Sabyre

Time for the weekly progress report. It's been a rather busy, and at times, frustrating week. However, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. So, here we go. At the end of the last post, I had the first inner strips set for gluing in the forearms. Here they are finished and ready for the second strip Monday night. I sued more left over scrap to cut the inner strips. Marked out two 15mm strips. Scored and snapped. Marked for length. After cutting, roughing up the gluing surface and sanding down the edges they were ready to put in place. The forearms were under a good bit of tension trying to get them to stay closed, so I tapped them to help hold them together. Here they set with inner strips in place and waiting for the glue to set. After they had 24hrs to set, I checked there progress. I wasn't too worried about the right forearm, it wasn't near as tough to close as the left one. I started with the left, pulled the clamps and magnets off, and no problems yet. However, as I pulled the tape off the seam popped. Now, at this point I know the problem must be addressed before moving on. However that is not what I did. I have yet to finish the work on the wife's arm armor, I had work to do on the daughter's room, yard work to do and several other things I wanted to get accomplished in what felt like a short and diminishing time period. Instead, I thought MAYBE, if I just use extra glue and more clamps on the cover strip, I can fix it. I pulled out some more scrap and laid out the 15mm cover strips. I got them cut out and prepped, sanded, roughed, glued, and clamped. The right one came out fine, so it just got the usual treatment. Here is hoping. They next night I was eager and a little nervous to see the results. After removing the clamps, mags and tape it jumped right out at me. I was right should have fixed it before moving on. There was enough tension to pop the cover strip off. So, I pulled the strip off and cleaned off the glue. Time to do what I should have done in the first place. Fix it. I placed the strip, glue less, back on the forearm and clamped it on the ends. I then placed Popsicle sticks on the strip to spread the pressure and put the larger clamps in the middle. Time for a hot bath to flatten the glue area of the cover strip. I heated a couple pots of water to almost boiling. Placed the forearm in the sink and added the water. After letting it set for about 10 mins, I pulled it out and set it aside to cool off. It worked as planed. the cover strip area is now flat. However, now the forearm has an egg shape. If you look at the pic above, after I pulled it out of the water to cool, you will notice I did not have the strip or Popsicle sticks on the other side. This caused the forearm to indent in the two areas the clamps were. So, now I have flattened the seam areas but deformed the rest of the piece. Here it is from the wrist end. Elbow end. The right forearm was ok, so I continued on with adding the last cover strip. On the way home from work yesterday, I stopped at lowes and picked up the material I need to fix my forearm. I hope. I found this piece of 3/4" aluminum angle. I also got some hard ware for connecting the parts I will make with the stick of angle. The angle is 4 feet long. I cut it into 4 pieces at 12" each roughly. I then placed two of the angles back to back in the vise. I then drilled one hole through both angles on each end just larger than the bolts I picked up. The idea is to sandwich the sides of the forearm between the angles. the 3/4 angle is a little bigger than the 15mm cover strip. This should give me a flat spot to glue the strip to. Here I have everything ready to go. Deep breath and hope for the best. I put the brackets on the first side making sure to center them up on the seam line. Here it is with both brackets in pace and ready for it's hot bath. I started the water heating on the stove and returned to check on the cured right forearm. There is a little glue removal needed, but all in all ready to go. Water is heated and ready to go. Placed the forearm in the sink and added the water. Now for the 10 minute wait. I used a flat sided wooden spoon on the bottom of the forearm in order to 1. not indent the bottom with the clamps and 2. attempt to flatten out the elbow end opening kinda like the right forearm. Here is the final result. Sides are flat and ready for cover strips and the opening is back to being rounded. I did a test fit and it fit as desired. I did have one minor issue. I ended up with a crack in the ridge. This was from me trying to manipulate the shape by hand after heating. I did not share any of the pics or steps I undertook in that process because it was a waste of time and effort. This was my reward for attempting such foolishness. I will repair this when I make abs paste for shimming later on. Cover strips are now glued on. Now I can move on to finishing the wife's armor parts. Now that I have all of the experimentation out of the way on mine hers should go much smother .

