Astyanax

I have edited my initial post (#6) to provide links to download Dave's files. Bill

Ah yes, sorry about that, I didn't think about the international aspects. My cap is 30mm at its narrow point and 38mm at its widest point. It is 41mm long. Hope that helps! Bill

Thanks for the kind words. Yeah, there seem to be two standard sizes of mouthwash cap when I looked at the local grocery store: medium and really large. I went with the medium sized one. In my case it was a large bottle of ACT. Bill

Steve, one of the things I have learned in my reading on these forums is that you want to go a tad large, if for no other reason than to be able to adequately pad the insoles. Hours and hours of standing demand it. Go size 10 and pad as needed. Bill

Dave, check your PMs, I can host the file for you right here in this thread. I'm not going anywhere. EDIT: Here are the files for anyone to download: http://smithpad.com/pics/external/DLT.pdf http://smithpad.com/pics/external/DLT.ai Bill

5. Barrel Base Having completed the front of the barrel, I wanted next to finalize the base and attachment point to the blaster grip. This turned out to involve a lot fewer parts than I expected. (I have to point out here that I had to throw out my initial plan to have the barrel detachable. As some of the other guys figured out, the barrel is heavy and the attachment point to the blaster grip is relatively small, so I ended up gluing it on. The whole rifle will have to be one piece. But that's okay with me. ) So this connection part only required two parts: 1. 7-1/2" length of 1-1/2" ID PVC pipe. 2. 1-1/4" x 1" slip fit bushing. No threads anywhere. I used a coping saw to very carefully cut my length of 1-1/2" PVC pipe. Marking the cutting line all around really helps me stay vertical with the saw, and then I was able to use the 80-220-400 sanding method (see above) to even it out and smooth it out. Next, I needed to fit that bushing in one end, which it doesn't want to do. This require a lot of sanding of the inside of the pipe (the dremel really helped here) until I was able to pound the bushing into the pipe with a mallet. No glue was necessary. (I opted for an octagonal bushing here because I figured it would give me better attachment points later when I work on details.) After this, it was time to deal with the holes. After some experimentation and Photoshopping of the original plans, I came up with this sized template: (You can right-click-save this image and print at 100%.) I taped the template onto the pipe, about 1/16" back from one end. I lined up the paper's "split" (centerline of a forward hole) to one of the flat sides of the octagonal bushing, such that the paper's split would slice the flat in half. I used an awl to mark my drill points, then a 1/16" drill bit to make my pilot holes. I then enlarged the pilot holes with a 1/8" drill bit, and then used a 9/16" spade bit to cut my final holes. Cleanup with a dremel resulted in 5/8" diameter holes, which are a little too large. But since we're talking about the base of the barrel, I was okay with this. It won't be a big deal. I then tried using a layer of exposed silicone on the inside of the bushing to see how it would fit on the blaster grip. It did fit well, but any weight at all causes the silicone to squish and for the barrel to droop. So I glued it all on permanently using E6000. I aligned the forward holes and bushing flats to the left and right sides of the blaster. Flat sides out, not corners. I will later put details/greeblies on this attachment point. Next post, I will finish out the barrel as far as basic components and inner barrel. Bill

I am absolutely using your Plastruct idea for the t-tracks. Can you tell us what lengths you used? Also, the rib's strip looks narrower than the base strip's 13mm, maybe it's 9mm or so? Thank you! Bill

Looking really beautiful. Nice work!

Made significant changes to my Barrel Tip post (#4) above, because of the extra holes. Very happy with it now! Bill

That is truly a righteous helmet interior. Really clean. Four fans? Talk about stamina!

Wow, what a wonderful post! Definitely bookmarking this as my go-to as I get started. A quick question about gluing. You mention cleaning off the excess glue that squirts out from under the cover strips. Is there a technique to that, or should I just grab some of it and pull? I thought about using an x-acto knife with a light touch to loosen it first, but I wouldn't want to scrape up the plastic! Thanks, Bill

I messed up! Turns out the barrel end needs four holes (not two) in the front part, AND the orientation of those forward holes needs to be twisted! It may not look like a perfect match, but I'll go with 90-degree located holes and a 45-degree twist. I'm gonna have to redo this part and completely edit the above post to show it done correctly. Which gives me a little more time to get a better dremel tip and properly do those 20 indentations around the backside of the tip. Dremel tip #997 seems to be my best bet for that. Updates coming soon! Bill

