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Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/27/2022 in Posts
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The Organa Obliterator. The Princess Punisher. The Senator Silencer. The Royalty Reducer. and my personal favorite, The Leia Leveller. My resin QuestDesign broke half of the sight guard randomly on a troop and I found myself on the blasterfactory website buying a metal one to fix the damage. It happened to be during their May 4th sale. They happened to have "ESB E11 kits" on sale with a VERY nice discount, so I ended up with one. I was having a bad day and had the extra cash. A 3rd E-11 became mine. I didn't want another E-11. I'm happy with my Hyperfirm and my QD. But sometimes we just gotta take life as it comes and make space for a new build. Here's the Warmachine after an initial assembly to see how everything fits together. It's just lovely. And surprisingly not too heavy. Fully built, it's about the same weight as my resin QD with the original Stirling stock attached. So anyways, I built this thing and was just smitten. It's such a lovely blaster. I had to build it into something fun, so I started researching and discovered that Mr No-Stripes had an E11 with an M19 scope. A plan formed. The kit came with the M19 scope and T-tracks. I then placed another order for the stuff I was missing - the clip, Hengstler, and power cylinders. I've also got an original Hengstler 400 on the way from @T-Jay. The original counter may get used in another project since I really don't wanna hack it up for the BlastFX, but it'll be really nice to have on hand. And of course I bought the BlastFX kit. I came across a video of a Warmachine E-11 with the kit installed and went completely gaga. No way to not buy it as well. It should be in my hands in 12-16 weeks. So this is gonna be a loooonnnng build. The end is not in sight. Repeat, the end is not in sight. Back to Mr No Stripes. Just look at him. Isn't he heroic? Courageous? A fine figure of a trooper? You can see a lot of details in that above shot thanks to the 4K resolution. His bolt is weathered pretty dark. He's got the chip on top of the scope. There's a shiny rivet on the rear sight. And there are SCRAGGLY WIRES sticking out of his counter and going forward toward the power cylinder. In this shot we can see a bit of key detail - wear on the front power cylinder edges. Very very shiny wear. And also just the bare hint of those scraggly wires. And of course, the hero shot. If the TKs had just stunned Han, Luke, and Chewie in the hanger wouldn't the movie have basically ended right there? But I digress. After sticking my toe into the research and feeling how nice the water was, I went a little deeper. Not much, but into the next scene where Leia is escorted to Vader. Paying careful attention, I was like "oh yes, there's our hero Mr No-Stripes standing behind her right shoulder with his M19 scope." only to be disappointed to see that the trooper in question DID indeed have stripes in about 3 frames of the film. You can just barely see it, but he's a different trooper. Yet it's clearly the same gun. CLEARLY. M19? Check Chip on scope? Check Wear on power cylinders? Check Counter present? Check SCRAGGLY WIRES?!?!?! Check! I did an annotation. The amount of detail that is clearly visible is just outstanding. Love the 4K res screenshots! It even shows that front folding stock greeblie that @justjoseph63 makes. The socket on top of the scope is also really interesting. It looks really tall and if you have a clear enough screen, you can see a bit of separation between the base and the top - I think a chip is actually installed in the socket. So this is the foundation for my entire build - the theory that Mr No Stripes gun and The Escort gun are in fact the same gun. Our hero might not have been carrying it in this particular scene, but it reeeeeaaaaalllllllly looks like the same weapon. It may not be a correct theory, but it sure charges up my imagination and it's the replica blaster that I want to build. And there's a ton of good views of this particular E-11. Combine these pix with the bolt-side view and front view in the hands of Mr No-Stripes and that's about the most complete showing of a prop that a fan can hope for. But that's not all! @PlayfulWolfCub actually created his own replica of this beautiful blaster during his power cylinder production and research. I've borrowed the photos from his PDF. Having this reference from one of the TK Detail Masters is the icing on top. It's gonna be extremely valuable to have as a guide for those slightly blurry parts like the scraggly wires. Anyways, that's my project. I'm excited about this build! (please don't burst my bubble and tell me they're not the same gun)2 points