Well, after much debate with myself, I too have pulled the trigger and placed an order. I figure at the very least it would make a good sandy. For $350.00, it's worth a shot.

Thank you sir! Your build thread is one of many I have used in my never ending research for this build. Thank you sir! I am new to all of this. I also find that having to stop and take pictures, slows me down and keeps me from getting in a hurry. That's usually when I goof up. I have looked over a lot of build threads doing research for this build, yours included. When I did my blaster build, I did not stick to the picture taking as I should have, and was a little nervous about posting the thread as I went. I followed DarkCMF's blaster build as I went and his documentation was immaculate and very helpful. It saved me a lot of rework I would have found myself with, had he not posted it. This build thread will in no way match what he did, but if it can help some one else out in any way, that's what it is about IMHO. I would like to think I am doing my tiny part in the troopers helping troopers creed followed here in the FISD. Thank you sir! I hope I can make the end product look in some way as good as some of the other great builds I have seen. Ok, after some more research and debating with myself last night, I have come up with a pan for the forearms. I intended to leave the return edges on the elbow end of the forearms. I had them sized the way I thought I wanted. After the biceps had time to finish dying, I test fit them with the forearms. The right forearm was ok, but the left forearm needed some work. I could barely get my arm to bend half way up. I know just wearing the armor will restrict some movement, but this was unacceptable. The solution I decided on was to cut the recess in the inner part of the left forearm to match the right forearm. I did this following the same method Mutter used in his build. Here is the way they looked before I started. Left on the left Right on the right I paced the right forearm on top of the left making sure it was sitting centered and not falling off to one side. I then traced the outline of the cut out on to the left forearm. Here is what I was left with after attacking it with the lexan scissors. I then used the dremel to cut right up to the line. I put the left forearm back together and tried it on again. It was better but not quite were I wanted it. Also after cutting it I lost the return edge I was wanting to keep, so I figured I would go ahead and cut the return edge off of the right one, set it back over the left retrace and try again. This is the return edge on the right I was to remove. After removing the edge on the right arm, retracing on the left and recutting the left arm, I test fit again. This time I got exactly what I was after. I could now bend my arm almost as far as I wanted. I understand I do not have the shoulder bells, chest plate or ab on and these will likely restrict movement as well, but one step at a time. Here is how they looked after cleaning up with the dremel and some sand paper. Left on left Right on right Now I accepted the fact that I must lose the return edge on the inner forearm, but I didn't want to lose it on the outside. However, I was left with this horrible looking match up on the seam. I decided to compromise. I used the dremel to tapper the corner of the return edge down to meet the inner forearm, to give it a more blended look and not so cobbled together. I also trimmed about half of the return edge off. This helped to blend in the taper as well as prevent it from snagging on my elbow when I moved my arm. Here is the difference. After trimming and taper. Before trimming and taper. Now that the mobility issue has been solved. I must address the fact that the trimming I did, affected the overall fit. I had to trim the sides down about 1/2 an inch on the elbow end and an 1/8 inch on the wrist end. This made them fit even better than they did before I started reworking them. It did also change up the joining edges at the wrist, so I had to cut them a little as well. I did this by using the curved lexan scissors to cut along the front till I had a straight line. I then used sand paper to clean up the edge and smooth it out. Here is the finished result. Looking from the elbow end. Looking from the wrist end. Fit is great. Now it's time for gluing. I pulled out some of the left over cut pieces from the thighs and shins. I used one piece, cutting length wise, to make two 15mm wide strips. Place one in the forearm, marked the length and cut it down. Used sand paper to rough up the gluing surface and glued it in. Here they both sit with the first inner strip glued in. Now It is time to move on to the wife's forearms and biceps. This brings me to a question I have. I need to trim about an inch to an inch and a half off of the height on her biceps. Is it safe to assume this should be done all from the top? Any direction on this would be greatly appreciated. I did get my new correct decals in for the buckets, so as time permits, I can return to finishing them this week

Awesome choice. I'm kind of partial to that band. Mine would have to be " Cowboys from Hell" I would also have to include "Uprising" by Muse

