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Edited 18th August 2013: This project thread is now 33 pages long so here are some quick links to the end results... A 39 page downloadable pdf containing most of the project research and conclusions: A 21 page downloadable pdf of my finished E11 Replicas (with five different Power Cylinders variations): (Full acknowledgements of everyone who has contributed to the project are on the final "Credits, Thanks & Links" pages of both pdfs.) Sales thread for screen-accurate & authentically made metal Power Cylinders Sales thread for screen-accurate resin Power Cylinders Cheers, Andy ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ive posted this on the RPF but, having just read the awesome "The Best Sterling Templates EVER!" thread I thought it was worth posting here too: Every set of repro blaster cylinders I've seen has 2 central "fuses" but I think maybe there were actually 3 on the screen-used E11s. This photo of a 6-rack of the E11-used "mystery valves" on a mouse droid clearly shows 3 central fuses. I doubt the Bapty dressers would have taken the time to remove the 3rd one & I can't think of a reason why they would need to. I imagine someone has suggested this idea before & it has been disproved with material evidence but, to my knowledge, there isn't a clear enough photo of the original blasters to be sure. Has anyone any thoughts before I start making cylinder units with 3 fuses for my Sterling build and scratch builds? Thanks, Andy

Well I finally got a moment off work over Christmas and had just enough days to get obsessively stuck in to a new E-11 build. I'm building this one totally from scratch with the exception of a grip casting and a mag casting I had lying around. The rest of the build is my laser cut plastic parts and some found items. All my reference and measurements come from the "Best Sterling Templates Ever" thread that can be found here. I have used the actual templates we built up and relied entirely on the measurements and reference photos so generously provided by the team of real Sterling owners who contributed to that thread - sskunky, Christian, Lichtbringer and DaveJ - so a huge thanks goes out to them for giving me a chance to do a scratch build with accurate specs and skip the BBC plans altogether. Another huge thanks goes to Andy PlayfulWolfCub who made some corrections to errors I made in the blueprints and sent me literally hundreds of reference pics of his Sterling for me to work from. For those of you wondering when these templates are going to go public, the answer is soon. This build has allowed me to correct a few small errors and as soon as I'm done adjusting the template booklet I'll post it for all to grab Well without further ado - onto the build. I didn't get as far along in the four days I worked on it as I would have liked but these things always take longer than anticipated don't they? Here's what I've done so far anyways... THE TRIGGER ASSEMBLY I started with the trigger assembly. I know this is unusual but I have a plan to create a functional trigger assembly that will allow the bolt to be cocked and fired when the trigger is pulled. As a result I needed to build the rest of the blaster around the trigger assembly to be sure that everything was slotting together correctly. First I drew up my plans for how I thought a working trigger assembly might be constructed. This is basically a modified version of the real Sterling trigger function, greatly simplified after the manner of a toy dart gun: Basically the trigger should push the bolt catch down far enough to release the bolt and have it slam forward: Now heads up here: I have no idea of this will work. It's purely theoretical and until the whole thing is assembled I won't know if it succeeds or not. If it doesn't it's no big loss, I'll just have a static prop. If it works however it will add some fun. I started out with all my appropriate cut parts: The laser cutter cuts very sharp straight edges so I had to use the sanding drum on my dremel to shape the front portion of the trigger with the correct rounded edge. You can see the shape in this pic better: I glued the inner workings onto the right hand face of the trigger assembly in order to install the parts and rubber bands: I made short video of the parts in action but I can't embed Mobile Me gallery videos for some reason so if you're really keen to see it, you'll have to click here: http://gallery.me.co...3/TriggerAction This is the finished "sandwich" of parts: I've only painted the parts of the trigger assembly that will end up exposed after final construction. This is simply because paint and glue don't play well together and I want to be gluing plastic to plastic, not plastic to paint, for durability. The next step was to prepare the grip mount, which is this bit here: You can see in this image from Christian that, whereas most parts of the Sterling were butt braised on, the grip mount was flange braised: So I needed to create the flange edge for my grip mount pieces. I needed to make sure that the angle at which the flanges spread fit the barrel casing perfectly so I came up with this system: I took the plastic grip mount pieces and sandwiched them between two pieces of wood and set them in the oven for ten minutes Then I wrapped my receiver tube in foil to protect it from any heat transfer And literally pressed the tube into the soft heated plastic until I got a flange flare I was happy with: Then I had to set about making a trigger guard. I happened to find a strip of copper hanging around my man cave that was the correct 1.6mm thickness. I transferred the trigger guard template flat onto the copper strip with a pencil: Once I was satisfied with the measurements I clamped the copper strip down and cut it to shape using a jewelry saw: Lather, rinse and repeat for the other end and we're ready to go. The tricky part was the bending. The copper is soft so bending it is easy enough, but getting the precise shape of the Sterling trigger took some concentration. Initially I printed the trigger guard shaping template and bent the strip while laying it against this shape on the paper, but ultimately the best way to do it was to bend it in position against the trigger assembly using reference photos and some tricky yoga positions. This trigger guard shape varies slightly from the real Sterling trigger guard in that I've removed the small curl at the top front. It does however insert properly into the trigger group like it should, but will be held with glue instead of a swiveling pin: All that was left now was to paint everything up. It may seem odd to paint the entire grip and trigger assembly up before it is attached to the barrel casing, but as this section layers black pieces on top of silver I needed to do it prior to assembly. Again I've taped up the pieces to prevent paint spray reaching the parts I want to glue: Painted the grip while I was at it just to maximize my fume inhalation opportunities: Here's a pic of my finished trigger assembly next to a photo Andy PlayfulWolfCub's sent me of his real trigger assembly: and here it is with the whole shebang assembled and the selector switch in place: You can see in this pic the great texture that the hammered black spray paint Seantrooper put me on to gives the parts. Very close to the wrinkle paint (sometimes incorrectly referred to as parkerizing) used on commercial Sterling L2A3's, and a pretty convincing metal simulation. The actual Hammered Black is gloss so it requires a satin overcoat to knock it back. THE SELECTOR SWITCH The selector switch was an easy part. Again I need to use the dremel to shape a curve into the base but then it was a simple assembly and paint job: I painted a layer of Krylon Crafters metallic on first and let it dry. Then I gave it a coat of the black satin and while it was still wet, I lightly whipped a piece of sandpaper over the switch to produce the weathering.

