DL-44 build on newer Denix: Logo Addressed (no filler added)

Filed it down with my files while I still had the tape on as close as I could get before removing and then switching to sandpaper.

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As you can see in the photos below I still have refinement to do as there are still high spots but looking ok so far.

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Haven't had a whole lot of time, been traveling for work but managed to squeeze in an hour yesterday to measure what I need to cut for the upper pins. I first put the pins in and lined them up to see where they sit. I knew right off I wouldn't have as much to play with like the walls of the lower since the thickness just isn't there.
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Ended up with 3mm on each side so that gives me 1.5mm to play with on each side to set each of the screws in, cut them and file them smooth and flush.

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Just know you should take off no more than 1.5mm otherwise the pins won't have anything to grab onto. I'd also suggest under cutting them and them filing them down by hand to achieve the 1.5 so you don't over cut it if you are using a Dremel. Using a Dremel to start off with it's easy to over cut it. I should have mentioned this earlier on the earlier posts as well for the lowers.

I'll spare you the setting of the screws and filing since I showed that above in a few other posts. Really isn't that exciting and doesn't make anyone's nipples hard soooooo (y).

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When you put the uppers on and place the pins in, just double check both sides before screwing and screws to make sure you still have 1.5mm on each side. Doesn't take but a turn or two of the screw . Turn the screw and check, turn the screw and check and you should still have 1.5mm of wall on the opposite side for the other screw. Then you'll have yourself a completely filled and logo deleted Denix without any filler used. I still have some light sanding to do so once I can catch a few minutes between flights and sleep, I'll do that and post up a few pics before I do the bluing so you can see it can be done with a little patience ;)
 
Greetings! Old guy here, long time lurker, longer time SW fan. Figured it was time to jump in with a build of mine I started with my son over the weekend.

I was sitting in a counter terrorism meeting a few weeks ago, we had just stopped for a break and I was looking out the window atop the 50 story building and I snapped this picture...

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My first thought after looking at it, "Trench Run!!". The next half hour I couldn't concentrate and pew pew pew thoughts were in my head, and, so I did what every other geek would do while sitting in a meeting trying to look as if they were paying attention...I order this!

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Let me first start off by saying I appreciate the attention to detail you all take. This build is for fun for me and my son so the attention to details you'll see here are more so along the lines of what I can pass along to him of my knowledge of tools and craftsmanship and what I've also learned from here; a conglomerate of everything. In no way will it be screen accurate, but it will be a good 10 footer hopefully to the average person ;).

Didn't feel like sanding for hours so after going the Johnny 5 route and dissembling her we hit it with some Aircraft Remover (paint stripper).

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After about 10 to 15 minutes just scrub it with a wire brush and it easily falls off. I honestly couldn't tell what was used to color this replica. It was almost too thick to be a bluing but to thin to be an epoxy base. Some of the pitted areas of the casting need to addressed with sandpaper, so we chose to use a 600 grit as to not score the alloy too much. Not a super soft alloy, but definitely not the hardest.

The photo above with the green glove really shows the casting dimples after the black has been removed. Our replica dimples were rally deep and we were really worried were were going to have to fill them with putty which I really wanted to avoid.

Next order of business was to tackle the seam lines after we rinsed the castings thoroughly of the Aircraft Remover. You can clearly see the difference in the image below from the top of the hammer where I am still sanding and bottom where the seam is still there where I haven't sanded yet.

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Same with the larger casting dimples. I figured there was enough alloy to where we could feather down using a file first then use sandpaper.

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Looking better, but still needs to be refined before finishing (y)
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I grew up in a garage working on cars with my Dad all my life. I've had some of the nicest muscle cars known to man and women and still do. Working on them have taught me a lot of values and tricks/ways to do things so you'd be surprised as to how many of those things carry over to making a replica blaster.

One of those we are going to use to fix a defect in our replica. The area on the left side which is a raised rectangle that covers what would originally be the Lock Frame on a real Mauser came to use crushed on the corner. So much that it was split, raised and spread out of alignment as you can see in the photos below.

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So, how does one fix something like this? Well, if it were a dent in a 65 Chevelle hood I would heat it up and then cool it down rapidly and it would pop right up. But I have a bigger issue here and that the split. The best I could do was to heat it up and pull it with a putty knife and rapidly cool it, then shape. See below for results.

