Delayed Gratification: Building Han Solo's Blaster -- 36 Years Later

I have wanted Han Solo’s blaster ever since I saw Star Wars as a ten-year old kid. How badly did I want it? Well, here’s my Halloween costume for 1977. (Hint: I'm not the princess.)



The “blaster” is a toy machine gun I had to beg my parents to buy. They are quite the pacifists and the gun was thrown out the next day. I had to make do with Lego versions hidden under my bed until the Kenner toy came out in 1978. I made so much noise about it that I think my parents finally just gave in. I still have it.



I thought about the real prop on and off over the years and figured I’d make a replica of some kind eventually. None of the Master Replica versions really appealed to me because they aren't functional. I knew the original was made using a real gun because I remember seeing it fire blanks in The Making of Star Wars. Jump to the 8 minute 50 second mark in the following video to see the behind the scenes shot of Harrison Ford firing on set.

[video=dailymotion;xcdkap]http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xcdkap_the-making-of-star-wars-1-4-1977_shortfilms&start=531[/video]

In early 2013 I decided to see if anyone had built a definitive Han Solo blaster. At the time I didn't even know that my favorite prop of all time was called a DL-44. I finally did a Google search and discovered the RPF. My bank account still hasn't forgiven me.

Not only were people building Solo’s gun, but the ultimate quest for accuracy was happening! I found the definitive DL-44 thread started by Deadbolt:

http://www.therpf.com/f79/anh-hero-dl-44-discussion-three-anh-greeblies-found-118186/

As of today it's up to 120 pages.

I read the whole thing and realized I had my work cut out for me. The time and effort everyone has put into researching and designing these parts is incredible. Special mention has to go to Pat Matera, aka Kpax, for his detailed drawings and analysis. I had just missed the first run of the fantastic parts that Dave, aka dmachinist, makes and sells through Dark Energy Creations, but it looked like there could be another run coming if there were enough interest.

I crossed my fingers and started looking for the right C-96 Mauser. In the meantime I decided I should try building something simple to see if I even had a chance of successfully completing a prop replica, something I had no experience doing. I went for Luke’s Lightsaber from Star Wars. Iconic and simple. The friendly and talented people at the RPF were extremely helpful and I was thrilled when I finally held my first prop replica in my hands.



Here's a link to that build thread if anyone is curious: http://www.therpf.com/f79/noob-hope-graflex-lightsaber-build-176993/

Enough of my babbling. It's time to get the parts together and build Han Solo's Hero Blaster.

Love the opening pic!

Once Dave announced that he'd definitely be making another run of parts, this time with a few refinements, I was committed. I started searching the Web and gun stores for the perfect Mauser. I also needed an original German WWI vintage Hensoldt-Wetzlar Dialyt 3X rifle scope.

The first thing I found was the scope. I was told by a fellow RPF member of an auction on the German eBay site and I jumped in. I ended up, unknowingly, in a bidding war with Scottjua, who is a master of blaster builds here on the RPF, and the price jumped far higher than either of us expected. I won because I'd been insane and put in a stupidly high price for my maximum bid. I laid low while the RPF made fun of whoever the idiot was who'd won the auction, and waited for my scope to arrive.

When I got the scope I was less than thrilled.



It was a rusty mess! The only thing it had going for it (aside from being a hundred years old and kin to the real thing used on the prop) was that the engraving of the name and model on the right side below the windage knob were screen accurate. But the windage knob had the wrong knurling and the rust was so bad I was afraid the thing would crumble to dust.

I disassembled the scope, making a diagram as I went so I'd know how all the bits went together later. I soaked the steel tube in Boeshield T-9 rust remover for 24 hours, hoping there'd be something left when the time was up, and then attacked it with steel wool, but that did very little. I pulled out the Dremel and went to work with steel wire brushes. I had to change to stainless-steel brushes because the steel ones disintegrated quickly and you could almost see the rust return to the scope as soon as it was stripped away.

I used the Dremel as much as I dared, and got it to this point:



I never was able to get rid of the dark black color in the pitted recesses. Something about 100 year old rusted steel I suppose? Anyway, I stuck the tube in a container of my favorite rust inhibitor, a lubricant called ACF-50 made for the aircraft industry, and decided not to think about the scope for a while. I figured I could always use the one Dave was going to include with the DEC kit. As for the money I'd wasted on the real scope? I took that as a lesson in not getting too obsessive about this hobby.

