count chocula

Thanks, Ian! This build was supposed to be a pipe with some doopy parts stuck on, but after seeing some of the phenomenal builds on this forum I think I've fallen down the rabbit hole. This is becoming a very non-doopy build. Thanks to you and the others on FISD for the feedback and inspiration. I've managed to make a little progress in the last 2 weeks. Bolt I tried adding strips to the bolt with abs scraps. I cut them out and sanded them a bit before gluing them to the bolt with zapagap/zipkicker. I found out quickly that my bolt is just barely thinner than the receiver, because after adding only two strips, the bolt would no longer fit inside the tube. I had to sand the front strips down quite a bit, and wasn't able to add any rear strips . I suppose I could've sanded down the bolt resin a little more to make it thinner, but I decided to leave it the way it is for now. No one sees the rear of the bolt unless they disassemble the whole thing anyway... I also added a few serial numbers to the bolt. I drilled out a little of the resin, replaced it with epoxy clay, then tried stamping a few letters/numbers in. They looked a little rough (I think I need a lesson from T-jay on hand-stamping). I re-covered some of the uneven letters with more epoxy clay and left just a few. This looks a bit sub-par, I think, and I'll probably end up re-doing it. Here's the whole thing together: I'm going to wait until near the end to paint the bolt (and nearly everything else) anyway, just to be sure everything fits properly. End Cap I have a real sterling end-cap, but I don't have an end-cap receiver/adapter. I took a shot at fabricating an adapter from a metal cap I had lying around (from a pull up bar I've since upgraded) and cut it down to use as the end-cap adapter. I used these templates from usaeatt2 to get a feel for the adapter dimensions, although I think these templates were designed for a 40mm OD pvc pipe, and thus were not especially useful for the width dimensions of the cutouts. Instead, after cutting out a strip the length of the adapter and making a slit in it, I stuck the fabricated strip inside of the sterling end cap and marked where the little square guiding pieces sat, then made the cutouts with a dremel and stuck the adapter to the receiver with jb weld. Afterwards there was a lot of trial and error when trying to get the sterling endcap to fit on. I ended up sanding/filing several parts and filling in some areas with epoxy clay. Looks a little rough, but I'll clean it up before painting. The end cap now rests in the adapter fairly well and can be rotated/retracted as in a real sterling. End Cap Clip I wanted a functional clip, so I left the doopy clip in the box. I have this 3-d printed clip attachment from themaninthesuitcase. I used sskunky/zerorooms templates to make a well for the clip out of a piece of aluminum bar I had left over from making the thermal detonator. I cut out a 35x21mm slab from the aluminum bar, then made a few slits in it with a dremel (as suggested in the template above). This piece is very small, and executing perfectly straight lines within 2mm of each other is challenging. I basically marred up the piece enough in the ridges to make it easier to bend. The bending itself was fairly easy when using a few c-clamps, a few pieces of heavy aluminum bar, and a hammer. I set up a rig similar to that used for making the thermal detonator clips, and gently hammered the piece until it bent into a U-shape. One side of the clip snapped after bending when I was sanding the whole thing down. I reattached this part with epoxy clay... The clip base ended up being a few mm too long for the 3-d printed clip, so I trimmed it down, then drilled a 2mm hole for the pin. I also cut out a smaller piece of aluminum and bent it into a curve, then jb-welded it to the clip to act as a spring. Magazine I decided to try and put the battery (a 3.7v 18350 IMR in this case) inside of the magazine as in ducati's build. In retrospect, I probably should have put the battery in the counter (or maybe in the inner barrel), as space in the magazine is very limited, but I liked the idea of the magazine being the source of energy for the blaster. I have one of gazmosis' very nice magazines. I chopped the top off (sorry gazmosis) and drilled out the inside to fit an 18350 and the led for Tino's button mod. There are holes in the magazine cap because I initially tried to make the magazine insides accessible for maintenance later, but realized quickly (after the little corners kept breaking off) that I might be better off sealing the cap to the magazine. Although I initially thought the battery would fit without an issue, as it happens I had to sand the walls of the magazine paper thin to get the battery to fit. In fact the walls cracked in a few placed and I had to repair them with epoxy clay. I used a bicolor (red-blue) led for the button, and wired it up to some shield fingers (I cut little slots in the cap, slid the shield fingers halfway through the slots, then soldered wires to the underside of each finger). I also wired the positive and negative from the battery to another set of fingers. I'm hoping to make these meet up with another set of contacts in the magazine well, transferring power from the battery to the rest of the gun electronics, and sending power back to the led in the magazine from the selector switch to make it light up blue or red when stun/blast are selected. Oh yeah, and there's a few magnets in the middle of all those contacts to make the magazine connect to the well... I probably tried to cram too much stuff onto one surface here. Hopefully everything works out in the end [knocks on wood]. I had to put electrical tape over the contacts after everything was wired because the magnet kept pulling metal objects onto the cap and shorting out the connections lol. Also, putting the magnets on after soldering would've been a better idea, because trying to solder a wire to a tiny shield finger within a few mm of a rare earth magnet is tough lol. When the parts were all soldered I stuck some epoxy clay over the underside connections to try and keep everything together. I then crammed the wiring inside and jbweld-epoxyclay'ed the top on with clamps. Magazine Well I'm finally using one of the DD parts. The gazmosis magazine barely fit into the well after sanding the edges almost paper thin. I ended up hollowing the whole well out to get the magazine to seat all the way in. I also drilled some holes for a real sterling ejector and magazine catch assembly. Made quite a few cracks/mistakes here, which were then repaired with epoxy clay. The plan is to use a piece of abs scrap within the well to meet up with the magazine. The other side of the battery/led magazine contacts will sit here. I'll also end up burying a few other electronics within the top of the well. Counter This post is getting to be a little long lol. Lastly, I've been modifying the counter shell I got from tengel at shapeways. Would've loved to have a real counter, but the cash flow is insufficient. I'm not a huge fan of the way this counter looks. The numbers are deeply recessed and would be very hard to paint to look like the real thing. Instead, I made some very un-cannon modifications , which may be disturbing to some... but we're supposed to be having fun with this... right??? I chopped the counter in half, drilled out the numbers, and re-created the face of the counter (with epoxy clay and sandpaper/files) to fit the battery-level indicator seen below. (Above) The faceplate has been redone here. I should have taken pictures of the pre-mod face and the numbers inside, but I didn't. A side view of the original face can be seen in this picture. I also made a small port for a micro-usb charging chip. If all goes well (which is a big 'if') I will be able to charge the magazine battery with this port on the counter, and the counter "numbers" will tell me how close my battery is to death. To get power into these electronics I will have to run wires into the counter. Rather than drill a hidden hole in the back of the counter, I'm planning to use the "promo e11" wire mod here, but in this case the wires will be functional, running from the mag well, up through the power cylinders and into the counter to power the battery indicator and charger.