I have an extra piece in my Doopy Doos resin kit. Can some one tell me where it goes? I havelooked at numerous pics and I now wonder if it was just thrown in.

In the fall I cleaned out all three local Targets for the E-11's (each store only had one). On line they more than twice the price if you can fins them. Does anybody know of on line source or other chains stores that carry them? Thanks!

I am finishing up my Hasbro blaster and I am not sure whether I should add the D-ring to it or not. Can someone clarify this for me?

So originally I had planned on doing ANH stunt like the majority of Troopers start with. I checked out thier blaster build threads and thought it would be fun to do the Hasbro conversion, so I bought a blaster off of the eBay, and ordered a Doopy kit. Well that was almost a month ago and in that time I have decided I wanted to go the less taken ESB route. I read up on all the differences in the ANH armor compared to the ESB. I bought different hand guards, made a my own holster, ordered the correct stickers for the helmet etc... Without ever really considering the difference in the blaster until today I recieved this box today and immediately jumped on the FISD forums with the intent of doing a quick build tonight. Then I realized that I was going to have to do some major mods to my blaster to be somewhat ESB accurate. So here we go with my first build of any sort on this forum. Removing the counter !!!!!!! This is what I am starting with. I had already cut off the barrel and scope pieces, as I had seen in every ANH conversion thread. To remove the counter I first used a Sharpie maker to draw an outline around the area I wanted to cut away. I then started scoring the lines with my exacto. After about 10 minutes of scoring the same spot over and over I started to get some penetration on the straight parts that needed to be cut away, but knew the exacto was not going to be usefull on the curved areas. I was also getting tired of the progress moving so slow, so I whipped out the dremel and bore a few holes through it hoping I could break the pieces off in smaller sections easier than the whole counter at once. Here is the first of the small sections removed. Now it is looking a little better. I am headed back to the shed now where will cut and sand the rough edges down and hopefully post some picture of the progress later tonight.