Let's see how well that lesson sticks. :$

Next: The Mauser

Oh man... sorry about that scope war. I had no idea... I thought I went high, and then bam... lost... I remember calling ebay in a huff too about how I thought I had gotten my bid in time. I guess it all worked out, but since I have learned that same lesson... let it go and another will come. Since then I've had 5!

Not to derail the thread, but the Journey is so familiar. Your thread rocks because it tells the story, mine is just lame build pics. Lol.

I had better luck with the Mauser. I had seen several in shops and online, and they usually were priced around $3000 for a good quality gun! I wanted to be able to fire mine so I didn't want some old broken down relic. Luckily I found an auction on Gunbroker.com for a Mauser that wouldn't interest any serious collectors. It had non-matching upper and lower serial numbers, so it was made from the parts of two different guns, just like the hero prop! It had also been worked on by a gunsmith in Illinois who made sure it was safe to fire, which is good, but he stamped his name on the frame, which is bad. Still, I was happy with what I got for the price. Here she is:



The grip has the wrong number of grooves (the hero had 32 IIRC) and the safety is the version with the hole instead of being solid like the hero, but all in all I'm very happy. Also, since this is by no means a collector's item, I will feel far less guilt about cutting the barrel!

Now there's a lot of waiting that happens while the second run of DEC parts is being made. I was in New York working and called up Pat Matera to see if I could visit the shop and see what he and Dave were doing. I had a great afternoon visiting with them. You wouldn't believe how many machines Dave has crammed into his shop, or the quality of the things he makes in there. He builds instruments for the medical industry that are so intricate and exact that it's clear why his parts for the blaster are so great. Their obsessive attention to detail and perfectionism are why I think this will be the perfect prop replica. And so I waited...

Meanwhile, I figured I'd better learn how to blue various metals and work with gun/prop/replica type stuff. So I built a Tomenosuke Bladerunner Blaster. Here's the finished gun. I haven't weathered it yet, and I may not. I plan to build another one with the most recent offering from Tomenosuke, but that one will go on a real Charter Arms .44 spl Bulldog. That one I'll weather.



So much for that lesson about not getting obsessive.

After tackling this thing I was much more comfortable with the idea of working on the real Mauser. I had learned a LOT about using the Birchwood Casey bluing liquids, but more on that later. The parts arrived from DEC and it was time to get started.

The first thing I did was the mystery disk. I spent forever lining things up to make certain it was in the right place. The fit of the grill on the front of the frame is the most useful spacial reference, followed by how far up the little curve of the frame below the rails you go. I looked carefully at all the reference shots and used one of the tape disks in the DEC kit to make a template out of clear acetate. The template allowed me to sand away the disk while protecting the frame. I also used a pair of dividers to scribe the circle into the frame so there would be the hint of an edge like in the photos. I wasn't going to mill the disk into the surface, but I was trying to emulate what I saw in the reference photos. Was the gun blued or painted while something was glued in the disk's place? After whatever it was got knocked off was there a thickness to the coating that surrounded the disk? It's hard to say and there's no real consensus, but I decided I liked the look of the blued gun. I don't think it was painted, so I decided to go with the bare steel for the disk. Here's the result: Sorry, it's a crappy cell phone shot.



I then made my first big mistake with the gun. I wanted to add the center hole in the mystery disk, and I did it the wrong way. Don't do this!



I used an 1/8th inch bit to mill a shallow hole in the center of the disk. Except I didn't hit dead center. So I had to go up to a 5/32nd inch bit and recenter the hole. Now it's too big and looks terrible. I figured I'd hit the center with a little bluing fluid and see if that helped.



Nope! Disaster. It looked even worse. So far not so good. I wasn't sure what the heck I was going to do about that so I decided to move on.