Pretty slick, kevin. Are you going to etch the "A R S" in above the selector switch?

That is a great idea. I like the idea for the red/blue "charges" inside of the receiver. I wonder if clear resin 9mm bullets can be cast with one of those bi-color (red/blue) leds inside the tip, wired to one of those tiny fade boards Brian mentioned (like this board from sparkfun) to look like glowing red/blue "bullets/charges" (as in Tino's recent bullet mod, but glowing red/blue). Maybe these can even be attached to the selector switch so that they glow blue or red depending on whether stun or blast are selected. I am loving the sniper rifle, btw.

I initially used the Tandy line 24 snaps for the visible snap parts (upper right corner of ab; butt piece), but realized I didn't like the look of the "Tandy" lettering being visible. I drilled those out, removed them, and replaced with them these snaps from amazon, which look better I think. I strapped a bunch more stuff together, and made a garter belt for the thighs. Now just working on getting everything fitted. Here is a test fit of everything except shins/boots/helmet/gloves and belt: Excuse the tan lines on my feet. I went fishing in flip flops and didn't wear sunscreen lol. There are still a few "fitting" issues: 1. The ab-kidney connection wants to overlap some, I will probably loosen those connections a little to try and get it to butt together properly. 2. The butt piece kind of wants to flare out a little. I've seen some people attaching the flaring sides of the butt piece to the thigh garter with velcro/snaps. I might try this. 3. Might need to drop the thighs a little more and/or trim the upper backs of the thighs so they don't pinch when I walk. 4. The left shoulder bell needs to come in a little more. Any comments/advice would be appreciated. I've kind of skipped over some steps without posting pictures here. Will try to make a more detailed update next time. I've begun to realize how tough it can be to get into this thing by yourself and why troopers need handlers...

