A tale of two pulse rifles

[sapper36]

About two years ago a member here (I forget who, sorry) offered a very inexpensive Pulse Rifle kit & since I always thought it was a neat prop I said why not? As I dug through the parts in the kit I found some flaws and areas that would require some serious work to look close to correct. I started collecting upgrade parts, Metal vents & barrell cradle, metal pins, trigger etc. About then I saw a really nice kit on Monsters in Motion so I migrated all my metal upgrade parts and a hyperdyne electronics kit to a somewhat sturdier and easier to build Pulse Rifle Kit. I finished that one about six months ago. I was then left with a box of the original kit parts, the trigger, switches and pins from the Monsters in Motion kit & spare metal bits. So I decided to dig in and make the best of all these parts to build another Pulse Rifle. Having the MIM Kit made this much easier as it showed me how some assembles should come out.

So Time for some pics....

First the MIM PulseRifle:

This is the MIMKit - It has real metal trigger, switches, pins, magazine release, vents and stock. It has the full hyperdyne sound & light kit with an amplifier. The Spaz cage is from the airsoft cage in the cheaper kit. I liked it better than the resin one in the MIM kit


And here is my Frankenstein Pulse rifle from all the leftovers:

I had some trouble getting a perfect fit on the shroud & I mounted a switch for the LEDs in the rear of the magazine well.

So there is the finished product. It has a movable trigger (a difficult trick considering I started with a solid resin Thompson) It has light up LEDs (95 only) The magazine & everything else is static.

Here are some pics before the painting was done...

You can see the shrouds almost had to be completely built from scratch for the underside of the sight rail and the trigger well for the remington here.

Considering what I started with I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.It looks like a Pulse Rifle - It came out pretty sturdy, It has light up LEDs & a moving trigger. I'd like it better if I could have gotten the shroud a bit neater and I had to use two screws to secure the bottom of the Remington for use as a battery door.

So any comments?

 

[Birdie]

Awesome work.

What is the SPAS cage on Frankenstein built from? Looks like all the vents are cut, is it from an airsoft?

 

[sapper36]

The Spas on the Frankenstein is the resin part from the MIM Kit It had nice detail but I was worried about how well the seams would hold up & the airsoft cage had better space for speakers. The MIMCage is two parts & hollow inside, but has alot of extra resin inside. Thanks for the complement.

 

[Noeland]

I'm working on my Wilco PR right now.

What did you use to close off the parts of the shroud you had to cut away? I find it too "open" in certain areas, especially in the GL trigger area.

They both look great by the way, kicking major heaps of ass there.. NIce builds.

Njc-----------------------

 

[kdawg1]

Damn those are nice I want one bad the only thing I'm missing is cash. Anyone know what a kidney is going for now. Nice work very nice you folks on this board truly amaze me with the talent here.

 

[sapper36]

To close in all that open space I got some .80 Styrene & cut strips, used my heat gun & tubes to shape it, & L bend plastruct for bracing. YOu can kind of see whats going on there in some of the build pics.

It was a major PITA i'll tell you. What would have improved the kit greatly was separate vacced parts for those depressions.

The good part is I needed really long strips of styrene so I found a local GE Polymer location & bought a 4' x 8' sheet of Styrene for $25. I've got enough styrene for scratch builds for the next ten years.

 

[SiR-ROUND]

Impressive work.

 

[DarthBish]

excellent work......
I've "ummed and ahhhed" about one of these for a while, and your pics have inspired me to build one.

What are the dimensions on these suckers.....length, width, height??

 

[prop fan]

I am also working on my Wilco Pulse Rifle. Nice work on your rifles...Hope to have mine finshed soon...your pics will serve as good refference photos

 

[sapper36]

Dimensions on the Frankenstein - 25"x10"x4" This doesn't include the stock for length as the stock can vary depending on how you install it.

Thanks again for all the positive comments guys - I really appreciate it - This one was a tough build. Next I get to work on a JLong Phaser.

 

[sapper36]

I almost forgot - One of my favorite things on this Pulse Rifle - I found a paint that really has just the right color for freshly blued steel - Looks just likemy M-16A2 did when I got it brand new - It's duplicolor Bumper Coating - Has just the perfect slightly bluish gray color. I know I'll be getting some cans for other projects.

 

[Sporak]

Do you a name and number for the paint?

 

[Noeland]

I recently discovered the Krylon "Ultra-Flat" series of camo paints, and have found they will give resin weapons a very nice "parkerized" style finish.

Here are two shots of my Wilco kit in progress.

Here is the paint I used.

This is not the same pulse rifle, I used BBQ paint and Krylon Ultra-Flat Olive Drab for the shroud on this static pulse rifle.

And taking inspiration from Matt, I used a paint pen to weather it. The results were fantasic, and I used duplicolor chrome paint for the ejection port. I use it for all my "shiny" needs in gold or silver.

I have been looking for a paint that might mimick bluing, so I will definately be checking out the bumper coating.. Thanks for sharing that.

 

[SiR-ROUND]

That's indeed a very good look. Would do nicely on my Lawgiver resin kit...