Sabyre Posted March 20, 2015 Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 Full Disclosure: My blaster is already finished for the most part. I will apologize in advance. There are a lot of pics missing, but I will post what I have. There are many great build threads hear. I did a lot of research reading through many of them. I took some ideas from a few of them, two in particular. Dark CMF 's build was very helpful and well laid out. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/26179-a-small-slightly-beat-up-brown-box-arrived-recently-doopydoos-full-resin-anh-e-11-build/. This is were I repeatedly turned for answers. I am a very hands on person. No matter how many reference pics I looked through, I just wasn't satisfied with how things looked. What I needed was to get my hands on the real thing. That's when I found Usaeatt2 's build thread. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/26960-e-11-steel-pipe-build/. I bought the deactivated sterling, and now have real parts I can look at and a project for later. So let's get started. I'll start with the extra parts used: 1. D-ring from Sonnenschein. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/8047-metal-d-rings-for-your-e11/ 2. Replacement Mag from Gazmosis http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/26677-doopy-dos-replacement-e-11-magazine-run-7-now-open/ 3. M-19 hybrid scope from Striker http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/26652-new-scope-molds/ We'll start off with the mandatory brown box arrival. The tangible start to the journey down the path to white armor bliss. It was like being a kid on Christmas all over again. had to lay everything out and see what I was in for. I bought the Doopy and the holster from Trooper Bay. They came in the same day. Did a quick mock up to see what it might look like. After a bath and scrubbing in the sink. ( pics I didn't take). It was time to get busy. I started with the grip, trigger and trigger guard. I freed the trigger from the guard and finished trimming and cleaning all three pieces. I started by placing the trigger in the grip and outlining where the grip sat on the trigger. I then placed the trigger on top of the grip, lining up the mark as best I could, and outlined the trigger. This gave me a rough idea where to drill. With the trigger in the grip, I drilled through till I got half way, roughly, though the opposite side of the grip. I then took a spring out of a pen, laid it on top of the grip and outlined it. Sorry for the fuzzy pic. I paced the finishing nail, I will use later in final assembly, in to check an see if the spring was in the right place. I hoped! I then placed the trigger back on top of the grip and transferred lines from the spring outline to the trigger, and drilled a hole in the trigger for the spring to rest in. After I convinced myself I was right. I removed the trigger and transferred the line over to the inside of the grip. I then used this reference mark to drill the hole for the spring. I tested this set up several times. I continued drilling deeper into the grip until the trigger sat where I wanted. I then moved on to the selector switch. I placed it about where I thought it would go and outlined it. Keeping it in the outline I moved it to all three positions making sure it still looked right. when satisfied, I drilled a hole in the grip and the switch. I cut the head off a finishing nail and put it in the switch. After I paint it, I will cut it shorter for placing in the grip. More to come........ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
usaeatt2 Posted March 20, 2015 Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 Great work, JC! Having real parts for reference and measurements really helps. Thanks for the kudos in your opening! Judging by your posting so far, the end result should be good. Your methods look very familiar. At one point in my carbon fiber/resin build, I had so many reference lines in the trigger area, I had to wipe them down to avoid confusion. Tim's build is an incredible piece of work...I still can't believe he built it in the bathroom... Aaron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 20, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 Thanks Aaron, I am a welder/fabricator. Building things out of metal, no problem. This is my first time working with resin, so it was a little nerve racking. You can't fix a mistake with a welder and grinder. Lots of measuring, marking, double and triple checking alignments, and still had to convince myself to make the cut or drill. Tim's build is an incredible piece of work...I still can't believe he built it in the bathroom... Aaron agreed 100%. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 20, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2015 Here, I will work on the front sight and folding stock. Here is the front sight before I cleaned it out to look a little more like the real one. You will also see the nail I will cut down to make the sight pin. I started by cleaning out the extra resin so you could see through it. I then cleaned up around sight base to square it up a bit more, drilled the hole n the sight base and cut the lot into the bottom. My original thought was to place a small set screw in the hole in the base. However, I eventually talked myself out of it. I did not cut the hashes into the sight guard either. I didn't feel confident enough to attempt this without screwing it up beyond repair. I then drilled the hole for the nail to fit in fairly snugly. I also counter sank the bottom for the nail head to set in flush. Sorry, this pic is out of focus, and I can't find the one showing the counter sink on the bottom. Once I was satisfied with the way the nail sat in the guard, I cut it down to size, beveled the edges to thin it down and cut the 45degree angle on it. After test fitting and checking it over, next to the real one, I used two part epoxy and glued it in. Next was the folding stock. Not a lot to see hear. Pics don't show it real well but, basically all I did was clean up the excess in and around the holes. I tried to bevel the sides of the tube a little, but it didn't make that much difference. Here, I decided to try my hand at cleaning out the opening for the sliding lock. I thought I had a good pic or two showing the rough finish, and the final result after rounding and filing the edges. I, however, couldn't find them, so I cropped this pic to kind of give you an idea. I'll try to get some more pics up a little later.... Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 21, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 21, 2015 Here I started off with the latch. Nothing great, just cleaned out the recess. I then moved on to the bottom of the grip. Had to replace the bolt in the bottom with a real one. I bought a package of M6 socket head bolts that match up real well. I started off by finding the center of the resin bolt, as best I could, and drilling a pilot hole with a small bit to keep my center as I counter sank the hole to fit the whole bolt. To avoid cutting the threads off. I drilled the larger hole first till it was deep enough for the head to sit flush. I then used a smaller bit to drill the hole for the threads. I placed a little bit of E6000 in the hole and pressed the bolt in. Now to do the same with the bolts in the barrel. I used the same procedure for this as I did the grip bolt. Find center, drill small hole. Then, drilled out the resin bolt head. This part was kind of touchy. There was no meat on the out side to keep the bit frog wanting to wonder off, and the bit did not quite fit in the recesses near the middle of the barrel. So I ended up with this. Resin bolts drilled out and some chipped recess edges. Kind of a sick feeling as your drilling it out and you see pieces pop off of places they are not supposed to, but now your committed. To late to turn around. Lol I read in a few of the posts about using miliput to fill in hole and fix mistakes. That's the direction I went to correct this problem. I put it on rather thick to make sure there was enough to sand it down to the original shape. Once I was satisfied enough was in place, I sat it aside to harden over night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 22, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2015 After letting the milliput set and harden over night, I began sanding it down until I was satisfied the original shape was achieved. Some of these pics are blurry, and for that I apologize. I had to so some initial sanding with finer grit paper to remove the rough spots around the corrected areas, not shown in the pics. Once I finished cleaning up the barrel, it was time to attach the bolts. I originally tried to place the whole bolt in the end, but they would not set properly. Instead, I opted to cut the threads off and just affix the bolt head. I applied E6000 to the bolts heads and barrel, pressed the bolt heads in place and cleaned up the excess glue that squeezed out. I then plashed this aside to let it set. The right bolt head, as you look at the pic, was a little tough to get in to place. It just barely fit in to the cut out and kept wanting to slide backward into the barrel. I then moved on to the mag housing. Not much to do here. I ordered a new mag from Gazmosis to replace the poor one that came with the kit, so the only thing I had to do at this time was replace the set screw with a real one. I started by finding a bit that just fit inside the resin screw and drilled a pilot hole to keep my center as I drilled the rest out. I then moved up to a size just larger than the real screw that was to be added. I drilled down, then test fit, a few times. Once the screw sat to my liking I was ready to glue. I dropped in some E6000 and set it in place. I then decided to clear out the channel in the d-ring retainer. Again, not much to do here. I ordered the d-ring from Sonnenschein, so I couldn't get to the exact with until I had that in hand plus the ring sizer to put around it ( another one of the many tricks I picked up from Dark CMF 's build thread). In the mean time I just opened the middle up to be flush with the outsides. Once again, I didn't get a pic of how it looked after I cut it out. Once the d-ring arrived I did have to take out a good bit more to get it to fit. The ring it's self fit fine with room to spare, but once I put the ring sizer on to keep the d-ring from flopping around, more room had to be made. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 22, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2015 Ok, on this part of the build I decided to make the pins to place in the bottom of the parts that go on the barrel. I used small nails cut down to size for the pins. The parts I used this on include the grip, folding stock latch, rear sight, and mag housing. The flash guards, I felt, were too thin to attempt to so this with. The front sight sis not have much room On it due to the nail head that was counter sunk in it for the sight pin. The parts I did make pins for, I did by setting them on the barrel and outlining them. I then placed the part on a piece of paper and traced it. I cut the outline out of the paper placed it on the part and drilled 2 to 3 holes for the pins. I then placed the paper on the barrel, lining it up in the outline I traced of the part and drilled the corresponding holes. I then placed the pins in the part and test fit it to the barrel. The folding stock I did differently. I did a layout on the hinge points to find center and drilled a hole for the pin. I then did a layout on the hinge mount on the barrel and drilled a hole on both sides. I then cut the pins down and placed the folding stock on to them. Not shown in the pic is the pin I placed in the front of the folding stock and barrel. I placed a pin right were the folding stock rests on the barrel. Here is the grip location. I cut a piece of 3/4 pipe and placed inside for an inner barrel. After tracing the grip I drilled a hole through the grip, barrel, and inner barrel for a screw. I placed this screw in the small area the front of the trigger guard later goes. The screw will go through the inner barrel to help hold it in place. Since the trigger guard will go in the same location as the screw, I counter sank the hole so the screw would not be in the way. Here you can kind of see the screw head sits flush. Here is the grip set in pace after the pins were installed. Here I placed pins and sat the stock latch in place. Here I set pins and put the mag housing in place And here is how it looked to this point. After admiring it for a few moments, and running it up stairs an showing it off to the wife and kids, I took everything back off. I did not get any pics of the pin process. As I was not sure if I would even do a build thread, my documentation was extremely lacking. Also, when I get going on something my inpatients sets in and I forget to take pics. lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 22, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 22, 2015 At this point I was getting excited, nearing the end of the build and seeing the finished product. Since the previous post my replacement mag from Gazmosis showed up, and I had to (nervously) try my hand at thinning the walls of the mag housing for the mag to fit. I used the method Usaett2 used on his carbon fiber build. http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/29140-carbon-fiber-e-11-build/ This method worked great. You can see the mag housing in the back ground of the first pic, and how thin the walls are. I started this part of the build with gluing the sights to the barrel using two part epoxy and this is were things started going wrong. If you don't notice right away I will show you shortly my first issue. After I got the sights set I glued the flash guards on. After allowing time for them to set I moved on to gluing the grip and stock latch in place. After the parts were set I started to debate on how I was going to do the mag housing. Glue it on first then blue the mag in, or glue the mag in then the whole thing to the barrel. Well, my mind was made up for me. My first major screw up was staring me in the face as I was looking the blaster over. Notice the rear sight. It is backwards. Now I glued it on with epoxy and it has line up pins in it, so pulling or cutting it off and turning it around is not an option. So what to do? After thinking it over for a while, I decided if I can't turn it around. Then I will have to make the back side into the front and the front into the back. So, I took the thinnest file I could find and started to file out the hash marks on the back. It took a few attempts and it didn't turn out as perfect as I wanted, but it will have to do. The next problem was the flip sight. I decided I would have to make a new one to glue in the back half of the sight. I was having trouble finding something that would work to carve it out of. I did not want to use the left over resin pieces I had in case I might need them later. The next day at work, I was looking at a welding wire reel made of plastic and it was just the right thickness, so I cut a piece of it off and brought it home to work with. I did not get a pic of curving it out or gluing it in but here is what it looks like now. It's not perfect, but it will work. I guess. I then decided I would mount the charging handle to the bolt. I decided to place a screw in the handle and the screw that into the bolt. You can see the end of the bolt in the top right of the pic. I placed a wooded dowel in the end of the bolt so the screw would have something to hold on to. Again, Murphy came a calling. I kept drilling