Next I cut down the barrel. That hardened steel is tough stuff! I have access to a decent machine shop and tried the band saw first. It may have been an old blade, but it did nothing. I moved to the mill and ground away with an end mill until the sight was gone. Then I carefully fitted the DEC parts and measured MANY TIMES before making the final cut. I'd screwed up enough so far, I didn't want to screw this up too. I once heard a grip on set jokingly say "I've cut this thing twice and it's still too short!" It may have been a joke, but I've always remembered it. Measure a LOT, cut once. Here we go:



And now fitting the parts:



Okay, I screwed up the mystery disk, but I didn't screw up the barrel. Now it's starting to look like something! You'll notice I did a little extra work on the barrel. I milled a flat spot for the socket-head cap screw to grab and I milled three little dimples for the set screws in the bull barrel. (This meant I needed longer set screws. Here's the link to the ones I bought from McMaster Carr. They worked perfectly: http://www.mcmaster.com/#91313a119/=ss1zud ) I don't want anything shifting around when I fire the gun and I figured these would help. We'll get back to that later.

A quick word on the DEC parts. They are fantastic! Thanks so much to all involved for making these. By the way, these are all the steel parts from the DEC run. I did buy an aluminum Flash Hider in case the steel one was too much mass for the gun to cycle, but it'll be a while before this gun makes it to the range to find out. Long way to go...

Next I tackled mounting the scope. I decided to weld my scope mounting bracket on for a few reasons. First, I figured it would be the best way for the mount to hold up to the force of firing the gun. I was also skeptical about the thinness of the magazine well and my ability to thread a hole that would be strong enough to hold. If the gun never needed to function again I'd just have drilled a hole through the magwell and bolted the threaded rod in place from the inside like you would with a Denix. Also, I saw a detail in the following photo that helped convince me welding was the right way to go. This is the Hero Prop before the addition of the grill.



Does this look like a weld bead to anyone else? I know there are different opinions about how the mounts were attached, but I've convinced myself that the guys at Bapty welded theirs on. It would be the easiest thing for them to do, and the strongest. They obviously didn't care about being too precious. After all, the Star Wars universe is pretty beat up.

Another thing that convinced me to weld the part was the fact that my friend's father is a master welder. I have zero skills when it comes to welding, but they convinced me it was the right way to go. And we're off:

I spent another huge amount of time studying the reference photos to make certain I had the scope mounts lined up in the right place. This is another one of those, "we're going to do this once" kind of things. To say I was nervous while this was going on is a severe understatement.



And the result:



Hmmm... Not as pretty as I'd hoped. Pretty funky in fact. Very strong. But very ugly. I wasn't particularly happy at this point, but one thing was for certain, my scope wasn't going to fall off.

I should explain what I did. The welded nuts in the above photos are actually the black knurled thumbnuts from the DEC kit. I turned them down on a lathe until the overhang was gone and made them the mounts for the threaded rods. That meant I needed more thumbnuts and here's the McMaster Carr link for those: http://www.mcmaster.com/#92815a115/=ss2gsi

At least now I could bolt everything together and get a feel for what this beast would be like when finished. It is solid and weighs a ton!



In our next episode I try to figure out how to cover up all the mistakes and ugliness I've been creating. Thanks for looking!

scottjua said:

Oh man... sorry about that scope war. I had no idea... I thought I went high, and then bam... lost... I remember calling ebay in a huff too about how I thought I had gotten my bid in time. I guess it all worked out, but since I have learned that same lesson... let it go and another will come. Since then I've had 5!


Not to derail the thread, but the Journey is so familiar. Your thread rocks because it tells the story, mine is just lame build pics. Lol.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliment, Scott. I was afraid I'd bore everyone to death! And never belittle your build threads. I bet your photos have done more to inspire blaster builds than anything else here. Keep up the great work.


As for the scope, I can't believe you found five more, including one with the right windage knob! I'm still looking... But I'll be a lot more careful in the next auction!

I decided that I would start by filing down the weld beads so they weren't so obvious. I used my Dremel and some small files hoping desperately that I wouldn't mar the surface and have to refinish the bluing of the gun. No such luck:



Even after I taped the frame to protect it I still managed to scuff up the bluing enough that the only solution was to strip the frame completely and start over. Hooray! At least I managed to get the weld beads down to a less offensive size. I also sanded down the frame enough to get rid of the gunsmith's stamp. It used to be right above the wooden grip on the gun's right side. All gone now which is good. It would have driven me nuts.