The scope It's almost done. I forgot to mention last update that I tried to add some lettering to the rear rim of the scope (the shapeways scope doesn't have any lettering). I dremeled out a space, then used green stuff and some stamp letters (I have some 2mm and 3mm arial uppercase stamps I bought from romazone on etsy) to recreate the lettering. I tried twice and wasn't really happy with the way the letters looked. It was tough to get everything to line up properly and look professional. Mine kind of looked like a grade school craft project so I just scrapped the idea and sanded and green stuff'ed over it. Not sure if there is a good way to make this look really clean - the letters are so close together here any little mistake makes it look silly. Anyhow I chopped up the scope as seen in the last update. I painted the inside of the scope a satin black and then started gluing in the prisms/lenses with some epoxy. This stuff takes 5 - 10 min to set. It would've been nice to've had a quicker-setting glue (e.g. CA glue + zip kicker), but I've heard that CA glue can release a vapor that stains the lenses. I glued/green-stuff'ed the front lens in first. I wanted to add some crosshairs into the circuit, but after printing some cool-looking crosshairs onto decal paper and applying to the rear-most lens, I realized that the decal paper itself made everything a little blurry (don't have a picture of this). Maybe printing onto "overhead" transparent paper would've worked better. Instead I bought a cheap scope from amazon with a crosshair built-in. The crosshair inside of this scope was just a thin piece of mirrored paper with a crosshair cutout which was so thin I almost broke it trying to get it out. I bent the little crosshair lines back into place and glued this just behind the front-most lens. Here's a picture of what the two front-most prisms look like glued in. They do have to be in a semi-reclined position for this to work. When the vertical axis of the prisms is perpendicular to the horizon the image is cut in half. Then stuck the roof prism and rear lens in as shown in the last update and glued all the parts together, then sanded the next day. I found a cheap pair of prescription-less plastic lens glasses from a party store and sanded one of the lenses down to get the rear-"lens". Currently in the process of painting (hammered-copper underneath, then a coat of black over that). It was tough to get a good shot through the scope with my phone, but the image is upright, and the crosshairs line up well. Bolt I bought an ejector/ejector pin/plunger-spring and charging handle from numrich. I dremeled out a spot for the ejector, then used various drill bits to make the holes for the ejector pin (1/8") and plunger/spring (3/8"). Then put it inside of the receiver to mark the location of the charging handle before drilling a hole for it (3/8" bit). I realized only after trying to insert the rear spring assembly that the charging handle is supposed to go through the hole in the front-most part of the spring assembly (as seen in the orientation below). I had to core out much more of the back-end of the bolt with the dremel to get the whole thing to fit together properly. I also tried to make a sear-relief and flattened area on the back side as in the actual bolt. Front-side (there are a few areas I need to fix with green stuff): Back-side: The whole thing together: Aaron's photobucket was an invaluable reference for all of this bolt-work. Needs a little more work before adding the "strips" (which I plan to do with abs scraps) and painting.

Thanks, kevin! That would be awesome if aaron could cast a bolt/extractor. You can buy a real bolt with the extractor from numrich for around $80 + shipping, but tbh I'm kind of cheap/lazy and thought it might be fun to try and re-create one. I looked extensively and have found very few dimensions for the real bolt. I couldn't find any measurements on the FISD E-11 blaster reference. According to sskunky the bolt is 123.8mm long and 33m in diameter. Sskunky also notes that the bolt "strips" are 123mm long and 7mm wide (although I vaguely remember my trigonometry and I don't see how the strips can be ~123mm long when the bolt is only .8mm longer and the strips run at a diagonal to the bolt - I'm thinking the strips are a little longer than 123mm). It seemed like zeroroom was getting near to tackling a template of the bolt on this thread, but apparently he went awol. Instead I used v7sg's bolt pictures (luckily he included a ruler in most of them) to approximate the dimensions in photoshop. I just cut and copied a portion of his ruler and rotated it to measure everything, e.g.: Here's a figure illustrating the dimensions I've guess-timated using this method - I used these to sand down the epoxy-clay-casted bolt. I used a dremel cone cutting bit to do most of the work, then hand-sanded and used various needle files (e.g. on the center slot where the ejector fin sits): If anyone out there has a real sterling mk4/l2a3 bolt and would be kind enough to confirm these measurements it might help out anyone else who is crazy enough to try and fashion their own bolt.

