I'm pretty sure smoke/orange would have passed as a 2-tone as well if they even consider it a RIF.
Yeah, I'm in the UK and there didn't seem to be any issue with HLJ sending me a smoke/orange version.
Some more progress on my conversion...
The detail at the front of the receiver is installed. It's not absolutely accurate to the original and it still needs a bit of filling and finessing once the two halves of the gun are re-united, but I'm really happy with how it looks - it's basically the supplied orange barrel tip, reversed with the gap between the inner and outer plastic rings filled. The inner ring was sanded down so that the fill is a sloping curve rather than flat. The 'tip' is a slightly modified pawn from a mini travelling chess set! It stands on a section of styrene tube and drops into the centre of the inner ring of the orange part. Then the whole thing slides into the end of a 22mm acrylic tube which fits inside the ground out opening at the front of the receiver. A curve to match the top of the barrel was ground into the bottom using a Dremel and another piece of smaller diameter acrylic tube is glued in place to fill in the missing top of the barrel where it meets the bottom of the receiver. I've given the whole thing a quick coat of paint to get an idea of the final effect. The barrel will eventually be drilled out and another acrylic tube inserted to accurise that a bit.
I've also built the battery access into the handle. After some thought I realised that I might be able to actually use the same method to attache the removable butt plate as the actual gun does - i.e. two 4mm hex bolts in recessed holes in the butt plate. And it actually works! The process was quite tricky though.
I sawed off the butt plate just below the grips (while the two halves of the blaster were firmly held together) and glued the two halves together. Then I drilled two 8mm holes in the correct places. A 'plate' of styrene sheet 4mm thick was epoxied into the 'top' opening of the plate (this was tricky as it has to be slightly larger than the opening left by the sawing so that when the nuts are tightened the plate is pushed up against the inside edge of the opening so that the butt plate is firmly held in place. Two 8mm tubes were glued into the drill holes diving neat round recesses 6mm in diameter.
For the interior of the handle, I cut several short lengths of various diameters of styrene tube. First is a 5mm tube with a 4mm inner diameter. 4mm nuts were superglued into the ends of these (for the hex bolts to screw into). It's REALLY important that these nuts are held securely in place and can't rotate within the styrene tube. Then two larger diameter tubes are used as 'sleeves', each one plastic cement bonded to the previous to build up the final thickness (about 8mm). I had to make sure that I didn't make the final attachment points so big that a PP3 battery wouldn't fit between them!
Now the crucial part. The two 4mm hex bolts are inserted through the butt plate and screwed tightly into the two nuts in the attachments - which are still unattached to anything. You need a 1.5mm allen key for this. The whole thing is then inserted, along with a PP3 battery for spacing, into one half of the gun handle. The butt plate is lined up correctly and lightly 'tacked' in place to the bottom of the handle with two or three drops of superglue (it's vital that the butt plate can be removed again easily without damaging it or the handle!). This gives the position the nut attachments will need to be in to a) allow the battery to pass between them, and b) ensure the butt plate fits correctly and lines up properly side to side and end to end when it's attached using just the bolts. The attachments were epoxied in place into the one half of the gun, using Milliput to fill in gaps, and then hot-glued for absolute security.
Once they were firmly fixed the hex bolts were unscrewed and the butt plate carefully removed from the handle. You now have a removable butt plate which attaches to the handle using just the hex bolts into the nuts in the handle and allows the insertion of the battery. One final thing to watch for is that the wires on the battery clip are long enough to allow the clip to be accessible (not stuck inside the handle!).
So! Almost ready to close up the blaster and start filling, sanding and painting now... One further thing That I've decided to do is to replace a few of the bits of 'hardware' that are moulded in (like the domed hex bolt and the grub screws on the top of the barrel) just to crisp up the detail. So I've acquired a few 'detailing' bits. Those will probably go on once the gun is together.
Further updates in due course!
