Artshot

Still working on this thread, just got distracted by my bright and shiny Sterling, although technically it's black and grimy, with a slight smell of oil. The bonus is, I can use one to help build the other. More photos coming soon.

So much inspiration for my blaster build Stunning work, thanks for sharing. Art

@usaeatt2 Thanks for your comments about the deactivations on my Sterling, I had a good look at it while looking at the Sterling manual, your spot on with your observations, I also now know that the reason the second spring put up a fight was because the cocking handle goes through it, which obviously cannot be removed as the bolt is fixed in place, ofcourse since I got the spring out, the end piece now rattles inside, will have to pack that when I put it back together. Thanks for the info about Chemical dip.....nasty stuff, but if it does what's required I may have to risk chemical burns. As I was looking over the parts I had a brainwave and dug out some Cillit Bang cleaner, it works on grease in ovens, so I gave it a try, surprising it worked to a degree, I now have a lot of little rust spots to deal with though. @jkno I took your advice and showed the Sterling to a friend at work, he is in a gun club and I thought he would know better than me, he did, he got the club armourer to call me. Basically it is illegal to interfere with a deactivation of a firearm that has been done by a licensed or approved metalworker, there work can be spot checked at any time. However, he said he thought the welding of the front hex bolts was overkill as there are already three marked deactivation points, one on the trigger housing, one on the bolt and one on the barrel near the ejector and the barrel could not be removed via the front of the weapon anyway. Now the good news, he is willing to do a modification to the hex bolts as he is in charge of deactivating and maintaining guns for a WW2 reenactment group, apparently there prone to a lot of police spot checks. And yes, there's bad news, each hex bolt would be ground off, the then the body of the bolt would need drilling into a few mm, then spot welded into the hole, then each weld would need to be ground and stamped, however i am only allowed to glue the heads of the hex bolts in place, and if requested to do so, I would need to remove them for inspection if asked by police. At this point he said I was nuts........he may be right.

@SamJ Good point, whilst I got the certificate with the Sterling, it's not specific about what the deactivation involved, I think some things may be best left alone, the hex bolts are bugging me though, but at least I now know why the hex bolts on the Doopy resin kits are basically blobs. There's a tiny bit of movement in the trigger , that'll do for me , another reason I think the ejector is welded is that when I was removing the spring it put up a lot of resistance, eventually it sprung loose, only to leave the end piece inside, which I think is fixed in place by the ejector pin going through it.....ofcourse I now have the metal piece rattling in there......first day of owning a sterling and I break it already I plan on displaying it as though it was a Stormtroopers retirement gift from the empire, although I somehow doubt that any lived to retirement age

Well, since I nearly got a face full of spring trying to remove them, it could be something to watch.

So, as i was waiting for my armour to arrive I decided to start building my Doopy E-11, but there was something missing, it's not a Sterling....which led me to this. It did not come partially disassembled, that was me, trying to strip it down and prep it for cleaning, it stinks, it's been well oiled, greased, whatever it's called, within 5 minutes my hands were black and slick. So, as I was stripping it down I came to the conclusion that it's going to need some work, I am going to strip the paint (hopefully repainting with a similar crinkle type paint), as there's a fair few missing and rough areas in the paint that need attention. I also noticed the selector switch will not move, is it because of the area on the next photo ?, it looks like a spot weld, more importantly if I grind the weld away, will the selector then move ? I also noticed that I cannot remove the pin next to the magazine housing, grub screw came out fine, if you look at the photo you can just make out how it was deactivated, looks like a steel rod was welded in there, I have a feeling this is what's blocking the pin removal. Next I came to the end of the barrel, this is the only outward sign of it being deactivated, horrible spot welds on the hex screws and a couple of random drops on the end of the barrel. What's the best way to remove the hex bolts, grinding ?, I have a new dremel I bought for my armour build, I realise the bolts are going to have to be sacrificed, which is annoying as they have the right pattern on them, still I have a couple of bolts I can use, there not diamond patterned, but they will suffice, I will no doubt only be able to fit the heads anyway. Also, how do I get the front site out, is there something I need to unscrew that I cannot see ? The last photo was just to show some of the paint texture. My last couple of questions are:- How do I clean the grease, oil or whatever it is, from the sterling, or should I just go in with the paint stripper, which I do not relish as there are parts which will be a swine to clean. And, what on earth was I thinking, I have no clue what I am doing. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks Art

From a personal point of view and being at the beginning of my journey, you will never find a more helpful bunch of like minded people, than on this site. Through messages, research.....more research, build threads.....research, I was able to make a well informed decision about what armor was suitable for me, reading through many builds from people with similar armor to the armor I am waiting for is an invaluable resource, everybody has there own approach to there build, all are fascinating to read. I agree completely with Sly11's comment about a circle, I fully intend to put up a build thread when I get my hands on my armor, I also figure that if I am screwing it up, somebody will point it out and stear me in the right direction before I make too many mistakes.

