Bulldog44

Wow, this is cruising along. Way to go troopers! Congrats to all those that have recently made it. Finish line is so close now!

Yes Tino, correct. I am trying to make a master set to make copies from. That’s the plan for the resin ones at least. I tried using right angles ABS strips for the base plate. ABS is easier to drill for sure and would certainly be a better idea for the resin power cylinders as you suggested. The right angle parts are okay but I am not liking the sharp angle of the bend so maybe it’s better to have them laser cut on a flat piece and then just need some heat to bend them into shape. Thanks for your suggestions. I was originally thinking of all resin casted but the base plate is not so straight forward to mold and cast. Fragile as well I imagine.

Had a chance to test drilling out the inner threaded section on these caps. Luckily I had the right size drill bit but found some drilling oil is needed. You can see from left to right- pre-drilled, partially drilled and fully drilled out. Last thing to do is to cut down the cap to its final size with the mini pipe cutter. These caps look really nice and have some weight to them. Unfortunately more expensive than the jewelry caps and require drilling so these are just for experimentation at the moment. Has anyone ever used this service for CNC laser cutting service? If it's cheap enough I might try to get some base plates made from my templates. Might be easier and cheaper to use aluminum so its easy to bend the plate to the finished right angle. https://www.emachineshop.com/

Thank you! They are certainly not easy to make consistently. I find something wrong each time I work on the parts.

Offering metal versions?????? No way!!!!! Ha! I can't even drill the center hole correctly. Maybe if I get better at making them it's an idea to think about. But if people want really accurate and machine crafted power cylinders they should go to Chris or Dennis, Andy as well if he decides to make them again. Chris's cylinder kits are super nice too for the people who want to build them. Perhaps I could prepare kits for the budget builder. The materials I use are relatively cheap. Just labor intensive and hard to get the drill holes perfect and the cuts clean and aligned. Hopefully I can make a nice enough master set to cast from. Many possibilities how to go about this, cast part for part or 1-3 part assembly. Not sure yet.

Progress on making my own power cylinders: Here is what I have made so far. Aluminum base plate is still not cut to finish yet. My tools for drilling and cutting are very basic so its hard to make these with more precision. More work on these in the next coming weeks. Paper mockup of the base plate. Still need to work on my template but so far it seems sufficient to use. End Caps- 10mm metal fittings. These are used in jewelry making. The walls are too thin when placed onto the 9mm tubing so I need to use some kind of filler or glue. It,s literally a hairline seam to fill. I can use 9.5mm piping so the end caps fit perfectly snug but it somehow doesn't make the end cap stand out enough, looks almost seamless. I used a mini pipe cutter to trim down the caps, sawed off the top end eyelet, drilled a center hole for the 10BA bolts and filed down the sharp edge a touch to make them look more like the original end caps. Ordered some fuses from the UK to try those for the end caps like Playfulwolfcub used. I also bought some locally found stainless steel screw caps that look perfect for the end caps. They need to be trimmed down too and I need to remove the inner threading. Not sure my hobby drill press can do this type of work but I will give it try. Here you can see a side profile of the metal I need to remove.

Thank you Daniel for all your time and effort.

Sorry no updates for the blasters but looking for information on measurements for the power cylinders. I am in the process of making my own set of power cylinders and looking to buy resistors that are located behind the main baseplate. I have read through Playfulwolfcub's info but can't seem to find the correct resistors to order. I don't want to waste lots of money ordering possibilities so if someone has the correct size I can refer to that would great. I think Usaeatt2 listed the specs on the resistors he used but it does not seem to guarantee the sizes when ordering. He said they were about 9.2mm in length? The power cylinders are certainly not easy to make. I am making lots of guesses on the dimensions to keep these original as possible and not rely heavily on Playfulwolfcub's (Andy's) research too much out of respect. Most of the materials are locally purchased items so the measurements are restricted to what I can buy here. The only things that I need to source from outside Japan are the resistors if I can't find them here and the 10BA bolts and nuts from the UK. Any help here is greatly appreciated.

