It's been a hectic few weeks, who invented real life anyway??? But I have been working on this on and off and I can finally see the finish line! So, here's some more info about the build.
After sorting out finding the right screws I finished up the scope knob. I had to buy 100 screws and only needed 2, anyone need some? I also scribed some lines for the setting marks, lacking any good method to make the numbers this will have to do. I drilled holes for the screws, sprayed the whole thing satin black, and used lacquer thinner to weather. All the exposed metal is real brass so it looks very authentic. I'm very pleased with this!
Todd's mounds are awesome, heavy duty steel and pretty darn accurate. The only faults I can find with the design are with the thumbnuts. The 2 outer nuts have a bit of a bevel on the face edge which I think should be flat, and the outer edge/rim on the center one should be thicker. This is minor though, and the outer nuts are correctable (though I won't bother). They also had some deep machining marks/rings, which I filed off.
The lower bracket is also less than flat on the face, there are some machining marks and slight curves on the surface of the U shape, seen here:
Fixed with some elbow grease and files. I also sanded and sharpened up the rest of the scope mount (machining marks, especially bad on the cross bar).
This brackets all got blued with Perma Blue, which worked nicely. I couldn't get them quite as black as I might like, but the color matches the rest of the Denix well.
For the mounting bar and thumbnuts I wanted to accurately replicate the paint scratches on the hero prop after filming, ala
kpax amazing build. I traced photos of the scratches and cut masks from self adhesive vinyl using my Silhouette cutter. These were stuck to bare metal before spraying with satin black. Here are the masks for the thumbnuts (didn't get pics of the cross bar, I was to excited to spray!), compared with a 1/1 print of the well known prop photo.
Mounting bar after spraying and removing masks:
After the paint was mostly dry but still a bit soft I added some tiny scratches with screwdrivers and such. I also tried to match the more notable weathering marks on the scope bell, and tossed it around in my toolbox for some more random dings. The center thumbscrew is as finished by Todd's and sanded to remove some of the black finish. The scope mount bracket parts received a beating with various metal objects and some steel wool to weather the edges. Here's the mount and scope, also very pleased with how this turned out!
And before I go, here's the whole thing mostly together. I'll talk about trimming the tomtit/heat-sink parts and finishing the flash hider in my next post. Thanks for looking!