I don't have armor yet, but I've read the stories of random parts falling off at inopportune times (usually the butt, causing the crowds to laugh). It's enough to give one nightmares. Double-snapping for me! Bill

No no no, read above (post #21). They're not saying some parts are .003" thick. They're saying some parts are .003" thinner than the rest. Which means a .09" thickness has been reduced to 0.087" for some parts, or a .07" thickness has been reduced to .067", etc. (I don't remember the baseline). By most user scales, this is not measurable. Unless the original post meant ".003 (thinner) plastic" instead of ".003 thinner plastic", which doesn't make a lot of sense. You can't build armor parts from film. You can only build movies. Let's hope this bears out as really accurate over time. Judging from previous posts, the .003 claim is suspect. Bill

Wonderful stuff! Joseph, can you comment on how we might go about making snap plates if we're first-timers (with regard to materials)? I see on the forums here that people often make them with leftover/surplus ABS or PVC, but I don't have any of those. Do we just use extra nylon and glue it to the plastic later? Or should we buy some extra ABS from somewhere in anticipation of this? Like Veronica, I would like to get ahead of things. EDIT: Answered my own question with this: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/tutorials/article/16-howto-nylon-snap-plates-w-tandy-line-24-snaps/ Looks like "plates" are a misnomer, and that you can use nylon as a base plate and glue them onto the armor. Thanks! Bill

Thanks guys for the advice. I'm convinced. Bill

Right, but silicone is significantly less repulsive in smell than the E6000 around here. Are the two any different? I can only guess that E6000 makes a stronger bond? I know that silicone is also removable, replaceable, but is it as strong? Thanks! Bill

Hi, I'm still researching in advance of receiving my armor, and in using E6000 on some other projects, I'm noticing it's very similar to plain old fashioned silicone. The difference is E6000 smells so strongly and unpleasantly for so many hours that the dirty looks from my wife will become unbearable when it comes time to build my armor. Also, E6000 seems more "stringy" than silicone. I'd rather just use silicone. After a bit of online searching, I'm not getting the answer to this question: Can I use silicone instead? Is E6000 simply that much better an adhesive that I have to jeopardize my marriage to build a suit of armor? Perhaps I need to rough-sand a little bit for silicone to work well enough? Please do shed some light on this if anyone has any insights. Thank you! Bill

