged for this little treasure...

The rear rod support is busted on this one -- I don't suppose any of you have a reference to what the intact part is supposed to look like?

[dmg3d]

Hi-

Look up "blowtorch" on ebay for some reference photos. There were about 80 or so items that came up. Here's a link to one that looked pretty close:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3219690380&category=39728

Hope it helps.

-Dave

[dmg3d]

This one looked even closer:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3220332501&category=1461

-Dave

[cathuria]

Hmm... I never thought about eBay as an image reference site -- snazzy:)
Thanks!

[robpauza]

Very interesting blowtorch. Also, sorry to hear about your Grandpa.

-Rob

[Randog]

Good start. It looks to be a very nice object to model as it has many nice shapes. I did notice that a number of the pieces appear that they were made with Sub-D's.

Be very careful using Sub-D's when creating hard surface models. The model can appear soft if not controlled. In most cases standard modeling techniques could be implemented instead of Sub-D's.

If you look at the top portion of the object a lot of the pieces look soft.

Other than that it is quite cool.

My rule of thumb is that if you can make a model that looks great untextured you have a winner.

[Dave3D]

Wow ebay, reference wow!!!:D
(thinks:= i wounder if they got any Apatchs there)

Dave

[cathuria]

Randog; thanks! I can see what you mean now about the "soft" looking bits. I'll have to watch that in the future.
However, I'm no slouch at mechanical modeling, but I didn't see any realistic alternative to the subD approach for the torch-blowing bit -- especially that handle at the back -- yowza.

When I built this one I intended it as a still-image show-piece and so I was using my poly-count-be-damned approach. Even so, it ended up just a shade under 30K polys (after freezing subDs) -- well under my guess at the start.