welshchris77

Finally got around to doing a post on my sterling conversion. Marv's t track, real counter (blue snaggletooth) and real scope. The scope I got of the italian ebay I think it was, he seems to have an endless supply of them as he always has them up for sale and has sold loads of them. I custom made my scope rail in one piece from some scrap steel. It took me months to get my sterling even after I bought it because of all the red tape I had to go through to get it into the Republic of Ireland. Had to get special permission from the local Garda (police) superintendent first, thought it would just be a formality when I sent him a letter asking if I could import a deac, got a letter back asking why I wanted to buy a machine gun so I replied with a lengthy letter explaining all about star wars and E11's. He gave me permission but first I had to get a visit from a firearms officer to check I had a suitable safe to keep the gun in, then I had to apply for something called a 'article 7' which allows me to keep the gun, when this eventually came through I then had to apply for a special import license document and send it along with the article 7 to the UK dealer who put all the documents with the gun and sent it by courier to me and eventually a brown box arrived at my door and I had the biggest grin ever! . All in all I think It may have taken 6 months or more from the time I first secured the sale of the gun to when it arrived, was an epic journey to be honest but glad I persevered. Wasn't much to do for the conversion really, attach t track, make counter bracket and attach counter and scope and cut down magazine. All finished in a day or two. I think I'm going to leave all original paintwork on the sterling and parts as it gives it so much character. Its interesting to see what has been done for the deactivation process, what I can see so far is as follows;- The bolt has been sliced through at an angle and welded to the inside of the body, the bolt is also welded near the cocking handle slot. A hole has been drilled to the left of the magazine well and a steel pin inserted through and welded into place on the barrel and body. Also it looks like the inside barrel has had a slot ground through most of the its length underneath and a steel rod inserted and then welded in place, you can just about see this through some of the vent holes in the body. Alan key bolts on the muzzle welded. Various parts of the trigger mechanism and selector switch have been welded up but there is a little play in the trigger. Hope you all enjoy the pics!

Thanks Ian, yeah looks a bit to new looking alright!, especially next to my sterling which looks like its been through numerous battles!

well it wasn't all the walls really, just a few marks, sprayed it onto a rag and give it a little rub and it comes off like magic

If for any reason you needed to remove the crayon I find a release agent like WD40 or AC90 works perfect, discovered this when I had to remove the kids crayon marks from the walls in the house, lol

Just posting a few pics of a doopy's build I did a few years ago, lots of things I could have done differently in hindsight but I didn't know about this site at the time, I might go back at some stage and change a few things like the scope rail, counter, alan key bolts etc.., also the front sights I changed for a brass one at the time to make it stronger but the brass looks too thin. I also changed the trigger and guard for a custom made aluminum ones but they don't look too bad. I had loads of pics of my build in progress but accidentally deleted them all off my old camera Anyway just thought Id share some pics of it before posting a new thread on my sterling conversion.

Routed my own design of moulding on the side of the base the other day, took a good few passes on the router table, also thought the top looked a little bland so incorporated a design that would match the grooves I put in for the perspex stands, sanded everything back a little and cleaned things up, stand is pretty much finished now, might put some kind of protective layer on it, maybe some danish oil or might just leave the natural oak colour, not sure yet.

Great build Clint and weathering looking good so far, did you spray or brush paint the hammered black on, it looks great!

I lost out on a m19 scope a few years ago on the american ebay, didn't really know how rare they were at the time and it went quite cheap, dam I wish I had put a higher bid in at the time. Are they Andy's cylinders or you make them yourself?

Good start Marc looks like all you need now are the cylinders and a scope rail, where did you get your sterling?, would be nice to see some more close up pics of its condition.

Look forward to seeing it!

Blaster and stand are looking very good Andrew, I like how you improvised with the plaque for the stand base, its a nice shape. you might want to prime the stand to check for any major irregularities between the wood and the bondo before getting it spray painted.

