camprandall

Ah, forgot to post pics of the vest that I ordered from Chris Hale. I tried to increase the brightness/exposure to show the details a little better. Here it is in all its glory!

Ok, I finally finished up the trigger area last night (minus the little extension that hangs down in front. I'm pretty happy with it. The proportions are a little off after seeing some more pics, but I did cut some pieces to fill out the inside area bit and get closer to the proportions from the pics. I know for one thing the bottom bulge on the front of the handle isn't quite right, but I didn't want to rely on bondo for significant pieces because they may too easily break off. Insert pieces to shrink the hole a bit and get closer to proportion. Bondo work... With sanding and then glazing... And then a coat of primer to find smaller imperfections. A touch more glazing should finish her off.

It should!

I actually ordered that component from Chris Hale, who formed the white boxes, molded the rubber straps and everything. I'm not sure what he sourced for the vest. I'll post pics later.

Well, he is the "heavy" gunner.

Wow, you England guys keep pulling out the surprises! Hadn't seen that angle before. Cool! Any chance you could also pull out a functional accurate stand that I can slap on this thing? I've been busy repairing and adjusting my TFA the last few days, but I did manage to get my hardwood side pieces for the trigger area cut out and glued. It wasn't nearly as easy as it should have been because my available tools jump from a dremel up to a miter or table saw. Cutting this and keeping any of the curves intact was a total pain, but I did find some cool mini saw blade Dremel attachments that helped a lot. You'll notice that the shape is different than the base pine wood trigger. That's because of the more recent pics that showed a slightly different shape than I had originally determined. I'll dremel and bondo it up to make it nice and even and smooth.

Whatever you're doing - it sounds hard! I can't wait to see how it all comes out!

Yeah, the mounting stuff is awkward. I'm mainly about the cannon and might not build the stands at all. We'll see.

Ok, so I have to know which area "Geisha Balls" refers to. Can't say I've heard that expression before.

Yeah, I just noticed that too. Not sure if I'll add it though because it's an awkward element for trooping. I'm actually not building the stand for now either - mainly because it's pretty complicated on it's own and would take as long as the whole gun to build. Maybe after the premiere.

This might look horrible, but it's a big help to building a confusing piece. I mocked up the trigger backing piece with cardboard to get a feel for how it might go together without using real materials. I'm going to try to build this in the next day or two.

Stock is done! And here's everything that's finished to date. Getting there...

To add to this, the Sideshow toy just announced has them inverted too which makes me think the source material provided by Lucasfilm depicted them that way.

I can attempt to write up a summary at the end of anything I can remember.

With the primer coat on, I think the front box looks pretty good! I'm calling it done. Post glaze, pre-primer on the stock. The stock looks good, but needs another round of minor glazing. I knew it did, but wanted to primer so I could see all the defects.

Thanks! Yeah, that's why I told myself from the beginning that I wanted it to feel accurate, but would be ok knowing that it's going to be off in areas.

Got the top front box glazed and sanded. Next step is primer!

Hey Edwin! I think it's good to use a heavy thread, but you also need to do it nice and firm otherwise it does want to tear a little. If you clean your gaskets well first, the glue should be enough. I didn't know about that step (you know, because no one had finished and posted gasket info yet) so I needed some extra reinforcement. Overall though, that silicone/rubber mix just didn't hold up at all regardless as they split just sitting in a box. There may be a way to store them carefully, but from what I've seen you just have to plan on an alternative like cloth or Wyatt's latex gaskets (which are also insanely more flexibile!).

Not a lot of time to work tonight, but got a couple things done. Glazed the front top box. Should help me get a nice smooth finish on it. Glued on the final piece of hardwood to the back (this time 1/4 inch) so pretty soon I'll be cleaning up bondo and glazing!

I actually saw that and am thinking of scaling it to mine. Thanks for your contributions! Wow, that's cool. Just go easy on my amateur efforts!

Made a little more progress on the stock. Got the top and sides layered with 1/8" maple to try to give it some durability. I then finished everything off with bondo so I can get a very smooth even look. Just some sanding and possibly glazing putty and the stock is done!

Thanks Aaron!

Thanks Tony! Actually I'm using maple for this stuff. It's a lot easier to get nice hard edges and sand but its not a big enough piece that I'm too worried about the weight. The frame itself is made out of pine and I've kept it as small as I think I can to still be structurally strong.<br><br> Of course, this is my first scratch build gun and it's a big one and the resources stink so I could be wrong about everything. :-)

I also started building the top and back white boxes. I was planning on using thick ABS, but I think that a thin hardwood actually worked pretty well because it's easy to sand and shape. Reference shots: Building... And with some sanding...

Made a little more progress last night. So my soak/bake bend trick didn't work for the whole stock cover since it too easily wanted to split, but I did at least get the curve for the top of the stock down so I'll just add side pieces and sand and it should come out just fine.