I started working on the biceps and forearms this week. I started out by removing the return edge on the wrist end of the forearms. If at all possible, I will leave what is there on the elbow end. I started out with the lexan scissors. Then cleaned the edges up with the dremel. I then moved on to the biceps. I was going to leave some return edge on the tops of the bicep, but after test fitting them, I could not get a good fit so off they came. Before cutting any thing off, I wanted to be sure the sides were centered so my seams would be in line with the forearms seams. I did this by first, measuring the ridge width. It measured out to be 25mm. I made a center mark at 12.5mm and using a straight edge, I made a line bisecting the ridge. I then placed my square on the table and check to see if the line was squared. Everything was squared, so I was ready to cut. I decided to remove 1 inch from both sides of the bicep. This means only removing 1/2 inch from each of the four sides. Made my marks and using the straight edge, scored and snapped off the excess material. After repeating this a few times, I taped them back together for a test fit. The fit was good. Now I needed to trim up the edges on the top and bottom to make a better alignment. I placed the straight edge on the sides and drew a line across the joints for a cut line. After getting all of the edges cleaned up it was time for gluing. I placed the inner strip in to measure it, marked the length and cut it to size. I used sand paper to clean up the strip edges and rough up the inside of the bicep and strip for gluing. Applied glue clamps and magnets, and moved on. After the first inner strip had it's 12hr dry time, I prepped the other half same as the first. As I was waiting on the glue to dry, I started on the forearms. I followed the same steps with these as I did with the biceps. As far as fit, I would have gone a little tighter on the wrist end of the forearms, but then I couldn't get my hands through them. I will just have to work around them being a little big on that end. As I have what my wife likes to call " Monkey arms", I can't trim much off of the forearms. However, there was a little that had to come off of the seams to make a better connection. By the time I finished getting the forearms set to the right size, the glue on the biceps had their 12hrs to dry. It's now time for cover strips. I placed the cover strip on to measure the length. Marked it, cut, and sanded it down. Rechecked it for fit, roughed up the surface, and applied glue, strips, clamps and magnets. UPDATE 9/26/2015: I must have done something wrong using the below method of making bicep hooks. All of the hooks I made in this segment failed. When I put the slightest pressure on them they all snapped right at the spot I made the score line to help with forming. I am not saying this tutorial is wrong, I am just saying mine didn't work as expected. Later in my thread I show the new hooks I formed using an Idea found in Locitus' build thread. Thank You. I then decided to go ahead and make the elastic hooks for the biceps. I found this tutorial by SIMpixels[TK]. I started with a piece of scrap from one of the leg pieces. Measured and cut out 4 pieces at 90mm. I then cut all four of them to a width of 22mm. I measured out the 48mm point of the back for the bottom bend. I then flipped them over to mark out the remaining bend lines. This is where I found a problem. It is nothing major, but in his tutorial, he shows a 22mm by 90mm piece being used. However, when you lay it all out, the piece should actually be 22mm by 96mm. Instead of cutting four new pieces, I just changed the measurement on the back bend to 42mm. I then continued laying out the bend lines on the opposite side. Once it was all laid out, I used a sanding disk on the dremel to round off the corners. I then used sand paper to south out all the edges. I used a triangle shaped mini file to score the bend lines. Then used a heat gun to heat the abs. once it was warmed, i pressed it against the table to form it. This is what I ended up with. They are not perfect, but I think they will work. Next, I will work on getting the forearms finished up.

Hi Jayson, I am working on the same kit, and am currently working on the forearms and biceps as well. This is my first build, so some more seasoned veterans might be able to better direct you. As I can tell you are correct in both question 1 and 2. Question 3, line up the elbow end evenly, then trim any extra off of the wrist end. Question 4, the return edge on the wrist end of the forearm should be completely removed, if you intend to shoot for centurion, the rest is up to you for comfort and sizing. Myself, I removed all of the edges on the biceps and wrist end of the forearms. I plan on leaving as much as possible on the elbow end of the forearms as possible. I intended to leave the edges on the tops of the bicep as well, but had to remove them to get them to fit correctly. A more experienced builder might have better suggestions. I hope this helped.