Yeah they look like they would be trouble to remove alright and I don't want it to be an illegal deac as I had to jump though so many loops to get all the paperwork to get it in the first place. I would also like to troop with mine sometime in the future. The Emerald Garrison organize troops here in Ireland and I mentioned about trooping with a deac once in a forum once and a few members reckoned I wouldn't be allowed by the guards (police) or they would give me trouble, but I can't see why not really if I had all my paperwork and documents with me, I went to a military show recently and they had deacts and functioning weapons, the law on deacts are a bit of a grey area here in Ireland though, I have to keep mine in a gun safe which is odd as its not really a weapon, the way mine has been deactivated it would be virtually impossible to reactivate.

Coming along very nicely ronny, I made an aluminum rail for mine but found it too soft even in 2 or 3mm so I made a steel one, steel is so much stronger, Evilboys rails look great!!. I got my deac sterling from the UK also, are the alan key bolts on the muzzle welded?, mine are and It kind of bugs me, not sure how to go about grinding them off though, they are tricky to get too, I'm wondering if grinding part of the head off would allow them to be unscrewed and new ones put in, suppose it depends on how deep the weld goes.

Your welcome Aaron ,got back to doing some work on my display case the last few days, kind of hard juggling a family and building an extension on my house but try to get a few hours in on the weekend on my hobbies.

Next I used a copying bit (flush trim bit) on my router table to trim the edge of the piece's. After some scrapping with a stanley blade and careful sanding I flame polished the edges transparent with a pen torch, if you haven't done this before be very careful as you can mess it up very easy, set the flame low and gently pass it over the edge until it turns transparent, practice on some scrap first, too slow and it will start to burn and go brown, too fast and it won't turn clear enough. Some comparison shots of a test piece with no flame polished edge and finished piece:- Finished piece's:- Some shots of the pen torch I used, bought from harbor freight when I was in Florida but can easily be picked up cheaply from ebay and such. Flame is slightly more intense in real life just doesn't pick up that well on cam, still quite a low flame though.

ok got some more work done on and off the last week, think I'm going to go with transparent stands, I wanted to use polycarbonate as it is very strong but can't source it locally without buying a huge sheet which would cost a fortune, I have some 6mm perspex in the workshop so I'm going to use that for now. I started off by making some templates that fit the E11 nice and snug. Then sketched out how I want my stands to look like:- I then made some hardboard templates from my designs and stuck them onto the perspex with small strips of double sided tape, after that I roughed out the shapes with a chop saw and half moon rasp file leaving about 2mm out from the hardboard template If you haven't used perspex before it scratches very easy so leave the protective backing on as long as possible and use scraps of hardboard when holding it in the vice.

Nice job Ronny , will you make the scope rail yourself?

Fantastic build Aaron, keep up the good work!

Good job, looks good!

wow Andrew you could do some really cool stuff with a cnc lathe and mill but sounds like your flat out at the moment, don't burn yourself out dude!, all in good time, congrats with getting married by the way. I don't have armor yet by the way, still unsure what to get, want something sturdy but accurate, don't mind paying for a good kit but there are so many out there seems a bit of a mind field!

Thanks Kyle, busy today doing other wood carvings for a seafood festival in my local village Kilmore Quay so will be tied up with that for a few days, then its back to working on my display case again, shame I can't do any routing when the kids go to bed out in the shed but that thing is dam noisy! Nice one Andrew, another thing I forgot to mention is build yourself some kind of platform or table for routing on, you can just about see mine in my pics, its a box with a top and bottom that have overhangs, I built mine from some scrap kitchen worktop and old laminated pine panel, gives some nice weight to it, it has some roofing felt for grip and two strips of wood screwed to the top, I place my stock against the front strip of wood and little wedges at the back to keep the stock steady, my platform height is then just above elbow level, it varies on the person but for me this height is ideal for freehand routing without giving me a a bad back or neck, the overhang of the platform on the top and bottom is also great for clamping to a work surface or your templates on the top. The main thing with routing is take your time!!!, start to rush and you will make a critical error or worse have an accident, google router accidents in pictures and you will see what I mean (not for the faint hearted), they can do some savage damage to hands and fingers, at the end of the day its a super sharp piece of tungsten carbide tipped steel spinning at 24 to 33 thousand rpm. Wear googles and mind your fingers!!

