What I learned building the Gallant rifle from scratch, so you don't repeat my mistakes

Did a full-size halo rifle last year and your second point hit home hard. I modeled the whole thing as one piece, then spent an entire weekend trying to figure out where to cut it with Meshmixer and wheather my cuts would even land on flat surfaces. Ended up with three joins that ran right through curved areas and needed shims glued in. On the next build I drew split planes into the sketch itself, and assembly went from a nightmare to an afternoon with some 12mm dowels and epoxy. The reference thing is real too, though I do it slightly differently. I put screenshots on a second monitor and keep a caliper next to the keyboard, checking proportions against a known dimension like the magazine length every time I start a new feature. Caught a receiver that was 20 percent too long before it became a week of rework.

Where I'd push back a little is on the finishing part. Filler and paint fixed a lot for me, but a misaligned join on a long flat surface still shows as a shadow line under raking light no matter how much primer I stacked on it. Now I spend the extra hour making sure my split faces are actually flat and mating properly, then let the paint do the rest. My bondo usage dropped by half on the build after that.

Got burned by tolerances on my first long gun build, so now I print a pair of test coupons before committing to any real join. One socket at the tight end of the range, one at the loose end, and I see wich one slides on without forcing. Saved me from reprinting a whole receiver section last time. The material that fixed my seams was glazing putty, the stuff in the little tube from the auto parts store. Spread it thin over the joint line, knock it back with a sanding sponge, and dark lines under side lighting mostly stopped being a problem for me.

I tried starting a blaster prop last month and got stuck right at the begining because I had no idea how big anything should actually be. I only had game screenshots so I just guessed the length and it came out looking like a toy. How do you figure out the real size of something that only exists in a game? Do you just pick a length that feels right and work everthing else out from there?