revlimiter

That looks fantastic to me! I'm not the most knowledgeable, but yeah. Amazing work. And the angle looks spot on. I do know that many of the screen-used ones had nothing like this nice an ear fitment.

That LOCK screw is so annoying. On this handle it tightens fully at FREE. Since I have to put electronics in it and wire stuff up later, I'm not gonna Loc-tite it on LOCK just yet. As for that red wire... not sure if it's correct, but it sure looks right compared to the screenshots. Trying my best to make this screen accurate. Onto an update! I got the power cylinder JB Welded into place. No going back now! But I can change out various parts of it. Next step was some T-tracks. I've never had to do these on any blaster before, so this was pretty fun for me. I snipped to 5x 6.5 inches and 1x 7.25 inches. The measurements worked well for this Fieldmarshall build. Work area. The snips help to re-angle the track cuts as necessary. They need a pretty sharp cut and most of mine were done too wide at first. Low heat while spinning to evenly heat all three spars of the Tee. If only the bottom gets heated, it won't bend... and will lizard-skin the bottom side. I used a small screwdriver to help shove the pliable plastic into the hole and it worked amazingly well. I was able to get a very sharp bend on all the tracks and most don't need glue. The top one looks a little loose because that's how it is on the screen version. You can see a little light between the barrel and T-track behind Leia. I tried to replicate that here while still keeping it in place. All starting to come together! The T-tracks and counter just add so much. I've started some light weathering to match the screen version as closely as I can as well. For the time being, I have the counter held in place with a screen-accurate wire. It's also supported by some strong double sided tape. However, the wire attachment creates the perfect height, position, and angle by itself. So very awesome to not struggle at the counter positioning. None of my other blasters have extremely sharp molds at the top of the scope. The accurate white crayon lettering is just chef's kiss. I also got the chip installed on top of the scope. I tried the socket only version first and then compared it to the height with a chip installed in the socket. I think the chip + socket is most accurate. Now I just have to figure out those wires running from the counter to the power cylinders...

and now that I'm not on mobile, I can share a link more easily to said paste. If the acetone is hard to get Down Under, Joseph has an excellent tutorial for using Sugru to do the same basic things. It's for thigh ridge gaps, but works the same for hole filling.

Holes aren't actually that hard to fix on our armor. Look into ABS paste. You can make some easily with spare armor scraps.

The hacked apart Sony headphones I put in those pads have worked flawlessly for me since install. I'm about to do another set in my wife's TIE bucket. The isolated mics in the ears work amazingly well too. No squeaks or annoying noise. Just some wind noise if it happens to blow right in the holes.

I got some parts painted. Preliminary assembly with some paint. It looks gooooood. I used hammertone on the main body pieces. I sprayed some areas purposely thicker and some thinner. I didn't want fresh wrinkle finish on this blaster. Wrinkle paint takes a long time to wear down to a nice "used" looking level. Hammertone goes to that level almost out of the can. It gives some of that variation in tone that the real guns have. Thinner on the barrel and a bit thicker on the folding stock. No hammertone on the guard, inner barrel, scope, or various other pieces. I also wanted to black out that center gold stripe on my vintage counter, but I didn't want to paint. It's also very very thin clearance inside, so a piece of electrical tape won't fit. However, a piece of clear scotch tape fits fine. I colored it with a black sharpie and that takes care of the gold inner counter problem. Moving onto the power cylinders! I wanted a little bit of crustiness inside the main capacitors/insulators/whatever, so I gave them a bit of a white acrylic wash. Nothing really awesome, just something to show that it's not plain copper inside those little side slits. Decently successful. The one feature the Fieldmarshall cylinders is missing is these outer wings. I snipped some extra from the T-tracks and glued it in place. It's slightly blobby but a really tiny and hard to see detail. And it's really on there! This may survive a couple troops. Inner capacitors! The nose holes needed drilling out slightly to allow clearance for the wires. I angled the outer capacitor so that METALMITE would always be readable if you knew where to look. Seriously, this kit is so very much the Easy Button. Almost nothing to change to make it perfect. It feels like cheating to build. I don't have much fabrication or alteration. Just smooth sailing. The included red wire is a perfect size for those rear capacitor leads once you remove the inner copper. It pulls out with a needle nose easily and any left over comes out by itself when you shove the cap lead into the red. And here's my first pass at a screen accurate power cylinder. Weathering is easy, but that red speck at the back required a bit of thought. The angle proves it isn't one of the center power wires. There seems to be an extra red power wire coming out the back rear of the outer insulator. You can also (barely) make out the presence of an extra flat feature on the outside edge from that rear view. Here it is from behind. Pretty similar shape overall. (Also, I'm happy with my wiring and resistors.) More thought and comparison with my in-hand replica vs the screen grabs made me realize I had the wire angled backwards. It should arc down and back instead of back and then down. And it seems to have a segment of black painted wire or a resistor at the end. It's rough and ready. It's used and abused. It might be old and tired, but it's my power cylinder. And I *think* it's decently accurate. Rear view with painted wires. It was hard to make myself paint over the pretty capacitors and wires, but that's how the original was and that's how this one needs to be.