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Our troops here are also exactly as Glen describes - VERY very few official LFL events and our garrison is not strict about such items. In the ~8 months that I've been trooping we've had one single LFL event that was limited to 5 troopers and I didn't volunteer for quickly enough. For official troops, we're expected to remove any and all non-canon items and wear our top spec gear. So, for example, the rubber gloves come out and the pilots gloves get put away. On all other local troops, we're encouraged to build and bring fun props like this that help engagement with the public. More than 50% of our local troops are non-blaster, which leaves us TKs empty handed. These binocs help fill those empty hands. One of our most popular troopers is a baby Yoda toy held by a Rebels Scout (people go crazy for Grogu here). Again, as I said, it's a laid back garrison. Others would probably not allow such props to be carried. Sorry if this project offended you Lluis.2 points
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A few months ago, I got a set of Electrobinocs from @justjoseph63 and have been extremely pleased with them. But... well... I wanted them to DO something. I got the idea to turn them into Bluetooth speakers so they could play the TK Chatter or some music during non-blaster troops. And, fair warning, this is now a finished project. This won't be an ongoing build. I've wasn't even sure I could make this work, so I didn't post up a build thread for the binocs. I didn't wanna be defeated by this little hunk of plastic. This was my first step - hacking open the binocs. I sliced it at the rear intersection as it seemed like the most logical place. I then cut off the lens and drilled a hole in the (extremely thick) resin. Joseph doesn't mess around in the creation of these guys. The resin is VERY thick front and rear. Walls have some decent thickness too. It can face some serious action without being damaged. You know, aside from being hacked up. The front 3/4 is attached to the back eyepieces with 3 screws and a thick layer of glue all around. I used a dremel cutoff wheel to saw it free. I wanted to use the top knob as the volume control, so off it came. It was held in place by a small screw. I bought this little bluetooth amp off amazon... and destroyed it trying to modify the buttons to be remote. I would not suggest anyone get this amp if you want to modify it. I'm pretty good with electronics and regularly solder gauge clusters back together for my day job. Relocating knobs and switches bricked this little guy bad. Recovery wasn't possible. Then I happened across this Bluetooth speaker KIT on Parts Express. It was mentioned offhandedly in a youtube vid that didn't really have anything to do with the project. At the time of this writing, the kit is about $44USD. Check it out on Parts Express. I didn't need all of the parts, expecially the 2.5" speakers, but the kit was much cheaper than buying the parts individually. Separately, the board and wires are more expensive than the whole kit. I also bought the optional battery board and batteries to allow the board to play without being plugged in. A total of about $66USD. I used two of these tiny 1.5" speaker drivers (coincidentally also Dayton) as they juuuust fit into the binocs. If anyone out there decides to use these parts for their own project, I'd highly suggest buying an extra or two of the 2.1mm DC barrel jack. They're quite delicate and I had to buy a spare. One hole wasn't gonna cut it, so I printed a new sensor array in ABS and sliced off the molded one. Not a bad fit! And not a bad finish after a bit of extra sanding. The volume knob board required a very very thin wall to be installed into. So much grinding! And the speaker fit pretty well in the far left of the binoc housing, but not so well toward the right. More grinding. My dremel extension handle got some action. The tiny speakers needed to be stood away from the front holes to allow them to work well. My local Ace Hardware hand 1/4" spacers and associated tiny screws to enable mounting. I believe each of the speakers uses 3 screws to mount. Drilling tiny holes in a deep housing isn't the easiest thing. This extension made it possible. And let me just apologize right here for the severe lack of build progress photos I took. I had roadblocks at like every step of this project. The drill bit extension for example. Every time I hit a dead end and had to wait another week for more parts from amazon, I was uncertain if this thing would ever get finished... so I didn't take many in-progress photos. I think this pic was of the nose and sensor being glued on for the first time in about 2 months. I also placed speaker cloth in each with hot glue. One of the very few pix I took showing the inner parts placement. It's TIGHT in there. Speakers at the very front and just a tiny bit of space between the back of them and the front edge of those huge batteries. The batteries are screwed on in the very front and have some 50lb double sided mounting tape holding them in place in the back. The extra speaker wire and wire bundle for that volume knob are zip tied and stowed to the right