4. Barrel Tip With a plan in hand and lots of reference photos available, I set out to first make the barrel tip, which I am defining as being all the front parts up to the barrel itself. There is no standard PVC pipe size that matches the MG34's barrel diameter perfectly. I opted for slightly too large instead of too small, and went with 1-1/4" (inside diameter) SCH40 PVC pipe for the main barrel. I acquired assorted PVC fittings based on that. The 1" pipe just looked far too small and flimsy for my taste. These are the parts and fittings I used for the barrel tip, as well as the order of assembly: 1. Mouthwash cap: These come in two sizes on the grocery store shelf; I went for the smaller one. 2. 1-1/4" bushing with a 3/4" threaded hole. This helps the mouthwash cap seat better on the part. 3. 1-1/4" coupler: Trimmed to 1-3/4" in length. 4. 1-1/4" piece of pipe, cut at about one inch in length. 5. 3/4" coupler: This helps the inner barrel stay centered. 6. 1-1/4" bushing with a 1" hole. Slip fit. 7. 1-1/4" coupler. NOTE: I want to point out here that on almost every PVC part, I also tried to clean up extra PVC "flash" (except on round parts) and sanded off the raised text where I could. It's as simple as rubbing a piece for a few seconds on 80 grit sandpaper on a hard surface (instead of running the sandpaper on the part), followed by 220, and then 400 grit. Finally I use the 400 grit to smooth out the corners. NOTE AGAIN: I also want to mention that during the build of PVC fittings, I tried to orient the fittings so that their edges lined up. Octagons set up straight, etc. First off, I used a spade bit to drill a 3/4" hole in the middle of the mouthwash cap (1). Then I used a Dremel grinding bit and then a sanding bit to remove all the little "fins" that are on the inside of the cap and smooth out the interior (you can see those fins in the above pic). Then I glued with E6000 the mouthwash cap to the top of the bushing with threads (2). The threaded bits helped provide more surface area for the cap to stick. The next thing that needed to be done was that the first coupler (3) needed to be trimmed to 1-3/4" in length. I did this by first drawing a line around it with a thin Sharpie: The trick here is to hold the pen still and rotate the part instead. I then used a coping saw and VERY SLOWLY cut the end off. According to the plan, the coupler also has 20 "divots" at its base. My plan was to cut those with my dremel, but I needed a pattern to position them first. I mocked this up quickly in Photoshop: I then placed the part on a printout and marked the divot points with a Sharpie: Then to cut the divots, I used a dremel pointed grinding tip #997: While I did try to measure out equally-spaced grinding points for the dremel, it didn't quite play out perfectly. The dremel bit wanted to travel when I set it down on the PVC, so I did my best to eyeball it and try to get it even. It's not perfect, but came out well enough. A little sandpaper cleanup and I was done. Also, notice the black line encircling the piece. This was to help me make sure my dremel cuts didn't go too deep or too far. In retrospect I wonder if a file or rasp would have been a better choice than dremel for precision, but that would have been a LOT more work. These still came out fine. Here's all three parts assembled. The bushing and coupler didn't need glue, as the "slip" fit was very tight. My next thinking was that the piece of pipe, 3/4" coupler, and slip bushing would all go on like this: That way, the small coupler holds the inner barrel centered, and it can even be glued in. But upon looking closer at the plan and reference photos, I realized this whole piece is going to need four six vent holes! So some small tweaking was in order. I sanded the piece of pipe (4) on one end to even it out, because this end will need to fit flush to the slip bushing. Then, using the same divot template above, I marked two four positions where there would be 1/2" holes drilled. I then carefully drilled four pilot holes and then used a 1/2" spade bit to put in the four larger holes. I was shooting for about a 1/16" distance from the edges of the holes to the back end of the pipe: This took careful measuring to get it right. Thankfully, PVC is so cheap that you can replace it if you make mistakes! I then took a mallet and tapped the piece of pipe into the coupling until 1/16" or so of the holes was covered by the edge. Also, I twisted the pipe 45 degrees, putting the holes off-axis. This matches several reference holes, including one in my correction post below. I also glued it with E6000 to ensure it was secure. Next up was to insert the 3/4" coupler (5). Again, this is for stabilizing the inner barrel. It needs to be glued. But it now blocks the two four holes I just drilled! So it was necessary to use the dremel to cut a "window" into the two four sides of the coupler right where the holes would be. In the pic above, on the left side is a test fitting of the coupler, and then I used a thin Sharpie to mark the hole and sketch where I want to cut. On the right is the coupler after being cut with my dremel cutting wheel and cleaned up with the grinding tip (it's okay for them to be messy cuts). Here you can see the coupler inserted into the assembled tip. These windows allow a view all the way through the holes to the inner barrel. This needed to be glued in with a fair portion of E6000. The final coupler (7) also needed to be shortened a bit. Once again I used the Sharpie to draw a line around it and the coping saw to cut it short to a length of about 2-1/8". I put some E6000 glue (very little) on the exposed end of the 3/4" coupler (5), and pushed it into the piece of pipe until it all held flush. It was necessary to twist things just a little to get it all to line up right: Finally, another two holes needed to be cut in the back coupler, so I again measured and drilled (don't forget that pilot hole!) 1/2" holes on either side. And this is the finished barrel end! I will be adding the front sight, "greeblies" and additional detail later. This is just a completed foundational piece. My next post will involve working on the opposite end of the barrel, the part that attaches to the BYOB. Bill