Look at the sight guard on those. And the folding stock area around the grip. Both are quite solid. Definitely rubber E-11s.

Congrats!!! I was wondering if you'd finished in time. No doubt that beautiful armor will sail through basic approval.

Take special care to not rivet it on upside down. I speak from experience. I put mine on upside down at first... Curved back edge closet to your boots.

Welcome to the board Matt! TK research is definitely a huge mountain to climb, but it's a fun one.

I've been slowly working on the blaster. Initial painting and weathering. I got a little bottle of Aluminum Black and started etching some items. The mag release button is chilling in there in this shot. It's just a tarnish that's pretty easy to wipe off, so it's not suited for something that will be actively trooped with. However, I think it's gonna be perfect for the bolt and some small screw type items. I gave the bolt about 10 weatherings with this stuff, wiping it on and letting it sit, then dunking in water and drying, then repeating. I sanded in between several weatherings. The result is a lovely darkened bolt that shouldn't stick out quite as much as a non-weathered one. It looks quite dark in this shot with the unpainted aluminum around it, but it reflects light nicely in person. I think the etching will be juuuust right. I sealed it in some wax to preserve the weathering. I was really hoping this would be more like anodizing than dipping in ashes, but it's a lot more like ashes. Still, I got these small hardware pieces decently blackened. I'll apply some wax to help protect and then just use to let them age naturally should give a beautiful finish. I hope. I mean, I can always paint these things if I need to. I also sanded off casting flash on any metal parts that had it. The mag receiver (above) was pretty filthy with flash. It's now beautifully smooth. The scope and folding stock needed a bit of sanding as well. And here's the real working Hengstler 400 from @T-Jay It's glorious. No eagle, but it has everything else. I gave the tan cover a little paint and thought some disassembled pix would be nice. Being a pleb who's never seen a real one, I was geeking out. The little white bit at the bottom goes between the reset stalk side and the body keeping the reset stalk from pressing. Quite genius. I also really dig the zinc coated interior finish. 24 volt coil. Tino pre-set my TK number on it. Not sure how he did that... hopefully by rolling the digits by hand and not by letting it count 89400 little 24 volt pulses. Here's the Fieldmarshal replica on the left vs the real 400 on the right. EXTREMELY similar. I'll be honest, I wouldn't mind that open frame on the original... not sure if I could make it fit though and I haven't yet tried. I did mask off that original sticker from paint though. And the number side. The Fieldmarshal is a lot more rough and ready looking. The original 400 looks more refined. I just have the replica numbers wedged into place for these pix. They'll come out later. So what am I doing with both of these (very nice) counters? I plan to temporarily mount the real one to the Leveller with my best guess at the original wire fastener. Then, when my BlastFX arrives, I'll remove it and install the screen in the replica counter. It'll then be held on in the modern way, with screws on the scope rail. I'll keep the original on a shelf to fondle and ogle. It'll lie in wait till I have a new project for it to live with. Thanks again for the counter Tino!!! It's such a beauty.

