They're safe to handle by hand. I originally wanted to do the casing where the back half was ceramic and the front/red part was transparent and you could see the inner workings. But my polycount was getting unreasonably high so I toned it down a bit. The energy discharge is sphere shaped similar to a plasma weapon in halo. I'm hoping to design four major types of weapons. Plasma like this, conventional, laser beam, and a mass driver type weapon.