Pat Matera looked at a photo I sent him and mentioned that the thumbnuts I'd welded on were a smaller outer diameter than the ones on the hero prop. He thought I could machine some aluminum sleeves to go around the thumbnuts to make them the correct diameter as well as to help hide the weld beads. I thought that was a great idea. I bought some aluminum tube stock and headed back to the machine shop.

Here are the before and after shots:



And the forward mount:



When the parts are bolted together the weld beads are nowhere near as obvious:



Thanks for the idea, Kpax, I feel much better now. And since I had to strip the frame, I might as well see what I can do about fixing the mystery disk.

To be continued...

Awesome thread!

This is a hopeful future project of mine... I'm warming up on the Boba Debt ROTJ blaster, but this is the end dream, using a real mauser (deactivated... if I can find).

Your bladerunner link isn't working. THAT is a gun I REALLLLY want. If you do your real parts one, and are letting go of the other... Hit me first! heh.

VFX Freak said:

Thanks for the compliment, Scott. I was afraid I'd bore everyone to death! And never belittle your build threads. I bet your photos have done more to inspire blaster builds than anything else here. Keep up the great work.


As for the scope, I can't believe you found five more, including one with the right windage knob! I'm still looking... But I'll be a lot more careful in the next auction!

Click to expand...

thanks man! And looking forward to the new updates.

On the scope... I might be able to help with that... to a degree. ^_^ Email me.

NeoRutty said:

This is a hopeful future project of mine... I'm warming up on the Boba Debt ROTJ blaster, but this is the end dream, using a real mauser (deactivated... if I can find).

Your bladerunner link isn't working. THAT is a gun I REALLLLY want. If you do your real parts one, and are letting go of the other... Hit me first! heh.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip about the Bladerunner pics. I redid it with a different link so hopefully it's working now. And should I ever decide to sell the Bladerunner Blaster I've built once I finish the live-fire version, I will let you know!

- - - Updated - - -

Clutch said:

Awesome thread!

Click to expand...

Thanks, Clutch! That's huge coming from you.

Wow! What a great story! I also love the youth pic!

I hated the hole I'd drilled in the mystery disk so much that I decided it was worth trying to fill it and do it over. I asked the welder who did the scope mounts if he thought it was possible and he said he'd give it a try. The results weren't pretty at first, and I found the work I had ahead of me somewhat daunting, but the hole was filled with metal.



Time to start sanding. Have I mentioned yet how much I hate sanding? When people ask me what my hobby is called I tell them, "Sanding. Along with dropping, scraping, breaking, searching cursing and losing." That seems to be what I do more often than say, assembling cool things. I am so tired of sanding!

Rant over, on with the sanding: After several sheets of wet/dry sandpaper and even more elbow grease I had something that looked like this:



If you look closely you can see three pin sized holes that the molten metal left behind in the center of the mystery disk, but it looks so much better than the perfectly symmetric and incorrectly-sized hole that I'm thrilled. The cleanly milled hole looked so wrong that I began rethinking whether or not there's really a hole there in the Hero Prop or not. After studying the reference photos on the main thread some more I decided it was more of a divot with some bluing left in it.

At one point while I was sanding down the frame there was a spot that ended up looking just like the spot in the center of the disk. I should have photographed it but I didn't. It was in the wrong place so I kept sanding, but it gave me the idea that the hole in the center of the disk should look more random, like a leftover from something that didn't quite work right.

So now it was time to blue the frame. I learned a lot from bluing all the parts for the Tomenosuke Bladerunner Blaster, and I put those techniques to use. It's important that the parts not be too shiny and smooth or the bluing compound has nothing to bite into. (RPF member Nwerke helped me figure that one out.) I found that the gray Ultra Fine Scotchbrite pads give you the perfect texture and finish.

I started by using very diluted Birchwood Casey Super Blue. For the zinc parts of the Bladerunner gun I used a 1% solution, but with the more robust steel of the Mauser I found that a 10% solution (cut with distilled water) was a good starting point. I put the frame in a Ziploc bag of the solution so it was completely covered, and watched as it slowly darkened. I then rubbed a 50% Super Blue solution over the gun using lintless Kimtech tissues. When the 50% solution stopped having an effect I moved on to the 100% Super Blue. It's tough to do a large and oddly shaped piece. The stuff runs all over the place and causes uneven staining. Keep working at it and use plenty more elbow grease. The Super Blue acts as its own solvent so you can go over areas you're not happy with over and over.