My garage cabinets are STILL covered in a fine layer of lil plastic... like 9 months later.

Gosh. I probably could do that if supplied with another of Joseph's excellent binocs...

The strap is lovely and super soft too. Like I said in the video, I take no credit for the beauty of these binocs. That's all Joseph. I tried to keep them as "stock looking" as possible in my bit of repainting after sealing it back up.

Had no one else seen that front greeb on the stock in this scene? DID I FIND SOMETHING NEW? lol! I'm beaming. For the wire situation on the blaster, this is my take. I am totally prepared to be wrong and get corrected, but I think this is what's going on. I've spent far too much mental resources on these wires. The easy place to start is this one without a whole lot of detail. It looks like 2 wires to me coming from the Hengstler nose. And then there's all of this. The back view and bottom view match up nicely with the side view to give a good path for that wire (yellow) that seems to be holding the counter onto the rail. It's quite thin. I think it's just black electrical wire. It could be a mega-thin zip tie, but... I mean really really thin. The replica pix from Playfulwolfcub show his wire path (green) and I think it's quite close. I believe the wires are a bit thicker than the ones on his blaster and dip down toward the power cylinders and kinda overlap the red power cyl wires. Maybe. That's my theory right now anyway. And also I noticed that the Leia Leveller has no "OFF" text on the clip.

The Organa Obliterator. The Princess Punisher. The Senator Silencer. The Royalty Reducer. and my personal favorite, The Leia Leveller. My resin QuestDesign broke half of the sight guard randomly on a troop and I found myself on the blasterfactory website buying a metal one to fix the damage. It happened to be during their May 4th sale. They happened to have "ESB E11 kits" on sale with a VERY nice discount, so I ended up with one. I was having a bad day and had the extra cash. A 3rd E-11 became mine. I didn't want another E-11. I'm happy with my Hyperfirm and my QD. But sometimes we just gotta take life as it comes and make space for a new build. Here's the Warmachine after an initial assembly to see how everything fits together. It's just lovely. And surprisingly not too heavy. Fully built, it's about the same weight as my resin QD with the original Stirling stock attached. So anyways, I built this thing and was just smitten. It's such a lovely blaster. I had to build it into something fun, so I started researching and discovered that Mr No-Stripes had an E11 with an M19 scope. A plan formed. The kit came with the M19 scope and T-tracks. I then placed another order for the stuff I was missing - the clip, Hengstler, and power cylinders. I've also got an original Hengstler 400 on the way from @T-Jay. The original counter may get used in another project since I really don't wanna hack it up for the BlastFX, but it'll be really nice to have on hand. And of course I bought the BlastFX kit. I came across a video of a Warmachine E-11 with the kit installed and went completely gaga. No way to not buy it as well. It should be in my hands in 12-16 weeks. So this is gonna be a loooonnnng build. The end is not in sight. Repeat, the end is not in sight. Back to Mr No Stripes. Just look at him. Isn't he heroic? Courageous? A fine figure of a trooper? You can see a lot of details in that above shot thanks to the 4K resolution. His bolt is weathered pretty dark. He's got the chip on top of the scope. There's a shiny rivet on the rear sight. And there are SCRAGGLY WIRES sticking out of his counter and going forward toward the power cylinder. In this shot we can see a bit of key detail - wear on the front power cylinder edges. Very very shiny wear. And also just the bare hint of those scraggly wires. And of course, the hero shot. If the TKs had just stunned Han, Luke, and Chewie in the hanger wouldn't the movie have basically ended right there? But I digress. After sticking my toe into the research and feeling how nice the water was, I went a little deeper. Not much, but into the next scene where Leia is escorted to Vader. Paying careful attention, I was like "oh yes, there's our hero Mr No-Stripes standing behind her right shoulder with his M19 scope." only to be disappointed to see that the trooper in question DID indeed have stripes in about 3 frames of the film. You can just barely see it, but he's a different trooper. Yet it's clearly the same gun. CLEARLY. M19? Check Chip on scope? Check Wear on power cylinders? Check Counter present? Check SCRAGGLY WIRES?!?!?! Check! I did an annotation. The amount of detail that is clearly visible is just outstanding. Love the 4K res screenshots! It even shows that front folding stock greeblie that @justjoseph63 makes. The socket on top of the scope is also really interesting. It looks really tall and if you have a clear enough screen, you can see a bit of separation between the base and the top - I think a chip is actually installed in the socket. So this is the foundation for my entire build - the theory that Mr No Stripes gun and The Escort gun are in fact the same gun. Our hero might not have been carrying it in this particular scene, but it reeeeeaaaaalllllllly looks like the same weapon. It may not be a correct theory, but it sure charges up my imagination and it's the replica blaster that I want to build. And there's a ton of good views of this particular E-11. Combine these pix with the bolt-side view and front view in the hands of Mr No-Stripes and that's about the most complete showing of a prop that a fan can hope for. But that's not all! @PlayfulWolfCub actually created his own replica of this beautiful blaster during his power cylinder production and research. I've borrowed the photos from his PDF. Having this reference from one of the TK Detail Masters is the icing on top. It's gonna be extremely valuable to have as a guide for those slightly blurry parts like the scraggly wires. Anyways, that's my project. I'm excited about this build! (please don't burst my bubble and tell me they're not the same gun)