Good choice. I have RS armor and love it. I think you will be satisfied with your purchase.

Nice fix on the front end hole. Always more fulfilling to go the extra distance to make it the best it can be. That is one beautiful blaster you made and should be very proud of your work on it! Excellent work!

Thanks Tino for your kind words. Hope I can keep up the same quality as the scopes. Some parts like the stock and the end cap have proved very difficult to cast with out incident. Even if they are not perfect parts I think they will be fun to assemble and patch up. Stay tuned!

Interesting. I had a look back into Dday's posts and it seems he did cast the stock in 2 parts at first but then moved back to a one piece cast. So your stock is the newer Phoenix prop stock. https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/28047-phoenix-props-e-11-stormtrooper-blaster-kits-a-new-hope-and-esb/?do=findComment&comment=414476 This explains a lot as I noticed on the wishbone stock part I have the paint texture is still present as it was on the DVH stock. So he somehow casted the stock, cut up a few stocks & separated the parts and recasted them. I understand why he did this now as it is very time consuming to cast all the parts, especially when you are offering blaster kits.. But like the scopes, I always want to have all the parts like the real deal. Not sure I will ever offer full kits but would like to try to cast all the parts and see how things stand from there. When that time comes I will certainly be interested to your feedback on the parts like you did with the scopes.

Hi Dylan. I bought an ATA kit many moons ago with hopes to use it at a practice build. I worried about messing it up so I never put it together until this year. I bought a pre-assembled RS helmet to help me at the time as a reference. It seemed the longer I prolonged doing it I started to doubt I could do it well. Instead of waiting, I say go for it and build the ATA kit, take your time with trimming and setting up the 2 halves to place the holes and of course the ears, go real slow and steady. Its a fun helmet to build and think you can do it. I did make a few mistakes here and there but nothing I could not hide or fix. But if you still feel like you want a pre-built helmet all of the makers recommended above are great. The RS helmet has all the original bumps and oddities. When I first got it and compared it to my ATA kit , I was bit surprised how much thinner the plastic was. Its nice to have the 2 to compare. Side note: My ATA helmet is smaller in size than my RS helmet. Not sure if this is common or a result of the bucks used by ATA shrinking over time when vacuum forming. But the fit for the ATA is a tighter on my head. Side by side you can see the size difference too.

Welcome Kenneth! Great you made it to the FISD. Best place to be for Stormtroopers. Looking forward to your build. All the help you need is right here on the FISD so please feel free to ask for advice whenever you need any. Best of luck on your TK journey!

Here is a quick look at the 3 types of folding stocks I will be using for my blasters. The top stock is the original one from the DVH kit; one full casted piece, non-moving parts The middle stock is from Phoenix Props kit. I am not sure if this was modified to cast into 2 parts from the DVH kit stock. It still has the old sterling paint in some areas so I think that is what this is from. Then Dday went with newer parts to cast from. I might be wrong about this so please feel free correct me. The bottom stock is casted from the paint stripped parts I acquired from Dday. Side View Top View Parts For Part For the DVH and Phoenix Prop stocks I am working on removing the inner resin to fit in the folding arm tubing. The DVH stock is really interesting as it has all the paint texture and battle worn look & feel to it. Lots to clean up and patch but still fun to work on. Nice point about this stock is the hinge mount part is casted with the stock wishbone arms so its easy to glue onto the receiver tube & the outer hinge caps are casted into the piece. The Phoenix Prop stock was a huge improvement from the DVH and Doopy stocks as it added more depth and detail by molding the handle part separately. No Need to carve out areas to make it appear like 2 parts. The stock I casted will have all the parts included. I have only molded the large parts so far but hope to start on the smaller parts at some point. The stock will be fully movable, lightweight but with the parts being plastic and very thin, I don't think it will be very strong and will eventually break. Just fun to go from a static one piece stock assembly to a 1:1 part for part replica.