Thanks Andrew, is there any particular design you wanted to route or just just play around to get a feel for your router?, routing is a whole world onto its own and there are masses of information on it online, as an artist I like to use mine for freehand routing designs and images (mostly non star wars related), freehand routing lends itself to free flowing shapes and curves but straight lines and large circles are near impossible , thats where templates comes in and guide bushings, this is the first time I've used templates as it can be quite time consuming working them out and making them, I could use templates for curves and whole designs but the amount of templates I would need for even something simple sometimes is not worth it, it would be good if you planned on making a run of the same design though. The stencils are good for getting an idea of the scale you want your design to be, you could print a design at the size you want, laminate it, cut out the bits your going to route, tape it to your stock(wood, board etc.) and trace it out, you might have to make a number of stencils for one design where pieces are 'floating', with multiple stencils you will have to make some kind of registration mark or hole on all of them in the same place to line each one up, maybe incorporate two circles on corners opposite each other before you print it, you don't have to have a printer by the way, you can use tracing paper or sometimes I have just held a piece of paper over my laptop screen and traced it for smaller images. For the circle I had to make it bigger than it would come out as you have to allow for the gap between the cutter and the outside of the guide bushing, for a circle I measured it and times by two then added this to diameter of the circle, its a bit of trial and error really, I only have one guide bushing at the moment but have a set of different sizes ordered which would be good for smaller and more intricate designs. You could also use a projector to transfer your image onto your stock, I recently did this for a large piece by clamping my stock into an easel then projecting the image onto the stock and tracing it off with a pencil, always use a pencil on wood by the way as you can see the line better than anything else if your freehand routing, I would maybe practice on some scraps of MDF or similar before using expensive hardwood too. You might have got a guide with your router that attaches to the side, I used this for routing the groove that glass sits in, also the quality of the routing bits makes a huge difference, I use trend tct bits and the speed you drive them at is important, too slow and you get chattering which makes the cut bumpy, too fast and it will burn the stock, you can see some burn marks on my design but this was hard to avoid as the oak I'm routing is very dense. To cut the circles templates I used my dremel with a circle cutting arm and a spiral cutting bit, I screwed the hardboard down onto a scrap of chipboard to stop it moving around, there are lots of other ways you could cut circles if you google it, hardboard is good as its thin and easy to sand after cutting, plywood would be tougher to cut and clean up but would last longer as a template, I would stick to hardboard though if I was use, its fine for the good or else very thin MDF. I would definitely mark a cross on the hardboard or plywood first to use as a guide for lining it up to lines on your stock. Im probably leaving lots of things out here but hope this helps. yeah perspex forks sounds good Ian, they could fit into a slotted grove on the base or maybe even a cross shaped groove with two pieces of perspex slotted together which would make it stronger, the cowboy story is cool, kids imaginations are great!

Thats a good idea Ian but would have to decide then which side to display, although most seem to display the guns left side showing off the counter. I am tempted by perspex ones though in some form. I wonder how some old retired stormtrooper who has served the empire well would display his trusty old E11 in his living room on some distant planet siting in his armchair saying to his grandson "thats the E11 I used in the battle of endor you know my lad", grandson "wow, did you shoot many rebel scum that day granddad?" lol

Thanks Steve and David, I'm unsure yet as to what shape I should do the support arms or struts for the E11 and what material to make them in, maybe something chunky in matching white Oak, the ones on my old case didn't look great, I will have to think about this one , any Ideas anyone? I guess in matching white oak it will blend in more and not detract from the E11 too much, or maybe some thick brass rod and custom brass support cradles. I might do a decorative edge on the base too, when I first got my router I put roman o.g moulding on everything, the novelty has worn off now so might do something different, I did a roman o.g on my last Mk1 case, I can post pics of it if anyone is interested in seeing it.

Get out your measuring tape Ian! lol, so far the measurements are; Glass case 585mm long, 294mm high and 244mm wide. Oak base is 656mm long, 314mm wide and 39mm high: the groove is for the glass is 8mm wide and 7mm deep. Making the design is basically Routing 2 circles with a guide bushing and circle templates on my Hitachi M12 E Router, stenciling in the missing lines and freehand routing the rest, takes a very steady hand so no beers the night before, lol. I did a practice one before hand by the way on chipboard. More pics of the process for the next circle. 12.7mm(1/2") tct router bit for the circles and a 6.85mm(1/4") router bit for free handing the rest. Roughly 3mm cut depth.