Had some high spots after pulling so we needed to shape and refine the best we could. The whole point in doing this was to not go the route of using any type of filler. I want to show the people this forum you can still get great results without using filler. Character flaws shouldn't matter too much as long as it doesn't bother you :p

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And here it is after some light sanding. You can see the walls are even all the way across and no more huge dent as the gap is closed too. The crack is still there but something we can live with. Way better than it was, we think. You'll also notice in some of our photos a white or off-white dusting on the alloy. It's basically what is called a guide coat to tell us what are the high and low points of the alloy. where to sand and not sand just as if we are sand a cars surface. It's basically a light powder.

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Now we can move on to my favorite part of the build so far, the removal of the Denix Logo. At some point Denix changed their logo and stamped it into the casting. Filling it was easy enough, but made it ugly once you started to blue it etc, so we decided to see if filing it down would make a difference in the appearance. If this has been done, I guess I have missed it and I'm the idiot around here, move along. Otherwise, take a gander and this is how we tackled it. We figured there was enough alloy there as to not tamper with the overall aesthetics of it, but as it was so close to the milling of the Lock Frame milling area, we had to be careful as to how we would file as we could file "straight" on as it would diminish the milled wall entirely. So we milled at an ever so slightly 2 or 3 degree angle until it was gone never reaching the edge of the wall above the logo. See progress pictures below.

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Checking for high spots, throwing on some guide coat

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And finally...

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From the rear you can barely tell on the left side there was any alloy taken off where the logo would have been. So glad we did this rather than fill it with putty.

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Time to do some more refinement, sanding and play with these little treats!

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I Suppose your „Counter terror Meeting“ looked like this
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fits the view [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]
Anyways, Great Metal work skills, i was just able to do the good old filler work...
 
Thanks. I just wanted to see if I could offer up something new. Maybe someone has done it I just haven’t seen any in my searches.

Sometimes, yes :lol::lol:. No matter how many times I try the Force choke, it never works. I have used the line “I find your lack of faith disturbing” but no one has caught it yet ;).
 
Yesterday we had a surprisingly nice day at around 68 here in the nations capital so I thought I'd take advantage of it, open up the garage and work on the bull nose before I secured the upper portion on. Even before I filed, I figured I'd slide the bull-nose on and see if by chance the darn thing would by the grace of God just slide right on. Ya never no, things come out of molds all the time in weird shapes, it just might have lol. Of course it didn't, but it was worth a shot. So I marked and filed where I needed to file as you can see below. All I did was use a ruler, used my scribe to give me nice straight guide line, then used my flat file starting in the grove tapering inward and down until it flattened out. Use firm but straight flat strokes, you're not sawing wood here.

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File, check, file check, file, check. Might seem like overkill, but it's how you don't overdo it. Should look like this to where it starts to slide under the sleeve.

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Here is where I started to realize I had an issue. Looking at where I am now you'd think I would be in the homestretch, right? Nope. In a perfect world that would be great if every Denix came out of the mold the exact same way as the way the DEC Bull-nose was machined since it's the exact same every single time it's machined. But since the Denix isn't, I quickly figured out I had an issue with the upper potion of the sleeve hitting on the top left and right sides by micro millimeters so it wouldn't slide any further. Not a huge deal, all that was needed was for me to do the same thing I did to the bottom, just shave off a few micro millimeters and Bob's your uncle.

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I went ahead and gave the top edge a skim just for good measure.

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After a good 15 minutes or so I had a nice squared edge all around, not too deep. I filed, I checked, I filed, I checked. I did this until it slipped on nice and snug because I didn't want it to rattle around at all when it was handled but I also made sure I didn't over do it on one side compared to the other making it sit uneven.

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My son has been working on the display for this and won't show it to me yet or even tell me his idea. I can't wait to see what he comes up with. I have a feeling it will be something rusty since he loves rust.
 
Holy crap, nice filing work! I did this, and went a little overboard on my first one and less on my second. I ended up using JB weld to cover a gap that had still opened up. I think it was me expecting the Denix to be predictable :D
 
Holy crap, nice filing work! I did this, and went a little overboard on my first one and less on my second. I ended up using JB weld to cover a gap that had still opened up. I think it was me expecting the Denix to be predictable :D
Thank you, I appreciate the compliment. I refuse to use any fillers on this so I'm taking my time. Condoms are more predictable, come on, you know better :lol:.
 
Its looking great, thanks for sharing. I reworked all the edges on my Denix to make them sharper as well as getting the trigger more refined. There is no question that with attention to detail in the way that you're doing here, your build is going to be top drawer...

