Destiny 2 is a game that has captivated me for years. A big reason for this is that I just found Cayde-6 funny, and he drew me into the story. With his death, his weapon, the Ace of Spades, became usable for players. Unfortunately, it’s not a great weapon anymore in comparison, but it’s still iconic.

The Ace of Spades was one of my first Exotics and, back in the Forsaken expansion, one of my favorite weapons. And when you have a 3D printer, you get silly ideas. I printed the weapon for myself. Luckily, there are several templates online, so I didn’t have to create it myself. The weapon is the most complex print I’ve done so far, and I learned a lot in the process. Both about 3D printing and about painting models.

When printing, it’s a good idea to have the parts oriented the same way. It’s unavoidable that you can see the individual layers of the print, and it’s a bit annoying that these lines are sometimes horizontal and sometimes vertical. On the other hand, with the orientation I chose, I needed very few support structures. But the print didn’t turn out so well, especially on the curves and steps, which you can see on the weapon’s grip.

Unfortunately, it was only after assembly and the first coat of paint that I had the idea to sand the print to smooth it out. Once the parts are assembled, that’s not so easy anymore. There were also a few printing errors and dents that didn’t look good. In the end, I filled them with putty. Not the ideal choice, but it was what I had on hand.

And you can make more mistakes painting than I thought. It’s not that easy to paint finely enough. Plus, the model was already assembled, so again, it was hard to reach certain areas. And how do you mask off shapes correctly? Only afterward did I get the idea to print on masking tape and cut out the stencil. So, I fudged it a bit.

Still, using a brush wasn’t a good idea. If I do a project like this again, I’ll probably get spray paint instead of brushing on acrylic paint. Even when dry, acrylic paint is still quite sticky, which is why I spontaneously grabbed a can of spray lacquer at the hardware store. This protects the paint and stops it from being sticky. But you can clearly see that it was painted with a brush.

Maybe I’ll print the model again someday, without making the same mistakes. I’ve also since found a model that is more finely detailed and has a movable trigger and hammer. Someday, when I’ve recovered from the first attempt.