I think I finally got the roof prism mod to work the way I wanted. I was having a lot of trouble with the image being blurry initially, but when the roof prism is placed directly behind the "porro" prisms (from T-jay's monocular), and the larger/rear lens is placed directly behind the roof prism, you get a clear, upright image. It's not magnified, in fact I think it's actually shrunk/de-magnified a little (as I guess it should be when looking through a telescope backwards). Fyi the two porro prisms have to be put face-to-face a la Thrawn's guard's mod - in a vertical orientation (I had some trouble for a while because I was trying to put the faces together horizontally). It seems to work best if the frontmost prism angle sits just above the smaller lens aperture (see below). I kind of chopped my scope to pieces trying to figure this out. Here's what the layout looks like. Now I just have to put it back together lol. Also I guess I will need to put a fake/plexiglass lens where the larger/rear lens used to be. I've also made some progress with the bolt. I sanded/dremeled some grooves into it to try and get the look of the bullet-loading side.

I don't have an M38, but I think you're right, Kev, that there are two prisms in there. You can see two prisms on Sith Lord's diassembly photo: And in this paper diagram it looks like both prisms are housed together near the smaller lens: Apparently there are quite a few different ways of using prisms (one or more together) to invert an image. The monocular that is part of T-jay's kit uses two Porro prisms to invert the image, but these have to be at right angles to one another to work, which make them impossible to fit into the scope. The two M38 scope prisms must work together to invert the image and channel it around the bend in the scope in a way similar to what I was suggesting above.

Thanks for the feedback, Jason. I took about 1cm off of both sides of the ab piece. I think you're right that its better to avoid messing up the kidney/butt lineup and notch.

Scope I'm been working on getting the lenses into the scope (or at least thinking about working on it). I'd like to get the scope to function like one. Thrawn's guard has a great build where he places the prisms from T-jay's completion kit monocle into the scope, diverting light around the bend in the scope, but this results in an inverted image, because of the inverting properties of the smaller, magnifying lens at the end. I think one solution to this would be to add an erecting prism to the mix. Novak Dimon posted some pictures of a partially-disassembled M38 scope, showing clearly the presence of an erecting prism just inside of the larger lens. I purchased a $10 pocket telescope off of ebay with a roof prism (a type of erecting prism) inside. The prism has a complex shape that rotates the view 180 degrees, which is why the telescope is able to project right-side-up images even when using the same magnifying lens as the monocle I got from T-jay. I'm thinking of putting the roof prism in just inside of the larger lens, then using Thrawn's guard's prism orientation just inside of the smaller lens, which I'm thinking will result in an upright, magnified image. The Bolt The doopy's kit bolt is too large in diameter for a 38.1 OD pipe. It's also about 5cm short, and just totally unlike a real bolt (although I'm sure it was not intended to be a replica). Doopy bolt: V7sg's real bolt photo: The Doopy bolt: V7sg's real bolt: I didn't want to pay $80 for a real bolt, so I'm trying to fashion one out of epoxy clay. I first crammed about a baseball-sized amount of epoxy clay into the remnant of the 38mm OD aluminum tube that I cut off at the beginning of the build. I forgot to mention that I also purchased a front return spring assembly from Apex. They must have been feeling generous because they included the rear spring and spring cup, too. Anyhow, to get the negative of the front return spring in the bolt, I wrapped the end of the front return spring in plastic-wrap and jammed it up into the epoxy mould. I tried spraying the inside of the tube with oil before putting the clay inside, but it turned out this didn't help with extraction. I ended up having to dremel the tube open after letting the stuff dry. I put more epoxy clay into all of those little filling defects, leaving me after 24hrs with this: I sanded that down until the whole thing just barely fit inside of the 38mm pipe: Still needs a lot of work, but the front return spring assembly fits inside the rear end fairly well, and when completely compressed the spring cup just meets up with the rear end of the bolt. I will probably cut off some of both front and rear ends of the model to get to the 123.8mm size of the actual bolt and try to make it look a little more square.

