rl180

PISTOL GRIP - Continued The new black styrene sheet outlines for the pistol grip are glued in place. The original finger grips which were previously sanded down still stuck out too far and were completely sanded off. The back side of the handle, it will be a bit thicker than the old handle. Bit nervous on how this is going to turn out. The handle gaps have been filled in with a layer of Apoxie Sculpt - two part epoxy. I choose Apoxie Sculpt over Bondo for this as Apoxie Sculpt is easy to smooth with your fingers and a light squirt from a water bottle works wonders. It will take overnight to cure but will require less sanding than Bondo will.

I know they are wood... I was wondering if you made a cutting die to get that shape... They look too perfect for a table saw / router. As to seeing the real thing, that was part of the debate. I read the threads years after it happened, but from what I recall Gino claimed he handled the real props. And thus his claims that his T tracks are most accurate. Larger part of the debate was around lack of evidence to such claims. I assume you've seen these already, but for other reading... comparison photos: http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/gallery/image/3273-ccd66b35-87a7-47b2-baf3-9475b27b71a7-zpsglcfsgxq/ http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/29118-alternate-t-track-supplier/

Looks really good. Great job. Did you make a custom cutting die -- like used for custom molding work? I seem to recall old flame threads (Marc, Roy, Gino) about which shapes, dimensions, etc of t-tracks were accurate and pretty sure they stated it was not rubber. It was a hard plastic track if I recall used in storm-doors/windows in England. I tried to find the thread... but couldn't find anything useful. Just arguments.

I might take you up on that! Bipod look really nice, except for the big wingnut.

PISTOL GRIP - Continued The back side of the pistol grip has been chopped off to match the template I came up with. I eye-balled it with my chop saw and sanded it down some more with a dremel. I packed this large hole in the handle with a few applications of Bondo, after an hour or so it was ready to sanding. After a little bit of sanding I was pretty happy with the resulting profile of the grip. After drilling in two 1/4 inch holes about 5 inches deep, 1/4 inch lead coil wire was inserted to add to center mass to the gun. This is to help offset the weight of the long front gun barrel. I also added some inside the receiver and the rear receiver attachment. About 1 pound of weight was added in total. Placed some 3M painters tape on Black Styrene Sheet 0.040 inch (1 mm) thick and then outlined the the template for the pistol grip. Then used the Dremel sanding bit to get the shape I needed. Rough fit of the cut out black styrene sheet. I put some pencil lines where I think the pistol grip marks will be placed.

Thank you Andy! I appreciate the encouragement.

PISTOL GRIP NOTE: Some of these pictures I took a while ago, just haven't posted anything about the pistol grip yet. Since the gun is not based on the MG-34 style, the pistol grip needs a lot work to get it closer to what it should look like. Again, screen accurate is not a consideration here but it needs to be much closer. The first step was to sand off bumps on the forward side of the grip which created finger grips. The next issues I need to deal with is the size of the finger guard, it is much too thick as can be seen below. The finger guard on the MG-34 is around 1/2 inch. I marked off where the lines should have extended upward and cut off the extra plastic that was not needed. This area has since been packed with epoxy to make it solid. I used the standard MG-34 pistol grip template and made something out of wood just to get a visual idea how far off the angles and dimensions are from the standard MG-34 and as you can see my grip angle is off and much wider. It's going to need some serious work... I chopped off the bottom a little to give it an upward angle. The gap was filled with Apoxie Sculpt - two part epoxy and rounded over a little. Still doesn't look right. So I could alter the standard MG-34 pistol grip template to fit my grip while keeping all the main features of the traditional grip. I didn't think it would be too much work, but I tried over and over. Everything just looked too ugly. Another option is that I could alter the handle to better match the template. What I eventually decided on was a little of bit of both. I have to modify the existing template and the handle and meet somewhere in the middle. This is what I came up with.. I think it is a pretty good compromise.

REAR RECEIVER The original gun body I started with has a detachable butt-stock which I plan on reusing. Unfortunately the attachment point is in the wrong spot, but I'm going to make it work. The diameter of the existing butt-stock is a bit small, so the first job is to add some 1.5 inch PVC pipe. To the left you can see the existing release switch to detach the butt-stock, also in the wrong location. I don't plan on moving it, but I will modify it to blend in better and be smooth with the side of the receiver. The left side will get squared off to match the receiver and transition to the round 1.5 inch PVC. To the right is where the butt-stock will attach. This show how much wider I needed to make the rear of the receiver. I stuffed in some PVC foam board strips to help reinforce it. Later on I'll stuff it with some more bondo or something. I might add some lead weight in this area later on as well to balance the DLT-19 if it happens to be front heavy. The two parts joined together. Again it will be squared off to match to rest of the receiver and the necessary details on the bottom will be added.