I haven't got a lot done since my last post, I had hoped to be a little further along by now. We don't have much work in the shop right now, so I volunteered to go work in the field and have been quit busy this week and haven't had much time to build. Hey, I have to make the money to play with my new toys, right? Anyway, here is what little I got done this week. In my last post, I had the inner strips glued into the thighs. A day or two later I glued the other half of the thighs on. Once they had dried, it was time to glue on cover strips. I first laid the strip on the thigh to measure out how much excess was to be removed. I marked the strip even with the top of the thigh. Using my utility knife, I scored just behind the line and snapped off the extra material. After sanding the edges of the strips, and roughing up the back side of the strip and top of the thigh, I placed the bead of glue on the thigh. I applied the cover strip and clamped it in place. I put a little too much glue down, but I can clean it up later. Repeat a few tome and all four thighs are set for dying. Unfortunately this is all I managed to get done this week. Hopefully, I will have enough time in between working this weekend, to get started on the forearms and biceps.

You have my interest as well.

Ok, now that the shin cover strips have had there 12hrs to dry, I can retrieve my clamps and magnets and start on the thighs. There was a little bit of glue that oozed out of the seam I will have to clean up later. I will do these the same way I did the shins. I started by placing the inner strip in to find the proper length. I made a pencil mark where I ant to cut. Using a straight edge and utility knife, I scored and snapped the excess off. After using the sand paper to rough up the area to be glued, I placed a bead of glue in the thigh. I placed the inner strip in and applied clamps and magnets. Rinse and repeat a few times and all four inner thighs are set for there dry time. If I have time later tonight I can get the outer half of the thighs glued on. I have to pick the wife up at the airport tonight, so this might have to wait till tomorrow after work.

After letting the shins set over night, a little over 12hrs, I glued the other half of the shins on. I did the usual roughing up of the inside of the half to be joined with sand paper, laid a bead of E-6000 and clamped it in place. I set these off to dry for the day. About 12hrs later, and its time for the cover strips. I first went over the top of the shin with a utility knife and removed any excess glue that oozed out. Then I roughed up the area the cover strip was to be glued. I placed the cover strip in pace, to measure and cut the strip to length. I roughed up the back side of the cover strip and sanded down the rough edges on the sides that occurred from cutting them out of the sheets of ABS. Placed a bead of glue and clamped them in place. The cover strips went in place much easier than the inner strip. Repeated the same process for the other shins. Now it's back to waiting for glue to dry. Nothing better than the old " Hurry up and wait " game. Tomorrow, I will try and get the inner strips started on the thighs.

After the kids went to bed, and I couldn't risk running the dremel to do ear work for fear of waking them, I moved on to the shins and thighs. Starting with the shins. With the cover strips on the front of the shins being 20mm, then I need 10mm on each half. So I measured 10mm from the edge of the raised seam on the front of the shin. I did this at the top and bottom on the front of the shin. I made a corresponding cut in the return edges of the shins to allow bending the extra material after scoring. I placed a metal straight edge along the 10mm marks, and using a box cutter, lightly scored the abs to or three times. After scoring, I folded the edge over until it snapped off. This is what I ended up with. The return edge at the bottom will be fully removed, so I used my lexan scissors and cut away a large part of it. I will clean the rest off when I can utilize the dremel again. After repeating this process for the other half, I had one set ready to go. I placed the inner strip in to see how much needed to be cut off. Using my trusty mechanical pencil, I made a line even with the bottom of the shin. I then scored a line just above the mark I made, folded it over and snapped it off. This leaves a little room in case I have to do any trimming. ( If I could hold still long enough, maybe I could get some pics that are not so darn blurry) I used some sand paper and roughed up the inside of the shin and one side of the inner strip, for a better gluing surface. I then placed an ever bead of E-6000 in the shin, placed the strip on top and clamped it in place. I used some rare earth mags to hold down the middle of the strip. Rince and repeat a few times and I have two sets of shin halves drying. Now on to the thighs. Basically the exact same process used for the shins. Measure 10mm from the inside raised ridge, score, snap and there you have it. repeat for the other half and you have a seam ready to glue. All of my clamps and magnets are holding our shin halves together, so these will not be glued today. However this will give me something to do just about every night when I get home from work next week. Move clamps, mags, strips and glue to the next parts.