I trimmed down the shoulder bell return edges as suggested. I'm gluing some snaps in there to strap the shoulders to the biceps. I had to double check billhag's stapping diagrams (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) a few times to be sure I was connecting everything properly. Redoing the cover strips I've also started re-doing the cover strips to fix the gaps. I removed the old strips with an exacto knife and was able to re-use some of them after pulling off most of the glue with fingers/sandpaper. I tried to really cinch the strips down this time with tape/magnets, and I also used some ratcheting needle-nosed clamps as suggested by TK-32917 which were more effective at clamping down the hard-to-reach middle areas (video). The redone strips look better. Very little gap: I also started strapping the torso/ab/butt together with black elastic. Everything fits pretty well overall, but the kidney/ab want to overlap a little bit: Not sure if I should trim a little bit off of the kidney/ab pieces to make them matchup better (although I would have to re-do the kidney notch), or whether I should just leave them be and have a little extra space around the waist area. I will probably trim a tiny bit from the kidney piece and re-do the kidney notch (maybe using an iron to recreate the tiny return edges of the notch). Thermal Detonator I'm almost finished with the TD. I rebuilt the aluminum strips (I wasn't happy with the remade ruler strips, they were too thin). I bought some 1" x 1/16" aluminum bar from a nearby hardware store. The new ones (left) are seen next to the ruler mods (right) below: I used vern's tutorial for the strip-making/bending part. Here's a picture of my bending rig: The final? product (blue tape there bc the faceplate glue is still drying): I'm going to put some better screws in there. I just remembered I have some black pan-head screws left over from another project. I haven't glued the caps on yet. I had to sand the edges of the pvc down just to get them on. They're just stuck on by fit at the moment. I think the first bend may be a little too low/close to the TD and the last bend may be a little long (I will probably trim those down). Not sure if this will ride too high when I put it on the belt, although some of the screen-used TDs do seem do ride high: Vern's tutorial didn't specify where to make the first bend (although he does specify that the last bend should be 3.25" from the first bend). My first bend was about 2" from the second screw. It looks like verns was more like 2.5 - 3". Here's a picture of my clips next to vern's. The last bend on mine is clearly longer. Mine looks a little disturbing compared to his lol. I'll wait to see how it fits before deciding whether to redo it. My last bend was 3.25" from the first bend, as in the tutorial. Hopefully it will sit ok on the belt. If not I will just re-do it. I also went to an armor party this weekend. Much thanks to TK-32917 for teaching me how to trim the thigh backs by marking them with blue tape. I'm now gluing the inside strips.

Gotcha. Thanks.

Thanks for the input, Jason. RE: the shoulder bells. Which side/part should be trimmed? Or do you mean the return edges? Or maybe all of the above? Yeah, I'm getting some better clamps and will try to address the cover strip gaps this weekend. Thanks again for the help.

Looks great, kevin! Impressive that you are building your own parts out of aluminum. I also ordered some stuff from apex and numrich recently, but i was lazier than you and ordered the original front and rear sights and a folding stock. Are you planning to make a functional stock out of aluminum? Or just use the fixed DD resin piece? I was initially thinking it would be cool to make a functional stock out of aluminum, or convert the DD resin stock into a functional piece somehow, but after watching some videos detailing all of the parts involved in the stock I kind of cowered away in fear.

Thanks, Brian. I'm worried the rear foot may not be the only thing bad about this scope. It's a little thin and flimsy-feeling, too (see pictures below). I may try to reinforce it with some more epoxy and just go with it. Maybe I'll just spring for a real scope. I'll play around with this one first for practice, at least.