Agreed, the hand-cut knurling is really nice. If you have some time, can you post some stuff on how you do it as well? Picture of the tools, etc. Your pictures of the finished work is awesome... pictures of how you got there would be great too.

wow.. stunning work. you make me want to toss my DLT in the trash LOL

UPPER RECEIVER - Continued Again, working the back side of the upper receiver I used the same technique. Cut & glue strips and pack with bondo. Also added a patch of PVC foam board on the back of the receiver as filler. The side of the gun will eventually be flat (mostly). Now I have flat top that I can start building the parts for the top feed cover. Updated side profile showing the now flat surface. All of this will eventually get a covering of black styrene sheet for a hopefully nice smooth covering.

UPPER RECEIVER The next big glaring problem with my gun body is the rounded top. This needs to be squared off. While I'm a big fan of the Apoxie Sculpt (cures really hard, can be drilled nicely, etc) I don't like the cure time. It really needs to cure over night which does slow you down when you only have a few hours of free time to work on your project. I've never used Bondo before, but following other threads everyone speaks very highly of it and it cures enough to be sandable in 15 minutes. I wanted to try Bondo without getting a 2 lb (861 g) can of it. But this is the smallest container I could find locally. In watching other "maker" videos on youtube, I noticed they had small tubes of bondo (looked like toothpaste). So I ordered a tube of what I thought was the right thing and it turned out to be just orange hardening cream which really does not do anything on its own without being mixed with the putty. If you noticed some orange blobs on my previous work, that was my screw up with the cream. It didn't dry for a few days and made a mess. So now I have plenty of extra hardening cream. I cut some PVC foam board strips and used crazy glue gel to tack in place. Then back filled the gap with Bondo to make is solid. I used the white hardening cream that came with it for now. I take just a teaspoon of Bondo putty with a plastic spoon, onto a paper plate. Then add in maybe 1/2 inch strip of hardening cream and mix it up with the spoon for about 45 seconds. Then I use leftover PVC foam board strips to pick some up and pack into the spots I need. There is about 5 minute working time before the bondo on the plate is not usable. Small batches. Also, unlike Apoxie Sculpt which has no offensive smell while working it, Bondo has a pretty strong chemical smell to it. I use a respirator when working with it to filter the smell and then fans to circulate my workshop air to clear it out some. Then cut some more PVC foam board strips to make the base of the top platform. Added a cap. Part of this surface will be visible from the outside. The inner side of the surface is cut at an angle to snug the inner barrel (which won't be visible unless you look for it). As a reminder my plan is to have the inner gun barrel go from the tip of the nozzle to the base of the butt stock to be support holding everything in place and also be removable for transport and disassembly.

Created a little box area to the right of the ejection port door and added a flat slotted screw. In checking the reference photos there seemed to be a pretty wide range of screw used. Also a part was added to the left of the ejection door, no idea what it is called. I made that from MDF board. A matching box and a slightly smaller screw (less room to work with) was added to the other side.

Thanks! This is where progress starts to crawl, thinking about how to layer all these needed corrections. I noticed many "poor boy" builds skip this stuff. I'm going to try to add what I can.

LOWER RECEIVER To start the underside of the Lower Receiver and the door for the ejection port I started by studying the standard reference pictures as well as the excellent work "Tig70" is doing with his Castable DLT build (http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/38288-castable-dlt/). These were very helpful such as these two pictures: I started with 1.25 inch Schedule 40 PVC pipe cut about 1/3 and then sanded down until it visually seemed to match reference pictures. After closer study of the reference pictures I noticed the location I was going to place the ejection port door was too low on the body of the gun. It needed to go upwards a little. I outlined what I think needed to be removed. Unfortunately it was much of the epoxy I added to reenforce the middle section had to be cut out. So I had to stuff that section to make it strong again. To fill that gap I inserted foam PVC board in several areas. Then I squirted in Gorilla Glue which is an expanding foam glue. Any remaining opening were then packed with Apoxie Sculpt epoxy. You can also see where the door hinge is going to be installed. The door hinge is made from a cheap pen I had in my desk that cut into 2 equal parts. The center "spring" is just a screw thread. The PVC pipe for the hindge was cut with a Dremel cutting tool and then used a grinding stone to make the cut wider and wider. The ejection port door made from PVC board was then glued in place. Once painted that should look like a single piece.

Thanks, I left a message on his thread for a PM. No pictures on that thread, but everyone seems to like the product.

I came across this model of T tracks used for Vader's light saber. The profile looks about right. I figure I just need to make them longer as needed. I haven't checked any measurement to see if they line up to DLT-19 or done the cost calculation with shapeway.com to print them for me. Figure I'd save this issue for later to see if something better comes up.