deeper into the handle a little at a time, until I could time the threads so the handle would face the right direction and be snug to the bolt, and it happened. The handle broke in half as I was screwing the screw into it for what was to be the last time. I thought! To repair this, I put the screw it were I needed it, then using the epoxy, glued the top end of the handle back on to the screw and bottom half. After it the epoxy sat I filed down the excess till it was good as new, sort of. Again, no pic, but here it is currently. Now on to my next disaster. At this point I was in a rush to get finished and upstairs to play with the kids for a bit before bed, and get the night of screw ups over with. I should have stopped while I was ahead. I decided I would get the mag glued in so it could set and I could glue the assembly to the blaster after I got home the next day. The walls of the mag housing were extremely thin, as stated earlier. There was a couple places that were so thin if you sneezed on them they would break. I was trying to figure out a way to stiffen it back up, and finally decided I would use the E6000 to so it. So I filled the housing about a 1/4 full of E600, then gently pressed the mag in till it was set all the way in. The E6000 did not fill all the way to the top and I didn't want too much in at once so I figured I would let that sit over night and add more as needed after I had the assembly attached to the blaster. There, done. Time to head upstairs. I set it aside, got up, dusted my self off and it hit me. A moment of panic." I put the dang thing in backwards." (obviously I cleaned up the language) After the night I was having it would have looked more like !@#@#%$%$^%$^&^%&& and unreadable. I quickly pulled the mag out of the glue, turned it around and pressed it back in. Crisis averted. I was done. Walk away before I mess something up that is not fixable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-Jay[TK] Posted March 23, 2015 Report Share Posted March 23, 2015 Lol. Nice story. You might want to study some reference pictures from real Sterlings while running your build Your last picture of the repaired charging handle shows an M19 scope, while earlier pictures had the M38 in the background. Where did this come from? Keep the pictures coming. It's fun following... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 24, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2015 Lol. Nice story. You might want to study some reference pictures from real Sterlings while running your build Your last picture of the repaired charging handle shows an M19 scope, while earlier pictures had the M38 in the background. Where did this come from? Keep the pictures coming. It's fun following... Thanks Tino, as far s the reference pics. I have looked over a lot of them. I even purchased deactivated sterling parts kit, so I have the real thing in my hands. There really is no excuse for the mistakes. I simply failed to follow the most important rules. Take your time, and be patient. I was getting in a hurry and not paying attention to what I was doing, so I got bit. The M-19 scope I ordered from Striker. It is a cold cast hybrid. The M-38 scope came with the doopy kit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 24, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2015 Ok, so up to this point, I got the mag housing glued to the blaster using epoxy, the d-ring on the end cap and my M-19 scope came in. While waiting for the scope I used some bondo around the grip and mag housing to fill gaps and sanded it all down. I also picked up some 1/8 by 3/4 aluminum flat from work to make the scope rail. Here is the great piece of work I got from Striker. It is the final piece to this puzzle. I started by finding the center of the feet and drilling a hole just slightly smaller than the M6 hex head bolts I would use for mounting it to the rail. I then used the bolts to cut the threads into the feet. This took a while. I didn't want to strip the threads out, so there was a lot of screwing them in and backing them out as I went. I used the measurements off of a bilhag diagram to find the first hole placement. Then I measured the hole centers on the scope for the second hole. Then I measures from both side edges of the rail to be sure I had the center of the rail marked and drilled a small hole as a guild. before drilling all the way through, I placed the scope next to them to see if they lined up. the front hole was a little off so I moved over a bit and drilled them out. Here is the result. After taking it up and showing it off to the wife and kids, it was time to disassemble and prep for paint. It was finally warm enough to paint so I headed out to the garage. I don't rally have any where to hang things to paint, without getting paint on things not meant to be painted, so I threw some old trim up between the garage door opener and the shelves. Worked just fine. The trigger guard got the old lay on newspaper routine. Here is all the small parts painted. They are flat black, the paint was not quite dry when I took the pic. All that's left is to paint the blaster body and scope, but I would have to wait till the next day as the temp started to