I was wondering if anyone could provide me with the measurments of their Hengstler Counter? im gonna need width, depth, height, as well as the size of the inlay with the eagle logo, size of spot for the numbers, and the bars on the back side on the top, bottom and sides. Also how many numbers are there suppose to be? thanks

Of late I've been mulling over various ways to make the ever elusive accurate T-track and have come up with several different methods worth trying. I've decided to try them all and thought I'd share them here one by one as I go. So here's method number one - aluminum T-track that anyone can make at home with nothing but a book and a ruler! Now I'll pre-empt this by saying all my following experiments will be based on the assumption that the screen accurate dims for T-Track are as follows: Now, I don't claim any expert knowledge here or solid evidence. The dimensions and shape have come from research here and on the RPF and they are, to the best of my knowledge, correct but don't hold me to it - we know the T-Track is a slippery beast, and while I don't purport to have caught one this info comes from some pretty experienced fishermen... Start by getting a roll of aluminum flashing from your local hardware store: It comes in various thicknesses - I've chosen .3mm for the balance between ease of bending and strength. Cut of a strip to size. I suggest going a little longer than you'll need for the finished length. I worked at about 190mm long by 38mm wide. Next you will want to score your aluminum to make the various folds easier to manipulate and sharper in the finished job. After a lot of fiddling and paper patterning I made this diagram to show the distances between the score lines that will result in the correct finished shape: Use a ruler and a stanley blade to score your lines according to these measurements: This bit can be tricky and I had a lot of fails along the way. If you score too lightly the metal will not bend sharply or will bend in places other than the intended fold. If you score too heavily it will simply snap when you try to fold it. This was simply a matter of testing and practice. I ran the blade several times over each score and found that once the sliding started to feel "rough" I had about the correct amount. I also found that it helped a lot to graduate from heavy scoring in the inner most lines outwards to lighter scoring. This is because of the order in which we want the folds to be made, and it helps the metal go naturally in that order. Here is a diagram where black represents the heaviest scoring getting lighter: At this point my aluminum strip looked like this: Next, I measured and marked the exact centre of the strip: Grab an old hardcover book. The non spine edge has a nice approximation of the shape and size of the centre rail of the T-Track right down to the inverted U shape. In this case I'm using the same out of date diary I'm using as a cutting board: Using the centre marking as a guide I bent the aluminum over the edge of the book cover. Lining this up straight was a right PITA but if you get it wrong (and I did a few times) you end up with horribly lopsided T-Track: I simply pressed and pressed along the fold until I got it very flat. It should be almost so tight it's stuck to the book. I also found this process was made easier by holding a metal ruler on each side of the aluminum strip and clamping with pliers. Do not apply the pliers directly to the aluminum or your T-track will end up looking like Pruneface's head... Once that was done, I slid a ruler under the lip of the aluminum strip to keep it flat and bent it upwards. If the scoring is good the metal will naturally start to fold at the innermost score line: I did this on both sides and then removed the strip from the book cover. I found it helps to bend this first bend too far as it will naturally bend back down as you fold the other parts down: Then it was a matter of some simple origami to fold each section one by one to shape: When the score lines were good this was easy - when they were bad it was a nightmare... I lost a few efforts at this point. However once I got the hang of it I was on to mass production! Once shaped the track is surprisingly strong. Remember - the arch is one of the strongest shapes in engineering! The good thing about using the aluminum is that with some care and strength you can use pliers to get a nice bend on the end that slips into the vent holes without heating it: Sure - the ends are messy but they won't be visible so it doesn't matter a bit. I'm pretty happy with the results, but this is a method that requires care and the sharp aluminum edges did my manicure no favors. It's definitely worth trying but it won't stop me continuing to experiment with other methods. So stay tuned for method number two - here's a sneak preview:

Hi guys, I just bought a great M38 off Marv but it has no mounting screws. Does anyone have any spares to sell or know of a source of compatible screws that look like exactly like the originals? I'm in the UK and the 3/16" screws I've tried almost fit but all except one have a different thread. I'd appreciate any help people can offer. Thanks very much, Andy