Great to hear how you ended up here Dave and a fantastic username if I must say. Nice choice! I had a similar experience with getting my kit assembled and can relate a lot about the mistakes and taking more time than expected to get it all finished. Job well done! Wishing you many happy troops.

Awesome! I envy your journey to the 501st. Congrats to you and wish you many happy troops. Hope to see you get EIB & Centurion soon! Good luck!

Welcome aboard Dan! Best of luck on your journey! Feel free to post up and ask questions when you need help. Lots of kind & experienced members here.

Wow, I didn't realize how close this milestone was. Still celebrating the EIB 1,000 goal. I think I can push a few more troopers in my garrison to go the extra mile for this.

Welcome Edward! Best of luck on your 501st journey. Have lots of fun with your new armor!

Awesome! Looking forward to your build. Happy you got the scope and thank you very much for the kind comments.

Hi Tino! Yes, well overdue indeed. I am out of space and excuses so this had to get started. Hoping to add a bit of history info on the development of the kits from DVH, DDay to the parts I am now slowly molding and casting in phases. For the DVH kit there are a lot of areas that require drilling out to get that realistic look but I think I might not go too crazy with this one and leave it mostly as it came. And about the bayonet lug flattened area on the receiver tube continued from this thread -https://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/48391-sterling-smg-mk4-l2a3/?do=findComment&comment=704931 I believe you are 100% correct that the flattened area extends to the second hole. I only have the casting of the front end of the receiver to reference. It looks like it goes past the first hole but the front end was part I have is cut off slightly past the first hole so it’s hard to tell for sure. This is the only thing that seems to be incorrect on Andy’s template. I am not sure if this was intentional or a detail he missed. Maybe there variations on different era sterling’s. Just to keep an accurate account of the builds I didn’t use the temples seen above for the first 4 receiver tubes I drilled out. I used the e-11 temple found in the template section. Both templates are very close in comparison but I think Andy’s template seems to bit more accurate when using my DDay aluminum receiver tube as a second reference. Blaster #2 - Hybrid/ FrankenBlaster (Local plumbing PVC pipe receiver) Doopy parts: magazine well, possibly using doopy counter too DVH/Dday parts: Folding stock Magazine clip from Gazmosis Additionally Bulldog Prop parts. The DDay folding stock was casted in 2 parts and really helped give that extra look of realism. I still need to add the folding arm pipe detail once I get the inside area drilled out. Next up, I still need to fix the bayonet lug flattened area to extend to the second hole on this receiver tube and all the other tubes I have in the cue.

Original DVH E-11 Blaster Kit (2014) Already started to build the kit but will try to record progress from here. I have a few other blasters in progress too made up from spare parts from Doopy, DDay and my own casted parts. I will update those blasters here as well. Stay tuned! The DVH kit came with a 40mm diameter pipe and the inner diameter was big enough for the bolt to fit inside. Unfortunately the 40mm pipe looks too big so I went with some locally found pvc pipe that measures almost exactly 38.1mm outer diameter. The walls of the pipe are too thick to fit the bolt so for this blaster the original DVH bolt will not be used. I might make a custom bolt plate or make a partial bolt cast that can be trimmed and glued in place. Other parts that still need some work are the t-tracks and the folding stock. The power cylinders are too big looking so I will not use the ones supplied with the kit. The scope and counter have some issues but I will use them anyway. In general most of the parts came very unfinished and required lots of trimming, sanding and re-shaping with epoxy putty. This was a new groundbreaking kit at the time being cast from original parts that still preserved the paint & patina finish. It paved the way for more accurate cast from original part kits and inspired me to have a go at casting original scopes. Thought it was about time to break out the parts & bring this kit to life.

Nice job with the knurling on the front sight. Once that black coat of paint is applied it is like magic. The one thing I dislike about 3D printed parts is as you mentioned, they can warp in the sun. I had this problem with an F-11D kit I recently assembled. Was devastated to discover the parts warped beyond repair and had to finish it as it was. Great work and looking forward to seeing this completed.

Congratulations Trooper! Great to have you here.