Dang, beautiful spaces for the both of you! My displays are all Transformers and Hot Wheels. Not enough TK bits around yet. Congrats on the unpacking and beautiful room Joseph!

I ended up having to cut the corners after gluing cover strips down on several of my pieces. A straight razor blade works extremely well. It's small enough that you can't really apply a ton of force, so you can easily get the angles cut without harming (or sometimes even touching) the armor beneath.

Our troops here are also exactly as Glen describes - VERY very few official LFL events and our garrison is not strict about such items. In the ~8 months that I've been trooping we've had one single LFL event that was limited to 5 troopers and I didn't volunteer for quickly enough. For official troops, we're expected to remove any and all non-canon items and wear our top spec gear. So, for example, the rubber gloves come out and the pilots gloves get put away. On all other local troops, we're encouraged to build and bring fun props like this that help engagement with the public. More than 50% of our local troops are non-blaster, which leaves us TKs empty handed. These binocs help fill those empty hands. One of our most popular troopers is a baby Yoda toy held by a Rebels Scout (people go crazy for Grogu here). Again, as I said, it's a laid back garrison. Others would probably not allow such props to be carried. Sorry if this project offended you Lluis.

Thanks Glen! Yeah, little screens would be awesome and make for an amazing prop. I wonder if a budget rear view mirror camera retrofit kit would work for that? I say "budget" because it might have a screen small enough to fit inside.