I haven't updated in almost 2 weeks but I've made some progress with the kit. I'm going to an armor party this weekend so I wanted to try and get everything ready for fitting, etc. if possible... I think it's a good time to get some input/insight from those out there with experience. I've made a few errors along the way so maybe I can help out some future builders, too. Inner/outer cover strips After sanding everything, I decided to start fixing parts together using inner cover strips first (hoping to make it easier to put the outer cover strips exactly where I wanted them). I made inner cover strips roughly the width of the outer cover strips for each piece (5/8" for the arms, 7/8" for the legs) out of some of the trimmed ABS scraps (reserving all of the extra ABS provided in the MTK kit for the outer strips) and used these to join the arms and legs together. Hard to see in this picture (above), but the inner strip is on the far inside edge. The left forearm is a little bit tough to close compared to the right (the plastic forms don't really want to sit together the way you'd like them to). The same goes for the shins. (see below, when the middle was lined up, the tops and bottoms flared a little). My solution was basically to brute force each into shape with tape/magnets/clamps. Wrapping tape around the circumference of each piece was helpful to prevent the pieces from pulling apart. Side note (red dye issue): You may have noticed that there was some red stuff on some of the joints shown above (e.g.front grieve joint). This came from one of the plastic clamps I bought from Amazon. I didn't use any tape to try and cover the orange/red part of the clamp itself, and I think that excess E6000 reacted with the clamp and basically dye'd that part of the plastic red. This particular area will be covered by an outer cover strip, but the same thing happened to the outside of several of my pieces, too, which was disturbing. It seems to happen mostly with the red-tipped plastic clamps and not the orange-tipped clamps, but that may be coincidence. I initially thought the dye was just within the glue residue. But I've tried scraping the glue off and the color actually seems to penetrate the plastic a little. The only way I was able to get rid of the spots so far was to sand down the plastic a bit (until the color was gone), then going over it with meguiar's cut and polish so that the sand spots go away. Maybe the higher level novus polishes (e.g. #2, #3) will take it off without sanding. Red (left) vs. orange (right) clamps (I've now taped over the red clamp ends to try and prevent this): After letting the inner strips set up for 24hrs (I'm using E6000), I noticed that (1) one of the forearm pieces had not lined up properly, and (2) the left bicep was a bit larger than the right, and seemed to flare out more at the top I (unfortunately I don't have pictures of this but my wife will corroborate). I ended up re-do'ing the misaligned forearm and bicep strips, un-doing the E6000 connection on each, cleaning up the glue, and re-attaching with more E6000. I later cut the outer cover strips from the official/quality ABS scrap provided by Mike with the MTK kit (5/8" for the arms, 7/8" for the legs). I made a small corner cut on each strip (trying to copy ukwrath and affixed those to each piece. Placing the outer strips in the exact center of the joint seemed relatively easy now that the closure tension on the forearms, e.g. was absorbed by the inner strips. Here are some of the final covered edges of the legs: Does anyone think the tops of the front grieve cover strips look a little off? I kind of want them to be more in center at the top recess/flat-part (they seem to favor the outsides at the moment, but when I was putting them together this position seemed best. Not sure if I should move them. Other issues are: (1) there are gaps on the sides of some of the strips, particularly in the middle of the strips (the magnets I was using were kind of weak; recommend getting the real neomydium/rare-earth kind to others) and (2) I may have been too generous with the E6000 as there is some glue flash on the outside of some of the joints. See below Gap (above) Glue flash (above) I'm planning to rehab the gapped edges with CAglue, using some better clamps. I'm hoping I'll be able to remove some of the glue flash with these felt polishing wheels I've ordered. I also added hook to the biceps to hold the elastic from the shoulder bells using this tutorial form SIMpixels. They came out ok i think. Ab plate I painted the buttons on the ab plate (according to billhag's template) with humbrol paints. I may need to do another coat. I had some trouble with the blue button on the bottom of the main plate and had to redo it a few times by washing the excess off with paint thinner - hard to tell in this picture, though. I've heard that the ab plates are supposed to look like an extension of the ab piece itself. Not sure if I've accomplished that here or if I need to sand the edges more... Chest/back I trimmed and sanded chest and back pieces, then attached the shoulder straps to the chest piece. I lined them up by eye, sanded both spots on the outer chest piece and then E6000'ed the fronts of the straps onto the chest piece, trying to leave about 5-6 "bumps" of shoulder strap on the chest piece itself. Again with the red stuff. I'll have to figure out something to do about that. Probably just sand a little and then novus polish. Strapping/snapping I started making some snaps to connect everything together. I bought a bunch on Tandy Line 24 snaps and a set of snap pliers. I cut out some squares from the polypro webbing I had purchased, put a hole in the middle of each with a soldering iron, and tried putting male and female parts on two different squares, but they wouldn't snap together. This was because the post on these Tandy snaps is relatively long, and the extra post material was grouping up within the business part of the snap, preventing the male and female parts from getting together. I needed to make a double-decker webbing strip for each side to make them work. Single-"deck" webbing Double-decker webbing Double-decker webbing Also, the pliers come with two receiver attachments, one (on the left) works better for the female base parts, whereas the right piece works better with the male base parts. If you use the male receiver on female bases, it will make a dimple in the base of the snap. You have to squeeze the pretty hard to get the post to round out properly, and even then, sometimes I had to push the male and female parts together a few times before they became used to one another and sat well. Anyway I added some snaps to the chest, back and shoulder pieces. Still have to put some on the other parts. I finished my first tube of E6000 on the snap pieces. Thermal detonator The CRL says that the TD is supposed to be 7.5" long. My starting PVC was a little shorter than that, but I'm hoping the length of the end caps will make up for it. I started by taping off an area for the faceplate, then primed the TD with this rustoleum primer. It turned out to be way too dark. I then added a few coats of this krylon primer (which turned out a little lighter), sanded and added a few coats of clear coat. It looks better, but still a little darker than the ab buttons. Maybe I should sand and repaint with a lighter gray. Maybe just use the Humbrol grey from the ab buttons.... or maybe just leave it I used two aluminum rulers from Amazon to make the TD straps/holder. In retrospect, these were a poor choice, as the rulers were wide than 1" (I had to dremel the width down) and the lettering/print was recessed into the aluminum and I had to sand off quite a bit of the metal to get the ink off and make it look smooth. I started by removing the cork backing and marking out 1" x 8.5" as per vern's tutorial. After cutting along the lines with the dremel grind/cutoff wheel, I sanded the edges and face until smooth. The face took a while because of the recessed lettering. I think the end result looks ok though. I left the print on the very bottom portion, because that's going to be up against the TD anyway.,