Eventually you reach a point where the gun doesn't get any darker and it's time to set the piece aside for 24 hours. I soak mine in Barricade which helps even out and harden the coating. Here's the result:



It's hard to photograph the pieces well because any color reflects in the polished metal and makes the bluing look less even than it is. I guess I should have worn black gloves when taking the pictures because it's the reflection of my hands that are throwing the color off. The result actually looks really good in person. And it matches the upper pretty well too:



And look! I get to start over with the mystery disk!

A few more notes about the bluing. You'll notice that the weld beads around the scope mount attachment points didn't blue. That's because the welding was done with stainless-steel welding rod, and stainless-steel doesn't blue. Oops. Won't make that mistake again.

Also, there's a LOT of detail about what I learned from bluing the Bladerunner gun, and a lot of it applies to this build. I wrote up a bluing guide which I posted here:

http://www.therpf.com/f9/blade-runn...174014/index36.html?highlight=VFX#post3102506

It's really long so I'm not going to take up room with it here.

Thanks for reading, more to come...

Wow ... what a great read David ... and also very nice you add in your mistakes and redos as well, because it's those that give us 'lefthanded' geeks confidence to start tackling our own projects ... ups an downs included

Chaim

Before I tackled the mystery disk again, (I was understandably gun-shy at this point) I wanted to make some real progress. I began bluing the rest of the parts. This meant... wait for it...

You guessed it: MORE SANDING! The DEC parts are beautifully made, but they do have machining marks on them that didn't fit with my concept of the Star Wars aesthetic. I spent hours sanding the parts to get the marks off, by which time they almost looked like they were chrome plated! Here's the scope mount when I was done with the sanding and polishing:



Talk about looking like it doesn't belong in the Star Wars universe! I ended up sending this to dmachinist who was kind enough to bead-blast it for me because I had zero confidence that anything I was capable of doing myself would give the piece the right texture. We'll get back to the scope mount later.

Next I prepped and blued the flash-hider, booster, and bull-barrel. Here they are after getting the full Super Blue treatment:



To get the weathered look of the flash-hider I dropped it in a container of white vinegar for about five minutes. I got the idea from Adam Savage's video about his Bladerunner Blaster collection. He said he used white vinegar to remove the bluing from his Steyr reciever, and that it took about an hour to get the factory bluing off. I didn't want to strip the part, just give it a good worn look. When I pulled the piece out of the vinegar the bluing had softened and I rubbed at it a bit with some Scotchbrite. Then I hit the end with a blowtorch to give it a bit of heat discoloration. It's a blaster after all! Here's the result:



Next I used Birchwood Casey Brass Black to blacken all the brass scope parts. I read somewhere that the original parts are painted, but my vintage scope didn't look like it was. I thought I'd get a better vintage look by blackening the parts chemically, and then wearing away the black later. Here's all the bits:



Then I used the BIrchwood Casey Super Blue to blue the steel scope tubes for both the DEC kit part and the battered and pitted vintage scope. They both came out pretty well. I was happy to see that the pitting on the vintage scope wasn't as apparent after it was black. The DEC part came out bluer than I wanted, no matter how many times I attacked it.



The vintage scope looked like it had been through the Clone Wars, but the DEC scope needed some weathering. I took an idea from one of Clutch's posts and rattled the scope around in a bag of tools. I also tried to duplicate the signature scratches and scuffs with a file and a knife.



By the way, if anyone is wondering how I managed to do such a perfect job of finishing the engraving on the DEC scope, it's because I didn't. Kpax was kind enough to do that for me, and he's an artist with a very steady hand!

Now I could start putting stuff together and it finally began to look like something resembling the Hero prop.



The color difference between the scope and the rest of the gun is obvious here. I'm going to have to do something about that. Also, no mystery disk or grill yet, but I have given the scope mount the Super Blue treatment. I also dinged it with a rusty old hammer, but it will need more work. The crossbar has been painted with black primer and the center knob for the scope mount was blued with the Super Blue.