side. The main Bluetooth board has barely enough space to be flipped and live right above the batteries. I used the top center button between the viewports as the power switch. The bottom two hide some screws. The bluetooth blue LED indicators light up the viewports. And the wires are indeed everywhere. I tried to tidy them before screwing the two halves together, but was only medium successful. All of the parts hide behind a printed acrylic panel. And here we are! That's a finished and re-assembled Electrobinoculars!!! It doesn't have the front lens anymore, but the opened up sensor array sorta makes up for that lack of magic. I really like the look of that sensor array. Non-cannon LED pilot light are pretty easy to overlook. The little green one comes on when the unit is charging. Red is power. The two things above the power & green LED are my original attempt at power and line in. They didn't go well. They're basically tiny speaker ports now. Power on and blue Bluetooth lights lit. Note the top button - it sticks out slightly and is a latching SPST push button switch. I found a 6mm switch that would fit inside the little button housing. The only downside of this button is that it can spin a bit when pressed. That's just the nature of the switch I used. It's installed tightly, just the button itself that can spin a little. This is VERY hard to see IRL, but it looks pretty cool in the photo. I did a holofoil desert scene with a little sandcrawler. At least it hides the wiring. And here it is!! A working demo vid. I can't wait to troop with it.1 point
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As a few of you may know, I semi-retired, sold my house and bought a new 5th wheel to hit the road! Finally got my "TK man-cave" organized, but needless to say at 10 ft x 8 ft. it's tiny! While it's probably what most might would definitely consider TK overkill, it makes me happy so I thought I'd share a few pics.1 point
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Yep it's me! I had an interest thread that I opened here last year but nobody seemed interested. I had a lot more interest on TheRPF. Not a lot of love for the ROTJ variant E-11 I suppose. I have a few more parts that are on the backburner that I plan to produce, I already have the 3d models design for them. Your build has me wanting to get cracking on my MGC builds.1 point
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Holy cats, Caleb! I had no idea this was you that made these.. it took me a second, but then when I saw the Virginia Beach location it finally dawned on me, lol. You know yourself that real metal U-channels are next to impossible to find, so I would suggest starting a sales thread here. Thanks again for an awesome product and especially for helping me finish up this puppy!1 point
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The original armor is also oval and despite the fact that one would think that it should be round your limbs are more or less an oval shape, making for that organic look and feel that the ANH suits almost felt as they had grown onto the body. To test this, just extend your arm, palm up and look at the shape and you’ll find that it’s more oval than round1 point
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Don't worry Adam...this project didn't offend to me in any way, I admire your skills to performe this project. Only is that I'm a littel shocked beacause FISD staff and Centurions don't persuade people to be as canon as posible in all events... maybe in Spain we are too strict...1 point
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For folding you can also hold each side with pliers, add some plastic to the teeth areas so they don't bite in then fold. The hardest I found was ATA armor, that stuff is thick and you really have to score well.1 point
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Some great research there, looking forward to seeing the progress1 point
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Wow! amazing details Adam, good luck with this project and looking forward for the advances !1 point
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Just the helmet to finish off in time for this weeks con so we should have some fully kitted pics after the weekend, of what I think is the first legacy to have gone the extra mile to smooth out the seams Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk1 point
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Nice work, looks great, here is mine for comparison, I went a little larger with the top left box to more match in with references Just watch the the final height placement when worn, a little hard to see from the angle of your photo, height placement did come up in an EIB application some time ago1 point
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Good to see you getting back onto this project Joseph, it's going to be a very nice display piece for sure.1 point
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