Interesting thought. TBH I can't tell much of a difference. Here's a picture I found of a variety of M38 scopes and an M40. Hard to tell much of a difference to me, but then again I've never owned any of these scopes. Anyhow I decided to try and alter the shapeways scope. I marked out about 1/8" rearward from the rear foot: Cut it out with a dremel diamond cutting wheel: Rotated the piece 180 degrees: Then used this apoxie sculpt "white" stuff to seat it in that orientation. I do have some green stuff from T-jay too, but I wanted to see how well this stuff works and not waste the green stuff just yet. Smoothed out the epoxy with some water. I think the rear foot is now about as close to the rear lens as it is in the real m38 picture. Will sand it tomorrow and see how it looks. Happy Sunday to all

Got it. Thanks. I didn't see that before. I measured the shapeways scope. It's about 5 3/8" long. The rear foot sits between ~7/8" and ~1 3/8". I measured the real scope from the photo. Assuming it is also 5 3/8" long (which may be a big assumption), the rear foot sits between 11/16" and 1 1/8". Thus I will need to move the shapeways scope back a bit. Maybe a dremel and a little green stuff will do it. I'll update later. Thanks for the help.

Vern and others: I got my shapeways scope (link) in the mail and am having trouble figuring out exactly what is wrong with the rear foot. I took some pictures of the scope and compared them to some pictures of real scopes I have seen and don't really see much of a difference. Does it have to do with the little indentation/scoop at the top of the rear foot? The shapeways scope rear foot: Real m38 scope: I've searched pretty extensively but haven't found any references for the actual dimensions of the m38 scope feet/shape. I'm happy to alter the scope and/or get a different one if this one is glaringly inaccurate...

Thanks for pointing that out, Vern. I was already a bit suspicious that some or all of the shapeways-printed parts I've been purchasing may be a little off. I actually haven't received the printed scope yet. Maybe this is something that can be remedied with a bit of sanding/modeling...? Will have to take a closer look at M38 scope specs and see how off the shapeways scope is.

Nice. Thanks for the advice, kevin. I'll take a look at aaron's kit. Having someone else making a similar build at the same time will be great for bouncing around ideas.

Thanks Ian and Tino! It's means a lot to get feedback from people whose threads you've been reading for so long. You guys are like celebrities to me haha. Ian, I checked out your sniper build and it makes me feel bad for complaining about dremeling out a mere 75 holes on aluminum. That sniper rifle looks awesome. And Tino, the craftsmanship of your phoenix props build is inspiring. Hopefully with the guidance of people like you I can whittle out something halfway decent.