drop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 27, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 27, 2015 Only one day left in our unusually warm late winter weekend, so it was time to finish painting, before we dropped back down to freezing. I started by wrapping the barrel with tape so I could paint the grip with gloss black. It took four coats to get all of the fish eyes out of it. I had the same issue with the small parts I did the night before. I gave all the parts a good cleaning before painting, but it didn't seem to help. However, I switched to a different brand of paint for the barrel and had no issues. I painted the scope with gold for a base. After finishing the grip and scope, the family and I loaded up and went to town. Had to get some different paint and that gave the grip and scope time to dry. A couple hours later and a trip to the masking tape, and it was time to paint the blaster body flat black. I put three coats on with no fish eye troubles. And here it is. Everything painted, dry and ready for assembly. I started by placing the inner barrel and lining it up for the screw in the bottom on the grip. I applied the screw, and the barrel is locked in place. Next, I inserted the bolt and screwed the charging handle into it. I placed a sticky backed furniture pad from lowes in the blaster cap. Then put the blaster cap in place. showing the movable d-ring. If you remember earlier the mistake I made with the rear sight, here is how it looks now. The ridges are not perfect, but they will have to do. Next up is attaching the scope to the mount. Then the scope and mount to the blaster. Using steel colored paint, I painted the scope screws and the parts around the trigger. Then took a little break to let it dry. Now it's time to attach the movable selector switch. I cut the pin I had in the switch down to size and inserted it into the previously drilled hole. I cut the pin down for the trigger, placed the spring and trigger in place and inserted the pin. A little bit of two part epoxy and some rubber bands and the trigger guard is in place. After letting that set for a few minutes it was time to mount the folding stock. And there it sets, waiting to cure. If you haven't noticed yet I get impatient. Waiting is a chore sometimes. I had a bad urge to pick it up and play with it right away. Here is the semi- finished product. There are still a few places I need to do some touch up painting. Over all I'm pretty happy with it. That catches you up to where I am at currently.... Oh ya I got a new holster in two days ago, that I ordered from Gazmosis. I think it makes the blaster look much better. This concludes everything I have done to date with this build. I will post any further updates as they happen. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-Jay[TK] Posted March 29, 2015 Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Looking good, good, gooood Any plans on weathering the blaster? Or to add a washing to the ejection port and inner bolt? Your inner bolt suddenly appears on some pictures and already has the correct shape and a spring attached to it. Might have missed it, but where did that came from? Any WIP pictures of it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted March 29, 2015 Author Report Share Posted March 29, 2015 Looking good, good, gooood Any plans on weathering the blaster? Or to add a washing to the ejection port and inner bolt? Your inner bolt suddenly appears on some pictures and already has the correct shape and a spring attached to it. Might have missed it, but where did that came from? Any WIP pictures of it? Thank You Tino, I do plan on getting to the weathering of the blaster and the bolt, I have just been busy with getting my spare bucket built before my armor arrived. It came in Friday! The inner bolt I cut off of the 3/4" PVC pipe I used for the inner barrel. I glued a piece of 1/2" wooden dowel in the end I screwed the charging handle to. The spring I picked up at the hardware store, Menards, and had to stretch it out to get the correct number of coils. As far as pics, I didn't get any, sorry. I didn't do very good at stopping at taking pics as I worked on it. I get wrapped up in what I'm doing and forget. Lol When I do the weathering I will get better pics. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sabyre Posted November 29, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 29, 2015 Ok, so after a long break on the blaster, I have finally gotten back to doing the weathering. Keep in mind, I am no painter or artist so if you see any thing that needs more or less painting or some attention please feel free to let me know. All of the weathering was done with the dry brush technique. I used testors flat steel for the blaster and testors flat brass for the scope. Before After Before After Before After Before After Before After Before After Before After Here is what I have at this point on the blaster Now the scope Here I added a decal from trooperbay to the scope lens. This is what I have at this point. If you have any tips or suggestions please feel free to let me know. Thanks for reading. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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