In an attempt to rebuild/improve the Doopy resin counter for my blaster build, I bought a Hengstler 890 counter for its number dials (I wanted the same font), which actually worked out reasonably good as it's outer box is the same size and if I can swap the dials around, all I need to do is cut the end with the viewing window off. However I cannot find accurate measurements for that end of the counter, especially the window slot and the button slot, any point in the right direction would be appreciated. Thanks Art

I think I just lost count of the amount of times I have read through this build, every time I think of a way to do something, I read your build, then find you did it better Art

Hey Tino I just had one of those "Doh!" Moments, your build is in my reference folder, which I often look back through to see how you solved some of the trickier improvements, never put two and two together.....I think I may have reference blindness If I can get my build to even half your standard, I will be happy. Would you happen to have the measurements of the Hengstler reset button to hand ?

Hey Tino If you look at the photo of the Doopy magazine receiver, the sides that enclose the end of the magazine are too thick, marked in black to help keep the thickness uniform, the long sides maybe by about 1mm, the short sides by less, actually one short side is a bit thicker than the other so I will thin that first to even them up. I do have a cheap version of a Dremel, but its prone to cutting out, so I do not use it much, besides I prefer the better precision I can get with a scalpel. If you look at the magazine from "Gazmosis" you will see a slight step in on the right side as it looks in the photo, this side will actually face front when assembled, that step is where it should hit the front edge side of the magazine receiver. Looking back at the Doopy magazine receiver you can see that it's quite built up on it's inside, as far as I see it there are two choices, either continue to hollow out the magazine receiver by about an inch or so, or cut the magazine down. I am probably going to cut the magazine down as it's far easier than trying to grind out the interior of the magazine receiver. My plan is to cut off less than I need and just fine tune with sanding until I get a perfect fit against the step in and the catch on the other short side, that way I hope to get a snug fit against the inside area of the magazine receiver. Would you believe that's a lot more clearer in my head

your attention to detail never ceases to amaze me

Okay, here we go with Part 2, or as I like to call it "How to fit a square peg into a square hole" The photo below is where I am up to at the moment. I have scraped away most of the primer I applied, this revealed a few cracks in the resin running up a T-Track, I carefully applied a bit of super glue into the area, once dried, I will clean the area and it's ready to receive a last cleanup when I am ready to paint, I also gave the primed area a rub down with a very weak solution of brush cleaner, this helps to remove any little stray specks of primer, then I washed the area with clean water. Yup, all of the above is probably overkill, but it keeps me happy. So, onto the magazine. As has been established in multiple threads, the Gazmosis magazine is too accurate for the overly thick sides of the Doopy magazine receiver, so they need thinning down, this is not easy if you do not have any grinding type tools, like me. So I fell back on an old favourite, I marked the edges that needed thinning with a black marker, which for me makes judging widths when thinning resin a lot easier than looking at resin against a resin background, watch out for transfer of colour, should you get your fingers on the black highlight, like me. I am currently thinning down the receiver by scalpel, it's time consuming but on such a delicate area, I don't want to take chances, I am doing regular fit testing as I go. Whittling resin, oh what fun. https://i.imgur.com/05yfFtp.jpg

During the clean up of the front of my blaster by removing the primer I applied and discovering a few blobs of errant resin and a couple of hairline cracks, now filled with primer, I spotted a Hengstler counter on Ebay and won it Since I only wanted it for the dials as they are the same typeface as the 400 series, I do not care it is a later model, I plan on building a fake top of the box for the Doopy to deal with this (I am toying with making it removable so I can put my eventual TK numbers in there). With that in mind, has anybody got the dimensions of the reset button ?, the rest of the sizes I already have in my ever growing folder of reference. More photos later, when I get in from work, where I am currently stuck....don't they know I have a blaster to build!! Art

Okay, I give up, what's the best way to get photos into a post ? I have photo bucket, never used it before though, and what's the best image size to use to stop them wandering off the side of the post ? Art **Never mind, sorted it*