Something else I forgot to mention: the sharp-eyed among you might notice that the safety is now the correct solid type. I found the right part for sale at Sarco and just had to strip and re-blue it to match. Getting closer. This was the first moment I really felt the light at the end of the tunnel.

Stay tuned for Mystery Disk Redux!

Sym-Cha said:

Wow ... what a great read David ... and also very nice you add in your mistakes and redos as well, because it's those that give us 'lefthanded' geeks confidence to start tackling our own projects ... ups an downs included

Chaim

Click to expand...

Thanks, Chaim! I owe you a lot of thanks as well. You have helped me out with everything I've built so far. It's people like you that make the RPF such a great place.

I love your reference to "lefthanded geeks." I seem to learn by trial and error. With a heavy emphasis on the error! :rolleyes

But in every case I've kept working at it and managed to come out with a final result that makes me very happy.

WOW... THAT'S INCREDIBLE! I can't wait to see how your DL-44 is going to turn out, my MGC build is on hold for a little while. I just wish I had caught run 2 before it was over... Nice touch with replacing the safety too, that really helps! :thumbsup

Okay, here's where we are now:



We're really getting there. I think the gun looks better with the beat up vintage scope, so I'm sticking with that for now. Other improvements since the last post include the grill, which has been sanded to fit and painted, and the new grips. Dmachinist made a few custom grips for customers with real Mausers when it was discovered that there were several different sized grips out there on the real guns. I used Birchwood Casey Walnut Stain and Tru-Oil to finish the wooden grips, rubbing lightly with steel wool in between coats. I just kept applying coats one day after the next until the grips were as dark as the originals. I carved and sanded a bit to get the fit perfect, and then used the original hardware to bolt the grips on. They'll need some weathering eventually.

The different colors of the various parts doesn't bother me too much, but I will put some work into trying to make the scope mount a little darker.

And now I can't wait any more. It's time to try the mystery disk again.

Once again I broke out the acetate template. I actually have a photo of it this time:



I stuck the template on with Spray 77. A word of warning: the spray 77 adhesive can damage the fragile bluing of a home-bluing job. Ask me how I know. If I had protected the bluing with something like Renaissance Wax it probably would have been fine. That's okay though, I wanted to make the frame a little darker anyway. It had become slightly lighter since the first time I re-blued it. I guess the color just faded a bit. I was worried about using the very runny Super Blue liquid again because it gets everywhere and is difficult to control. Luckily I found a solution. i used the Perma Blue Paste. It's much easier to control and did a nice job of darkening and evening out the tones of the frame.

I applied a little drop of Super Blue to the center of the mystery disk, which I had gouged a bit with a drill bit to make an uneven indentation, and voila!



A mystery disk I can be proud of! I also used some very diluted Super Blue on a Q-Tip to dirty up the mystery disk a bit as it looked way too clean. This may not look exactly like the Hero Prop, but it certainly has the right spirit and tone, in my opinion. I think it's a lot better than a neatly drilled hole.

Moving along I weathered the scope crossbar and the thumbnuts to match the prop. I used a flat bladed screwdriver to scrape off the paint. I didn't go all the way here. I left the wear on the crossbar somewhere like it might have been in the middle of production. The crossbar seems to have started out fairly clean, judging by the pre-production photos, but the process of removing the scope scraped the paint off during the course of production. So I picked something just short of the final version of the gun.



The threaded rods have been trimmed and weathered, and the scope mount has received another round of bluing and a lot more smashing and scraping with a hammer. It looks a lot different than it did when it was all bright and shiny. Now it looks like it belongs in the Star Wars universe. I find that the first scrape is pretty hard to make on a nice new piece, but once the first ding is there, the others follow easily. I think I managed not to overdo it. I also used steel wool to wear off the bluing on the central scope moounting knob, once again matching the reference photos.



On the other side of the scope mount I sanded off the bluing on the flat spot that the builders so kindly included, and then I used a chisel to hack the triangular gouge into the front scope ring immediately beneath the screw.

There's still work to be done, but things are starting to look pretty good now.



That's all I've got in me for one day. From the beginning of this thread to here took most of an afternoon to post, but it represents many months of work. And there's still more to come.

Thanks again for looking!