2. Inner Barrel I needed to determine how to find the right kind of inner barrel that would tightly fit on the inside of the orange tip of the BYOB grip. Reaching back into my aquarium days, I came up with this 1" rigid stand pipe. It's used for undergravel filters, and comes in 3'-4' lengths. Three feet is enough. My local tropical fish store didn't have one, so I had to order on Amazon. It did not quite fit into the orange tip (so close), so I sanded it down quite vigorously, first with 80 grit, then 220, then 400 grit sandpaper. Eventually it was a tight fit: I cut it to a length of about 24". Now I can build all the PVC around it. I will be sure to paint this with primer and satin black before permanently attaching it to the PVC. For ensuring that the PVC outer barrel "shroud" piece fits tightly on the outside of the BYOB's orange tip, I figure I can use cured silicone as a filler and "cushion". More about that later. EDIT: This didn't work out. I had to glue it all on with E6000. No biggie. One other thing I did was cut off a tiny white spring-loaded "button" at the base of the orange tip: This button serves no purpose and gets in the way of the PVC parts. An x-acto knife did the trick just fine. 3. Plans I then printed out the DLT-19 CAD drawing that's floating aound the internet, and found it to be very problematic in that it was not scaled correctly. I rescaled it in Photoshop, assuming that the full length should be 48-1/2"-ish long. I then broke the left side view into five 8"x10" printable sheets: These need to be printed at 100% scale, with no enlarging or resizing of any kind. I only did the side view this way , as I am using these plans strictly for getting my proportions right. After printing them, I taped them together so I could lay my parts down on it and try to match the profile as closely as possible. Here's a download link for the entire rescaled plan, just in case anyone finds it useful: THIS DOES NOT HELP FOR THE HOLE TEMPLATES if you are using standard SCH40 PVC pipe. I had to tweak those a bit further in Photoshop. I'll post those later once I've completed all three. I'm off and running. Bill

1. Audio The first thing I did after acquiring my Build-Your-Own-Blaster (BYOB) pieces was to hotwire it so that it only ever plays a rapid-fire DLT-19 sound effect. I figured out how to do that and posted the method here: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/32611-how-to-hotwire-the-hasbro-clone-build-your-own-blaster-to-play-the-dlt-19-sound-only-with-rapid-fire/ Bill

Hey gang: While I wait for my armor (and having completed one simple E-11 conversion), I thought it might be fun to take some inspiration from the other DLT-19 builds out there and see what I can come up with using PVC, balsa wood, and a few other odds and ends. I am not looking for extreme accuracy, but the DLT-19 does have some hallmarks in its silhouette that I want to try to achieve at least for basic approval, if not EIB (which I think is also doable). As a base, like the other poor man builds, I am using Hasbro's Clone Trooper "Build Your Own Blaster" (BYOB) rifle: If you're not familiar with it, this blaster comes in pieces, and you can attach the pieces in various configurations to make different kinds of blasters. There are 7-8 different firing sounds that go off when you pull the trigger, the selection of which depends on what parts you have attached to the main "core grip" piece. All I care about is this core grip and the butt stock. These blasters are out of production and quite expensive in the original packaging, but there are quite a few very affordable used ones on eBay, especially if you go for just the core grip and stock. Some of my guiding principles: - I would like to maintain the DLT-19 sound effect only - I would like not to have to do any woodworking with hard wood. Balsa is fine. - I would like it to easily disassemble into two pieces (this became impractical and unwieldy) - I would like to try to cut down on weight where possible (impractical; extra weight in the back was necessary due to the heavy PVC barrel) - I would like to match the proportions as close as possible, the details less so - It needs an inner barrel that you can see through the vent holes - I need to be able to transport it without getting arrested A word about film accuracy: I'm not a huge fan of trying to perfectly simulate the "in-film used prop" look of things; I prefer the "idealized" sci-fi universe accuracy approach. Meaning, I want my build to look like it belongs in the Star Wars universe, not on the set of a Star Wars movie. So things like serial number stamps and the precise screws and other stuff that are part of the original guns on which these blasters are based are not really suitable to "sci-fi universe accuracy" and won't be simulated perfectly. I don't want those ugly wires holding on the t-tracks; I want something that looks like a real Imperial Stormtrooper would use it, not the prop an actor would use. Enough of the rant. So before I begin, full credit to the following poor man builds (some still in progress), from which I am constantly finding all kinds of good ideas: Uber's Poorboy DLT-19 TK Ed's poor man's DLT-19 with action camera attach using Hasbro Build a Blaster Piper's poor man build Fuumantroop's Another poorboy dlt.....build a blaster content Allan1313's poor man's DLT-19 build Thanks guys for blazing the trail; this is wonderful work! Bill

Ah, hole-to-track proportion. That's what I should be thinking about, definitely. Thanks for the advice. Bill

Made my wife snort potato chips.

Matt: What size holes did you drill in the barrel shroud for vent holes? I know that most people use 1/2", but I was thinking about going with 9/16", because the 1-1/4" I.D. PVC is a little bit wider in diameter than the actual MG34, and I was thinking this might help it look a little more proportional. What do you think? Good idea, bad idea? Thanks! Bill