A few months ago, I got a set of Electrobinocs from @justjoseph63 and have been extremely pleased with them. But... well... I wanted them to DO something. I got the idea to turn them into Bluetooth speakers so they could play the TK Chatter or some music during non-blaster troops. And, fair warning, this is now a finished project. This won't be an ongoing build. I've wasn't even sure I could make this work, so I didn't post up a build thread for the binocs. I didn't wanna be defeated by this little hunk of plastic. This was my first step - hacking open the binocs. I sliced it at the rear intersection as it seemed like the most logical place. I then cut off the lens and drilled a hole in the (extremely thick) resin. Joseph doesn't mess around in the creation of these guys. The resin is VERY thick front and rear. Walls have some decent thickness too. It can face some serious action without being damaged. You know, aside from being hacked up. The front 3/4 is attached to the back eyepieces with 3 screws and a thick layer of glue all around. I used a dremel cutoff wheel to saw it free. I wanted to use the top knob as the volume control, so off it came. It was held in place by a small screw. I bought this little bluetooth amp off amazon... and destroyed it trying to modify the buttons to be remote. I would not suggest anyone get this amp if you want to modify it. I'm pretty good with electronics and regularly solder gauge clusters back together for my day job. Relocating knobs and switches bricked this little guy bad. Recovery wasn't possible. Then I happened across this Bluetooth speaker KIT on Parts Express. It was mentioned offhandedly in a youtube vid that didn't really have anything to do with the project. At the time of this writing, the kit is about $44USD. Check it out on Parts Express. I didn't need all of the parts, expecially the 2.5" speakers, but the kit was much cheaper than buying the parts individually. Separately, the board and wires are more expensive than the whole kit. I also bought the optional battery board and batteries to allow the board to play without being plugged in. A total of about $66USD. I used two of these tiny 1.5" speaker drivers (coincidentally also Dayton) as they juuuust fit into the binocs. If anyone out there decides to use these parts for their own project, I'd highly suggest buying an extra or two of the 2.1mm DC barrel jack. They're quite delicate and I had to buy a spare. One hole wasn't gonna cut it, so I printed a new sensor array in ABS and sliced off the molded one. Not a bad fit! And not a bad finish after a bit of extra sanding. The volume knob board required a very very thin wall to be installed into. So much grinding! And the speaker fit pretty well in the far left of the binoc housing, but not so well toward the right. More grinding. My dremel extension handle got some action. The tiny speakers needed to be stood away from the front holes to allow them to work well. My local Ace Hardware hand 1/4" spacers and associated tiny screws to enable mounting. I believe each of the speakers uses 3 screws to mount. Drilling tiny holes in a deep housing isn't the easiest thing. This extension made it possible. And let me just apologize right here for the severe lack of build progress photos I took. I had roadblocks at like every step of this project. The drill bit extension for example. Every time I hit a dead end and had to wait another week for more parts from amazon, I was uncertain if this thing would ever get finished... so I didn't take many in-progress photos. I think this pic was of the nose and sensor being glued on for the first time in about 2 months. I also placed speaker cloth in each with hot glue. One of the very few pix I took showing the inner parts placement. It's TIGHT in there. Speakers at the very front and just a tiny bit of space between the back of them and the front edge of those huge batteries. The batteries are screwed on in the very front and have some 50lb double sided mounting tape holding them in place in the back. The extra speaker wire and wire bundle for that volume knob are zip tied and stowed to the right side. The main Bluetooth board has barely enough space to be flipped and live right above the batteries. I used the top center button between the viewports as the power switch. The bottom two hide some screws. The bluetooth blue LED indicators light up the viewports. And the wires are indeed everywhere. I tried to tidy them before screwing the two halves together, but was only medium successful. All of the parts hide behind a printed acrylic panel. And here we are! That's a finished and re-assembled Electrobinoculars!!! It doesn't have the front lens anymore, but the opened up sensor array sorta makes up for that lack of magic. I really like the look of that sensor array. Non-cannon LED pilot light are pretty easy to overlook. The little green one comes on when the unit is charging. Red is power. The two things above the power & green LED are my original attempt at power and line in. They didn't go well. They're basically tiny speaker ports now. Power on and blue Bluetooth lights lit. Note the top button - it sticks out slightly and is a latching SPST push button switch. I found a 6mm switch that would fit inside the little button housing. The only downside of this button is that it can spin a bit when pressed. That's just the nature of the switch I used. It's installed tightly, just the button itself that can spin a little. This is VERY hard to see IRL, but it looks pretty cool in the photo. I did a holofoil desert scene with a little sandcrawler. At least it hides the wiring. And here it is!! A working demo vid. I can't wait to troop with it.

Truly beautiful work!! And that wall. Inspirational!

Looking good trooper! Congrats!!! Gonna go for EIB next?

congrats!!! Let the plastic hacking begin!

A thing of beauty!