Thank you Greg! Much appreciated! Good Eye! This had me puzzled for a bit. I took one of the helmets, removed the decal and tried to move it around to decrease the white edge. Not much luck with that. If I move it in any direction, it would not fit properly. Then I thought, maybe they are the wrong ones. I looked at the decal sheets and the light came on. One of the sheets is the correct NE Replacement Decals-ESB. The other is not. The helmet I moved the decal on had the correct ones, which is why I couldn't get it to move any. The other helmet had the incorrect ones and just so happens to be the one I took the pics of, in the thread. I have rectified the situation, and the correct decals have been ordered. I appreciate you catching this before I got further along. So true. My oldest is 9, so I am still in the insomniac stages.

I noticed that I lost most of the pics from my last post, because I moved them into different files. I went back and reattached them, sorry. Now to update. This past week I worked on putting the helmets together. After removing the masking, I went over them with some mineral spirits and cleaned up any over spray that was on the outside. After letting them set a while I placed the front trap decals and the brow trim. I set the face plate in, centered up the eyes with the traps, got the brow trim at the desired height and clamped it in place. After pressing the side of the back plate in to the face plate, I used a 9/32 drill bit, drilled through the original holes in the back plate making new holes in the face plate. It was then just a matter of bolting them together. Here are both of the buckets done to this point. Just for the heck of it. I had to get a pic of the ANH bucket with them. Next up is the ears. It may be a week or so before I get a chance to work on them. The wife flew back home to Texas to visit her family, so I'm now too buy babysitting to focus on the ears. Maybe I can squeeze in some work on other armor parts. They have to sleep at some point.

Congrats! May 24th 1500

Looking good. Only way they could look any better is with armor on top.

