Not long ago, the local dollar store (Dollar Tree) put up their summer stuff, including some three for a dollar squirt pistols. I was taken by the shape of these and decided to turn them into attack speeders for my science fiction games. Here's how I did it, along with the tools and materials I used.

• Squirt pistol
• 2 wooden turnings (3/4" doll head/knob) for the engines
• thick sheet styrene
• a cigar-shaped bead
• thin brass tubing
• a teardrop shape from a Christmas garland
• bamboo skewer (found at the grocery store)

• X-Acto knife
• sanding/filing tools - needle file, emery board
• Woodburning pen (to melt the plastic)
• a strong epoxy (I use JB Weld)
• Razor saw
• Some kind of putty or filler (I used Testor's contour putty)

Here you can see the original squirt pistol. The first thing I did was remove the plug and trigger - no tools were required for this. I then took the razor saw, picked an angle and cut the grip away. The little pump behind the trigger is thick, so it's easier to cut through the outer plastic and pull the guts out after removing the grip.

The cut wasn't completely smooth, so I sanded this until it was level. It was also necessary to do some sanding and filing at the join lines of the squirt pistol - the two halves don't always match exactly.

The next steps can be done in whatever order you like.

The cockpit is made from a plastic teardrop shape that was part of a cheap Christmas garland. It could also have been made from sheet plastic, carved from wood, etc. I simply split the teardrop, then cut it to fit in front of the remains of the grip. JB Weld was used to fix this into place. The join wasn't perfect, so I later used some putty to fill in small gaps.

There are two raised circles on the side of the pistol; deciding to mount the engine pods on the rear one meant that no measuring was necessary. I drilled a hole on each side, making sure it was large enough for the bamboo skewer to fit. Both wooden turnings had holes drilled in the side. The skewer was measured and cut, then slid though the hull. I made sure to test fit the engine pods before gluing everything into place. It's better to use one length of skewer for this, rather than two, as it will keep the pods level.

I went ahead and drilled a mounting hole in the bottom at the same time. It was placed more or less in the center.

The tail fin and the area just behind the cockpit are cut from sheet styrene. I used the wood burning pen to melt a slot in which to mount the fin. (You can probably do the same thing with a knife.) A little trimming and putty were necessary to get the "roof" section right.

To make the nose cannon I enlarge the existing hole with a drill, then glued a bit of brass tubing in place. The cannon barrel is a cigar-shaped bead glued over the brass, but leftover weapons from other models, plastic sprue, etc. could have done just as well.

After that, it was just a matter of cleaning up a few things and making the flying stand. This was cut from a plastic champagne glass - most of the base was cut away, leaving only a curved strip on which the speeder rests. I drilled a hole in the glass stem and fit a length of bamboo skewer (thinner than that used to mount the engine pods) in this to hold the speeder.

The only thing left was to primer and paint the model. I decided to paint the four bulges around the nose red - these are intended to be a quad-laser MG to supplement the main cannon.