The gun bowl is a bowl made out of 12 guns mashed together in a circle. Not regular guns, but a 3D file of a gun that was repeated, merged, and 3D printed. It's a bit of a pop art tribute to our gun culture and a super handy place to drop my keys at the end of the day.

Step 1: Get a Gun

If you look around the interwebs you'll find some free 3D models of guns. I found mine on turbosquid.

Step 2: Move It Around

All you need to move the gun into the correct position is a couple of rotations in 2 axes. These pictures here show you how I did it, but it's really up to you in terms of how you want the final item to look. Mostly the trick is to just keep playing with it and see what you're happy with. Be sure to save out different versions just in case you want to go back.

Step 3: Polar Array!

I worked on this file in Rhino and making the array of guns in a circle is dead easy. Select Transform > Array > Polar. Now you just pick your center of the bowl and pick how many guns you want in the array. Here I'm using 12 total copies of the file.

Step 4: Export for Printing

When all is looking good, export an STL file. If you have access to a 3D printer (rare, I know) then you're good to print. If not, you can send it to a site like Ponoko or Shapeways for printing. This gun bowl was printed out of white plastic on an Objet30, which is also the grand prize in the Make It Real Challenge.

Step 5: Paint!

While the white plastic is good for a shape, this really needed some color so I applied a few coats of spray paint to it.
- Gray Krylon primer
- Silver metallic Krylon
- Clear coat gloss Krylon to protect it

And now all the details pop much better than before.