Iron Builder: Bryce Dempsey's stud shooter techniques

The Iron Forge contestant from the Iron Builder challenge revealing their LEGO® techniques for you today is Bryce Dempsey (on Flickr, YouTube and Instagram), from California. Appropriately enough for a builder who creates replica guns from LEGO pieces, last week in Round 3 the seed part was part 15391, the Minifigure, Weapon Gun, Mini Blaster / Shooter. 

My favorite of my own builds for Round 3 using stud shooters as the seed part was the soda machine. The build featured 11 stud shooters in total, with many unique uses.

The actual soda machine itself relies on the back of the stud shooter, which allows for a standard tile connection, using printed tiles to represent each soda brand. The handles of the stud shooters act as the dispensers.

I even rotated a gray stud shooter to use as the ice dispenser, with the hollowed out section visible.

The iced tea dispenser, however, definitely has to be the bane of all purists. Since the stud shooter has an odd width, I struggled for a while figuring out how to make a shape with it that is similar to 2x2 round plates.

The solution I eventually came up with was to wedge the open part of the stud shooter onto a 3L bar and then use the friction to hold in 1x2 bow slopes, which rounded it out fairly well.

My favorite technique that I discovered during the build had to be the cup lid dispenser; a connection I found by accident. In a parts bin as I was sorting, I had found a unicorn horn wedged into the opening of the stud shooter and it provided an excellent match for the scale of the model.

I experimented with this connection a little farther and even came up with this adorable chibi knight!

READ MORE: See more techniques using the LEGO stud shooter piece from the other contestants

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All images are © Bryce Dempsey.