I decided to start off with the buckets, since I had already built one I felt fairly confident this so around. This also will give me some time to continue researching and planning my attack on the rest of the build. When I built my ANH bucket, I first glued the cap to the back and lined the face up to that, before drilling the mounting holes. I read on a thread that some one had used the preset dimple holes for building their bucket and it lined up, so I thought I would give that a try. Here is the hard ware that comes with the helmet kit. 4-long flat head bolts (for attaching the ears, one above and below the ear bumps), 2-short flat head bolts(for the bottom of the ears), and 3-round head phillips bolts(for mounting the face and back together) After mounting the face and back together, I placed the cap on to find that it will not set evenly across the face. The only way to make it work would be to do a good bit of trimming to the cap to achieve the desired look. I decided to scrap this approach and stick to what worked the first time. I took it apart, aligned the cap on the back and mark a center line on the inside. I took the cap off and lightly sanded the inside of the cap and top of the back were they will meet for gluing. I placed the E-6000 on the seam, lined up my center mark, and using clamps magnets and tape set it all in place. As I had a bit of a wait for that to dry, I decided to move on to the shins. I pulled a set out and looked at them for a few minutes contemplating what my first move would be. I know I need the correct size cover strips for the outside and I wanted to put strips on the inside for support. At this point I don't have any strips to work with so I need to cut what I need. As I was just a little nervous to make the first cut on the shins, I figured this would be a good way to get my feet wet with cutting the ABS. I pulled out one of the spare ABS pieces that comes with the kit and measured. The pieces are roughly 90mm wide and 173/8" long. 6 pieces came with each kit. I decided to go ahead and cut out as many strips as I could for both suits. After a rough test fitting, I will have to add shims to the kidney section so I kept enough spare ABS pieces to do that and used the rest to make cover strips. Here is what I figure I need : Biceps; are 15mm both front and back, Forearms; 15mm both front and back, Thighs; 20mm both front and back, Shins; 20mm front and 25mm back. Now I will be putting inside strips as well, and figuring for two suits, I came up with 32- 15mm, 24- 20mm and 4- 25mm. ** Note the back of the shins will not have inside strips as they are not glued together** I originally cut eight 25mm strips, but as I was typing this up I realized I was not taking the fact that the back of the shins are not glued into account, so I have 4 extra strips. There was not enough to cut all of the 15mm strips, but I can get those from all of the excess I will trim off of the armor. After finishing the strips I moved on to the face. Time to cut out the teeth. I will be cutting out 8 teeth, 4 on each side. I start with a dremel with a sanding disk to take awat the majority of the material from inside. I run the drum across until the Abs is really thin of just barely absent. This is what I am left with after using the dremel. You can see the rough edges around the teeth. I need to smooth these out and remove a tad bit more around the edge of the teeth. The teeth are cleaned up using a set of small files. I do most of the filing from the inside of the face until I get to a point I am satisfied with. I then move to the outside of the face to clean up any areas that still look rough. Here is the finished product. Now I am ready to mask the face and cap/back assembly off and paint the inside of the bucket. I do this with a flat black two part paint and primer. I did not have any paint left over from the blaster and ANH bucket so we hard to make a trip in to town. While at the store we saw these Star Wars popcorn buckets and they somehow ended up in the cart. By now the glue should be set on the cap and back, so this morning, I started masking them off for paint.Once I had the outside of the face taped off, I placed a piece of tape over the eyes to prevent over spray on the front. Using my exacto blade I trimmed around the eye to remove excess tape. Now time for the play dough. I read on one of the build threads that someone had used silly putty to fill the teeth for painting. I thought that was a great idea. On my last helmet I just used tape, but that was a bit of a pain, and did not keep as much over spray off the outside of the teeth as I would have liked. I went all over town trying to find silly putty. I could not find that any where. Even the dollar store here don't carry it, so I picked up some Play dough. I filled in the outside of the teeth area. Pinched off the excess that squeezed through. And with one hand on the outside and one on the inside, I pressed on each hole to fill each hole full of the dough. I sanded the inside of the face, back and cap just a little, to give the paint a rough surface to adhere to. I gave them a quick wipe down with rubbing alcohol to remove any sanding dust and oils, and took them out to paint. After the first coat. Second and last coat. Now just wait for it to dry and I can take the masking off. Here is it is after painting. Very little to no over spray on outside of teeth. A couple little spots were I didn't get the tape down good enough. Nothing a little mineral spirits can't handle. Inside of face plate. inside of back/cap And the outside of back/cap. Again just a few little places especially around the traps. That is as far as I have gotten for the weekend. Later this week I will start putting it together, as time permits. I hope every one has had a great Easter weekend. Thanks for reading, any comments or concerns are welcomed.

I pay 2 to 3 times more for my work boots, and they don't look as good or feel as comfortable as the "less than perfect" Tk Boots. Well worth the money IMHO.

Hey Dave, I have purchased two pair from them. Both were the less than prefect ones. This is the first pair I bought for myself, almost a year ago. This is the pair I just bought a month ago for my wife. The only places on them that I would consider "less than perfect", you can see in the pics, up close to the top were the leather isn't completely smooth. As your shins ride there you aren't going to see most of that any way.

I had to take the day off work on Friday so I could be home when this happened. My very own, BIG BROWN BOX DAY! Yes, two boxes. One for me and one for the Mrs. I couldn't wait, had to look inside. All that nice shinny white armor packed up so nice and neat. Time to start unwrapping and see just how much shimming we will have to do. Lol After trying a couple pieces out, I don't think it will be as bad as I feared. There will be a little shimming, but mostly a lot of trimming on hers for her height. Well, now it's time to get these down stairs to our room, A.K.A. the basement, and get one laid out. And here it is. I will have a lot of work ahead of me, but I think I am ready. I am finishing up on my ANH stunt bucket, then I will start on the ESB buckets. Hopefully, sometime this next week I will get going on this, the true start to reaching my ultimate goal. My very own TK#

Thank You Tino, I do plan on getting to the weathering of the blaster and the bolt, I have just been busy with getting my spare bucket built before my armor arrived. It came in Friday! The inner bolt I cut off of the 3/4" PVC pipe I used for the inner barrel. I glued a piece of 1/2" wooden dowel in the end I screwed the charging handle to. The spring I picked up at the hardware store, Menards, and had to stretch it out to get the correct number of coils. As far as pics, I didn't get any, sorry. I didn't do very good at stopping at taking pics as I worked on it. I get wrapped up in what I'm doing and forget. Lol When I do the weathering I will get better pics.