Hey everyone! I've been working on an ANH stunt MTK kit and decided it was time to get started on a blaster. Although I think the HFX products look stellar, I really wanted something with light and sound. Also, I kind of enjoy putting things together myself. I looked to doopydoos first, and they were out of the full resin kit. I purchased a pipe kit from them 2-3 weeks ago and am anxiously waiting. I decided to get working on the pipe in the meantime. I purchased a 38.1mm OD aluminum pipe from ebay as this is reported to be the accurate OD of the original sterling (link). I also picked up a completion kit from T-jay (thanks T-jay!), a better magazine from gazmosis (thanks gazmosis!), a Disney e-11 blaster toy (link, which I intend to use as a donor for lights/sounds), and 3-d printed parts from shapeways (Hengstler counter, M38 scope, scope lens retainers, power cylinders). One big caveat to all of this is that I don't have a drill press or any heavy-duty machinery tools. Thus I intended to do all of the pipe-work with a dremel. I am fairly handy with a dremel, but it turned out this was much more of a PITA than I had anticipated. In retrospect I may have been better off going with a PVC pipe. That being said the pipe-work is now done and I have several words of advice to hopefully minimize the pain and suffering of others going this route: 1. Wear shoes (not sure why I tried to do this barefoot at first, but I ended up tweezering a few metal filings out of my feet) and an apron or clothes than you dont mind covering in metal shards. 2. Wear earplugs (it is loud) and safety goggles (pablo's epic e11 build apparently involved a trip to the ER for a piece of metal in his eye). 3. I found it useful to wear a latex/nitrile glove on the dominant hand (to keep the metal filings off and dissipate heat from the dremel) and a butcher's glove on the left hand (I kind of dremeled into my left thumb a few times before I started wearing the glove, and after I started wearing it the thumb part of the glove saved me several times). 4. Use the appropriate dremel bits. This is probably the most important, as I went through a number of bits and probably wasted a fair amount of time and money before I found something that worked: For cutting straight lines: I tried the diamond-coated cutting wheels. While these work well for initial scoring, they aren't powerful enough to really get through the aluminum without generating a fair amount of heat and bit-wear. I ended up using an ezlock 1.5in metal cutoff/grinding bit for most of the straight-line cutting. This bit is a beast and ground through the aluminum without an issue. Highly recommended. Also works well for grinding the edges smooth after the fact (hold the flat edge of the wheel against the line you want to smooth). For grinding out the vent holes: I tried several diamond-tipped grinding bits for this (I have quite a few laying around from past projects). These were pretty much worthless and were whittled down to baby-smooth metal in a matter of seconds. Don't waste your time. I also tried several aluminum oxide grinding bits. These basically exploded on impact (although they did prove useful for final cleaning-up/sanding of the edges). What really worked were the cutting bits, like this, this, and this, all of which can be found at home depot. I started by cutting the 2-foot pipe down to 18 inches. I measured it out, scored the line with the diamond wheel, and then went to work with a hack saw. Templates: There are quite a few out there. I ended up using these templates from zeroroom (see post #99) in 38mm letter format. Printed them out, cut them to size and stuck them to the barrel with sticky spray glue. I started with the ejection port and bolt areas, scoring the straight lines of each with a diamond wheel and then cutting all the way through them with the heavy-duty grinding-cutoff wheel. Here's what they looked like after initial scoring: I then finished off the curved edges with a rounded/ball cutting bit and turned to the vent holes. I started by cutting a small divot in each of the holes with the ball cutting bit, then ground down further to make a small perforation in the aluminum in each hole big enough to get the cone bit or other cutting bit in. I then slowly ground the edges of each hole to just smaller than the template line (Took 3-4 hours and I went through 4 or 5 cutting bits). This was what I ended up with: I then cut lines in the template marking the grip, magazine and sights before soaking the whole thing in a warm, soapy-water bath for half an hour and sandpapering off the template: Some of the edges were a little rough. I finished them off with various grinding/sanding wheels/bits to get this: Not perfect, but I'm fairly happy with it. There are a few stray dremel grind marks on the surface which I'm thinking will disappear with priming/painting. I tried using a certain dremel bit with an outer diameter of around 1cm to make all of vent holes even, but the aluminum seemed to be grinding the bit moreso than the bit grinding aluminum. Still, the grinding bit did help to clean up the flash/edges and I think the holes look relatively even. Hoping doopy claus visits me soon with a pipe kit...

I tackled the main armor belt and knee ammo belt using billhag's template for guidance. Here's a link to the billhag photobucket. I trimmed the main armor belt to 3ish mm on each side of the blocks and about 38mm/1.5 in from the end. RE: the corners of the main ammo belt Some seem to trim the corners of the main belt fairly liberally But I think I've seen one or two people get dinged at the centurion/EIB level for trimming their ammo belt corners too much (although I can't find the threads now). Anyhow, I tried to make sure the trimmed ends of the armor belt lined up well with the canvas belt. I measured my canvas belt from trooperbay to be about 7.5cm in width. I had trimmed the main ammo belt to about 9.5cm: So I made the 45 degree cuts at the edge by marking about 1cm from each corner: Then scored (using half of a paint mixing stick as an edge), snapped and sanded lightly: The edges of the corners line up pretty well with the canvas belt. On the knee belt, I trimmed the long edges to 3ish mm as per the BillHag template, then followed the advice of Mike from trooper bay and used the TD pvc pipe as a template to round out the bottom corners:

Thanks, Joe. That's helpful. I see from ukwrath's build a very tiny 45 degree cut angle on that shin cover strip, which looks nice. I think I was trying to round mine off too much, which made them look a little less refined to me. I also found this interesting thread from Clamps after posting this question. It seems like the overall idea is to look at reference photos and other builds and come up with your own interpretation while maintaining consistency throughout. It also seems to depend somewhat on the angle of the edge of the part you are cover stripping, too, though, since some people curve the edges of the cover strips on the tops of the thighs a bit, for instance, to match the curve of the armor edge.