This is my blaster. There are many like it but this one is mine. My blaster is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my blaster is useless. Without my blaster I am useless. I must fire my blaster true. I must shoot straighter than my enemy, who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. Or in other words, welcome to my E-11 Blaster build. Here's what came in the medium brown box. After looking over the pieces it became apparent that some clean up was required, not a lot....I hoped, however the mold that the kits come from is looking a little tired in some places, luckily the FISD is full of people who thrive on improving what is out there, to further the quest of as screen accurate as possible. So with that in mind, I ordered a few bits & pieces:- "T-Jay" supplied a very nice selection of pieces to upgrade a lot of the Doopy blaster, power cylinder pieces, piping for a fake barrel, wire for the cocking spring, various screws to swap out molded screws, hex head screws for the barrel and grip, it really is a great selection (lots more than shown). I added the chrome pipe as a replacement for the plastic that came with it as the thickness of the Doopy barrel means it looks a bit wide, the power cylinders are just to show some of the replacement parts from T-Jay. "Gazmosis" supplied a perfect replacement for the poor magazine that comes with the Doopy kit, even comes with "Off" inscribed, which I knew was going to give me trouble if I stuck with the Doopy part. "PlayfulWolfCub" supplied an incredibly accurate replacement for the Doopy power cylinders, they truly are a work of art, but then considering the research he has done on them, I expected nothing less. Of course, with all those bits & pieces, a handy little box was needed, which will be repurposed once my RT-Mod armor arrives. Okay, so on with the build. Last week I attached grip with epoxy glue, I also drilled out the barrel vent holes, even though they will be under the folded stock, I am also drilling out the holes in the stock, which will have a fake piece of pipe installed to give the illusion of a real stock (part of the kit from T-Jay") I also ground the resin hex bolts (resin blobs) out and will be fitting real hex bolts. Next I applied a quick coat of grey paint as a primer to the front half of the barrel, I mainly do this on kits I build so that I can spot any flaws easier, there were a few, especially a crack going up on of the T-Tracks. I am currently in the process of sanding and scraping away the paint, once it's gone, the little flaws, divots and resin blobs will be easy to spot and deal with. Whilst I realise this stage is overkill by me, I have one of those mentalities that if I know something bugs me, I need to sort it out, even if nobody but me would ever notice. I realise there's not much to show at the moment, but stick with me, I have a few ideas I want to try, especially with Hengstler counter. Any and all suggestions are welcome. P.s I apparently need to learn something about including photos, the next thrilling instalment will be better....honest.

I will be starting my build thread today, now that I have the rest of my pieces. Art

2000 parts......I must buy more as I look to be missing a few, I did locate an errant trigger though, with the aid of my bare foot, imagine stepping on lego, but more pointy. Whilst on the subject of all things E-11, is there an accepted position of the power cylinders on the magazine housing ?, I asked "PlayfulWolfCub" who I consider an expert on all things power cyclinders, he said they were mostly just stuck anywhere, I do sort of like the look when there lined up with the barrel as I like straight lines.

Thanks everybody for the information. Since my last post I have decided to apply the Hengstler, although I plan on rebuilding the counter area on the resin one that comes with the Doopy kit. I also just ordered a replacement set of power cylinders from "PlayfulWolfCub" to make them look more accurate. I also have the replacement magazine from "Gazmosis" and the mod set by "T-Jay" to add to my Doopy, along with a few other ideas I have "borrowed" from other threads. Suppose I better start putting it all together now

That'll be more reading I need to do then

Since I am about to begin my Doopy build of my very own E-11, I have a quick question. Are Hengster and Power Cylinders standard on the ANH E-11 ? I only ask because personally I think they ruin the clean lines of a standard E-11 and I do not want to add them to my build, but for the sake of accuracy I would. I read once that they had a habit of falling off the E-11 on set, so there's a mix of both on screen, but I am just curious if there's actually two versions on purpose. Would that make it E-11 and the E-11a variant ? Just Checking Art

I just found the elastic, snaps and glue I was looking for on Ebay 15mm black snaps 1 inch black flat woven elastic, 10 metres Fabric Glue I am going to do a few weight tests and strength tests once it all arrives, in the meanwhile my E-11 mod kit from T-Jay just arrived

Is it a bad sign that when I woke up this morning, my first thought was how I was going to do my webbing with elastic and glue ?

That's interesting to know, I was all set to buy webbing, but I am now wondering about the logistics of using elastic, more importantly in how to keep the strength at the ends once a snap has been punched through, doubling up at the ends would be my first thought. Since I have a lot of time to wait and prepare, I am trying to adopt an approach of looking at all options for my eventual build......within my skill level. Art

Thanks for measuring Snaps, it's much appreciated. Where I can, I will be buying from FISD members who sell items based on there own experiences and recommendations, if the knowledge is out there, why ignore it I am hoping to go for a Centurion RT-Mod build from out of the box.