Only one day left in our unusually warm late winter weekend, so it was time to finish painting, before we dropped back down to freezing. I started by wrapping the barrel with tape so I could paint the grip with gloss black. It took four coats to get all of the fish eyes out of it. I had the same issue with the small parts I did the night before. I gave all the parts a good cleaning before painting, but it didn't seem to help. However, I switched to a different brand of paint for the barrel and had no issues. I painted the scope with gold for a base. After finishing the grip and scope, the family and I loaded up and went to town. Had to get some different paint and that gave the grip and scope time to dry. A couple hours later and a trip to the masking tape, and it was time to paint the blaster body flat black. I put three coats on with no fish eye troubles. And here it is. Everything painted, dry and ready for assembly. I started by placing the inner barrel and lining it up for the screw in the bottom on the grip. I applied the screw, and the barrel is locked in place. Next, I inserted the bolt and screwed the charging handle into it. I placed a sticky backed furniture pad from lowes in the blaster cap. Then put the blaster cap in place. showing the movable d-ring. If you remember earlier the mistake I made with the rear sight, here is how it looks now. The ridges are not perfect, but they will have to do. Next up is attaching the scope to the mount. Then the scope and mount to the blaster. Using steel colored paint, I painted the scope screws and the parts around the trigger. Then took a little break to let it dry. Now it's time to attach the movable selector switch. I cut the pin I had in the switch down to size and inserted it into the previously drilled hole. I cut the pin down for the trigger, placed the spring and trigger in place and inserted the pin. A little bit of two part epoxy and some rubber bands and the trigger guard is in place. After letting that set for a few minutes it was time to mount the folding stock. And there it sets, waiting to cure. If you haven't noticed yet I get impatient. Waiting is a chore sometimes. I had a bad urge to pick it up and play with it right away. Here is the semi- finished product. There are still a few places I need to do some touch up painting. Over all I'm pretty happy with it. That catches you up to where I am at currently.... Oh ya I got a new holster in two days ago, that I ordered from Gazmosis. I think it makes the blaster look much better. This concludes everything I have done to date with this build. I will post any further updates as they happen. Thank you.

Ok, so up to this point, I got the mag housing glued to the blaster using epoxy, the d-ring on the end cap and my M-19 scope came in. While waiting for the scope I used some bondo around the grip and mag housing to fill gaps and sanded it all down. I also picked up some 1/8 by 3/4 aluminum flat from work to make the scope rail. Here is the great piece of work I got from Striker. It is the final piece to this puzzle. I started by finding the center of the feet and drilling a hole just slightly smaller than the M6 hex head bolts I would use for mounting it to the rail. I then used the bolts to cut the threads into the feet. This took a while. I didn't want to strip the threads out, so there was a lot of screwing them in and backing them out as I went. I used the measurements off of a bilhag diagram to find the first hole placement. Then I measured the hole centers on the scope for the second hole. Then I measures from both side edges of the rail to be sure I had the center of the rail marked and drilled a small hole as a guild. before drilling all the way through, I placed the scope next to them to see if they lined up. the front hole was a little off so I moved over a bit and drilled them out. Here is the result. After taking it up and showing it off to the wife and kids, it was time to disassemble and prep for paint. It was finally warm enough to paint so I headed out to the garage. I don't rally have any where to hang things to paint, without getting paint on things not meant to be painted, so I threw some old trim up between the garage door opener and the shelves. Worked just fine. The trigger guard got the old lay on newspaper routine. Here is all the small parts painted. They are flat black, the paint was not quite dry when I took the pic. All that's left is to paint the blaster body and scope, but I would have to wait till the next day as the temp started to drop.