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Its looking great, thanks for sharing. I reworked all the edges on my Denix to make them sharper as well as getting the trigger more refined. There is no question that with attention to detail in the way that you're doing here, your build is going to be top drawer...

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Oh, I really like that! Wonderful job, you’ve really almost made it your own keeping still with the classic styling. That’s what I love about this! You’ve given me something to ponder here because I was going to leave the trigger alone. I was perfectly ok with it being what I would refer to as a “5 footer” in that if someone saw it from that distance they wouldn’t be able to tell any difference from the next. Now, not so sure I can stand to look at how chunky it is. I may just take the Dremel to it and shave down a few layers to thin it out. By no means make it accurate, just pure it on a little diet.
 
Oh, I really like that! Wonderful job, you’ve really almost made it your own keeping still with the classic styling. That’s what I love about this! You’ve given me something to ponder here because I was going to leave the trigger alone. I was perfectly ok with it being what I would refer to as a “5 footer” in that if someone saw it from that distance they wouldn’t be able to tell any difference from the next. Now, not so sure I can stand to look at how chunky it is. I may just take the Dremel to it and shave down a few layers to thin it out. By no means make it accurate, just pure it on a little diet.

Thank you kindly, words of very high praise mate. Through my work I have regular opportunities to see the real props at the Skywalker Archives and while I like all the blasters as they were used in the movies, I especially like the Bapty version as it was before Roger Christian added the greeblies. I opted for that version and re-machined my Denix so that I could finish it in a way that looked similar to the original. It's certainly not accurate but with the mods, stamped numbers and attention to the trigger (which is always a dead giveaway) its nice and heavy and for me it looks more or less the part.

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Received my escutheon screws a few weeks ago but didn't play around with them until over the weekend. I quickly realized that I had a problem with the grips after mounting them, but the good thing is I know it's not the screw or the brass pieces. The holes that were pre-drilled from the factory under the grips that came with the Denix are too shallow as you can see on the left and right below. Both are also are different angles as one is almost flat and the other is very slanted.

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So I slapped them on to see where they would sit anyways to see what I would have to work with as there would be several ways I could deal with the issue. As you can see with the plastic washers in place it leaves a sizable gap between the grip and the frame, very noticeable on the left side.

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Next I tried it without the washers just to see what it would look like, but I knew it would draw the brass inward, but still wanted to see what it did. A little bit better fit, but as you can see, the screw sat way too far out and the left grip droops down because of the angle the brass sits inside the grip.

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I really don't feel like spending money for new grips so I will try my hand at correcting the shape of the holes for these brass pieces. If I end up cracking these for some reason, I do like the walnut grips DEC has, just don't want to pony up the $50 for them right now.
 
Thank you kindly, words of very high praise mate. Through my work I have regular opportunities to see the real props at the Skywalker Archives and while I like all the blasters as they were used in the movies, I especially like the Bapty version as it was before Roger Christian added the greeblies. I opted for that version and re-machined my Denix so that I could finish it in a way that looked similar to the original. It's certainly not accurate but with the mods, stamped numbers and attention to the trigger (which is always a dead giveaway) its nice and heavy and for me it looks more or less the part.

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This version is my favorite too, I was actually disappointed after adding the tomtit cylinders, and then disappointed about being disappointed. The thin magazine area I think is very badass and the grill covers the corners!
 
Had a chance to work on the grips today to correct the incorrect sitting levels of the brass escutcheon fittings shown in the previous post.

I placed the fitting in the grip to see where the high level was and then removed it, marked the area with a pencil and then just used a file to take it down little by little. I was going to use a Dremel but I didn’t want to over sand it because the fitting needs to stay at a certain level in order to look right from the outside. The full round hand file did the trick since the tip is knurled and I can control it better.

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As you can see below, the before and after is pretty clear. It fits flush now.

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Test fitted the grips and now they fit perfectly flush as well.

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KramStaar changed my mind for me without much pressure at all once he mentioned the trigger work. I was going to leave mine alone but I decided to just sharpen it up a little. Didn’t take off a lot but did take off enough to sharpen the edges and the profile a little as you can see in the before and after below. Still need to take out that dimple but also might still take out some more metal to define the shape of the trigger.

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Took off some more metal and removed that dimple so I’m pretty happy with it I think. Also think I’ll leave it alone now and prep her for some aluminum black as I’ve covered all bases in the build that I want to.

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