I briefly looked at it and everyone who sells these claim to be movie accurate, yet show different profile shapes and they are pricey. Worst cast I might 3D print them over making something out of PVC board or styrene as I think they need to be strong. They pretty much become hand grips on the barrel. I haven't seen a good DIY solution yet -- I'm skeptical about using plastic rakes, wiper blades, etc. Open to suggestions.

BARREL JACKET - Completed The Barrel Jacket is now complete. While it looks bigger than the schematic drawing that is only because it is elevated off the paper. On the drawing it is 25 1/4 inches (~64.2 cm) from the nozzle tip to the back of the last ring. And that is exactly the measurement of what I constructed. Looking down the long barrel. Looking through the barrel jacket, open shot all the way down. A yet to be build 3/4 inch PVC inner barrel will slide down to recoil booster. Side view of the barrel jacket. This is one of them moments when enough parts start to come together where you feel like this might actually be something decent. And when nobody is looking, point.. aim.. make a few Pew-Pew-Pew noises.

It will start slowing down, converting my gun body to something that looks like the MG 34 is going to be tricky and building the butt-stock. I haven't settled on wood, foam or epoxy or some combination. I'm spending a lot of time holding it and looking at it.... waiting for the light-bulb to go on. I'm studying how my fellow troopers addressed this before me.

Got ya. If I had to build another DLT I would make the barrel one piece. I don't see an advantage of making it from 2 parts if you just have to glue them together and worry about making sure the holes line up. Worry about this being a weak point so you end up adding extra weight with parts to reinforce the connection, etc. Something to think about.

Looks really good. You have detailed lines I haven't seen/noticed before. Looking at your part you can tell its really 2 parts hinged together which is really cool. The two parts are actually external to barrel but looks like you incorporated or modified to be insert into your external barrel jacket instead of clamping around the barrel or sliding over it? I'm curious why you went that way. Just in case you haven't seen this picture before: Looking forward to your next set of pictures!

BARREL JACKET - Continued Attachment screws added.. I know one is slightly off center. Drill bit wandered a bit, adds a little character. The epoxy still needs some more light sanding and the PVC foam needs a slight sanding as well to dull down the crisp edges. Touched up with multiple layers of hammered silver and black dry bush for that used metallic look but still mainly black as required to be a DLT-19. Being that the rings protrude outward a bit they should be a little bit more banged up than everything else.

BARREL JACKET - Continued The end of the barrel jacket which connects to the receiver needed extra detail as it is open to view. What stands out to me are the rings are asymmetrical (one wider than other) and there is a noticeable internal channel which I assume is used to connect to a large tri-pod like device for anti-aircraft use. Lastly they need to be flat on top where the rear-sight will fold down and rest. The base of this fitting was originally a 1.5 inch male adapter. The "nut" part of this was sanded off using my belt sander to have a smooth round surface. This is the start of the construction building up layers of PVC foam board of different widths to create the channel asymmetrical sizes. I was inspired how to construct these rings using "Tig70" images in his Castable DLT build. His casts are so crisp and clean they are like reference pictures. There is a slight decrease in the ring thickness on the bottom. I thought about using my Dremel sanding bit to manually create that but I figured it wasn't worth it. More likely something bad would happen, wouldn't be smooth not even, etc. Decided to skip that detail. Here the first smaller ring is mostly completed. The outside and inner faces were smooth out with Apoxie Sculpt two part epoxy. Multiple light thin layers were needed. While waiting for the epoxy to cure, I started building the second wider ring. You can see the internal channel pretty well. Picture from above showing the flat area where the rear-sight will rest and I tried to get a good shot of the internal channels. The blobs of epoxy will be sanded down later.

3D PRINTED PARTS - FRONT SIGHT Completed To mount the front sight I looked for nylon screws at my local home improvement center and they no longer stocked nylon screws. So I figured I could still make something out of a metal screw. Using a threaded pipe tap for 6/32 screw I added a thread to the Front Locking Lever. This shows the front locking lever and front sight after being tapped and a threaded screw inserted. Now obviously screw heads that large are not accurate and need to be sanded down. Using my belt sander I was able to trim the screw heads down to being equal to the diameter of the screw shaft. A small slotted screw driver can still be used to drive the screw. The mounting plate for these 2 parts needed to have the hole sizes increased enough that they would not touch the screw to reduce any friction. This shows the custom made screws holding front locking lever and front sight in place. The front locking lever lifts up a little (just about 1/4 inch). I'm not sure if that is what it is limited to on an actual MG-34 or not. But I figure its accurate if it is supposed to be a locking device you do not want to flopping upward. The front sight rises and locks in place. It is a sold lock, you can swing the barrel jacket around and that front sight will stay right in place. I also added a light amount of silver paint dry brushed onto the two parts to allow some of the details to be seen. This completed the front part of the barrel jacket and front sight assembly. Now to work on the back end near the mid-section.