Thanks Tino, as far s the reference pics. I have looked over a lot of them. I even purchased deactivated sterling parts kit, so I have the real thing in my hands. There really is no excuse for the mistakes. I simply failed to follow the most important rules. Take your time, and be patient. I was getting in a hurry and not paying attention to what I was doing, so I got bit. The M-19 scope I ordered from Striker. It is a cold cast hybrid. The M-38 scope came with the doopy kit.

Out freaking standing. He has definitely earned it.

At this point I was getting excited, nearing the end of the build and seeing the finished product. Since the previous post my replacement mag from Gazmosis showed up, and I had to (nervously) try my hand at thinning the walls of the mag housing for the mag to fit. I used the method Usaett2 used on his carbon fiber build. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/29140-carbon-fiber-e-11-build/ This method worked great. You can see the mag housing in the back ground of the first pic, and how thin the walls are. I started this part of the build with gluing the sights to the barrel using two part epoxy and this is were things started going wrong. If you don't notice right away I will show you shortly my first issue. After I got the sights set I glued the flash guards on. After allowing time for them to set I moved on to gluing the grip and stock latch in place. After the parts were set I started to debate on how I was going to do the mag housing. Glue it on first then blue the mag in, or glue the mag in then the whole thing to the barrel. Well, my mind was made up for me. My first major screw up was staring me in the face as I was looking the blaster over. Notice the rear sight. It is backwards. Now I glued it on with epoxy and it has line up pins in it, so pulling or cutting it off and turning it around is not an option. So what to do? After thinking it over for a while, I decided if I can't turn it around. Then I will have to make the back side into the front and the front into the back. So, I took the thinnest file I could find and started to file out the hash marks on the back. It took a few attempts and it didn't turn out as perfect as I wanted, but it will have to do. The next problem was the flip sight. I decided I would have to make a new one to glue in the back half of the sight. I was having trouble finding something that would work to carve it out of. I did not want to use the left over resin pieces I had in case I might need them later. The next day at work, I was looking at a welding wire reel made of plastic and it was just the right thickness, so I cut a piece of it off and brought it home to work with. I did not get a pic of curving it out or gluing it in but here is what it looks like now. It's not perfect, but it will work. I guess. I then decided I would mount the charging handle to the bolt. I decided to place a screw in the handle and the screw that into the bolt. You can see the end of the bolt in the top right of the pic. I placed a wooded dowel in the end of the bolt so the screw would have something to hold on to. Again, Murphy came a calling. I kept drilling deeper into the handle a little at a time, until I could time the threads so the handle would face the right direction and be snug to the bolt, and it happened. The handle broke in half as I was screwing the screw into it for what was to be the last time. I thought! To repair this, I put the screw it were I needed it, then using the epoxy, glued the top end of the handle back on to the screw and bottom half. After it the epoxy sat I filed down the excess till it was good as new, sort of. Again, no pic, but here it is currently. Now on to my next disaster. At this point I was in a rush to get finished and upstairs to play with the kids for a bit before bed, and get the night of screw ups over with. I should have stopped while I was ahead. I decided I would get the mag glued in so it could set and I could glue the assembly to the blaster after I got home the next day. The walls of the mag housing were extremely thin, as stated earlier. There was a couple places that were so thin if you sneezed on them they would break. I was trying to figure out a way to stiffen it back up, and finally decided I would use the E6000 to so it. So I filled the housing about a 1/4 full of E600, then gently pressed the mag in till it was set all the way in. The E6000 did not fill all the way to the top and I didn't want too much in at once so I figured I would let that sit over night and add more as needed after I had the assembly attached to the blaster. There, done. Time to head upstairs. I set it aside, got up, dusted my self off and it hit me. A moment of panic." I put the dang thing in backwards." (obviously I cleaned up the language) After the night I was having it would have looked more like !@#@#%$%$^%$^&^%&& and unreadable. I quickly pulled the mag out of the glue, turned it around and pressed it back in. Crisis averted. I was done. Walk away before I mess something up that is not fixable.