Star Wars Rebels - Kanan's DL-18 Blaster Build

[Mollins]

Hey folks, I've been working on a Kanan costume with Lee for him, and he's started work on building a Rebels style DL-18 for the costume.

It's built off of a blueprint of the movie blaster, but then modification done when looking at reference from the show to get it look more like it does in the show.

Here's the very beginnings of the gun; layers of sintra and some pipe











Once the base layers of sintra were glued together, another piece of sintra was then heated and shaped over the pipe on top, to get that tube shape on top of the gun.





Some filling and sanding was done to begin to get the shapes on the sides of the gun smoothed out correctly, the small tube area on the back of the gu nwas also added, made fro ma scrap piece of pipe, filled and then some more pipe and apoxie sculpt.





After this, the sides of the grips were attached with space left for the leather grips to go into when completed.



Some more general work was done on filling and sanding and shaping the blaster, the grip at this point has been shaped much more, and the area above the grip has been put to shape, the small angle piece on the front end of the gun here is different to how it originally looked - looking at some better reference images we noticed that it is thinner than we had it on the gun, so Lee removed it from the gun and replaced it with this new piece. He also corrected the top shape, by extending it further back.

Space for the trigger has also been cut out of the main body of the gun, and holes drilled for the pin for the trigger. Notches have also been added on the underside of the main body and to the grip for placement of the trigger guard.

The front area of the blaster has also begun taking shape at this point, made from more sintra and bondo.



Much more shaping has been done here to the main body, correcting the shape on the back end, as well as adding the base for the scope rails and holes for posts to go in nad hold the side ...things. Obviously, the front of the barrel has changed slightly also.



The shape was generally cleaned up through more sanding, and the raised edge has been added with some strips of plastic, the bottom barrel has also been shortened to the same length as the top barrel.



These are the side parts, their design is different from the movie blaster that Luke uses, but only slightly. The top part is a slightly different shape, and doesn't have the rocket/missile model part on it, and the bottom arm doesn't have the engine block part on it, instead it simply has two holes in the piece.

The other holes in the arms are there for placement of plastic rods to attach them to the gun.

Well, that's where the gun's at so far! The gun is actually being made with molding in mind, which is why some parts aren't just glued straight in.

Hope you folks like the gun so far, and will like it when it's done!

 

[Mollins]

Just a small update for today - work has begun on the sight for the top of the weapon, but have to wait to do more work due to how long the apoxie sculpt takes to cure.

Very rough at the moment, but will easily clean up once it's set.





Sight is made from an acrylic tube, with a styrene tube running through it for the thinned end.

Trigger is designed for the spring to sit at the back for a more tactile trigger.

 

[mac3kuby]

Love the type of build. Progress looks great. Keep it up.

 

[Mollins]

Love the type of build. Progress looks great. Keep it up.

Thanks!

Just a small update today, the scope mounts are being worked on now.

For the moment, they're on the main body of the gun, but for the final piece, it will be attached to the scope itself, to allow for better and easier moulding and casting.







The pegs on the side of the main body are to allow the side plate parts to be attached once it's all done.

Obviously, it's still in need of cleaning up, but I'm certainly pleased with how it's coming together - it's really looking like the blaster from the show to my eye.

 

[Mollins]

Just a small update this time, more general clean up has been done on the blaster, it's into the paint and sand phase now, so it'll get some sprays of filler primer and sanded down to make sure it's all nice and smooth.

The scope is almost done too, shaped to the slight taper it has, and the front end looking a whole ton more like the reference art.

The side panels have been sanded to shape (just rounding off the edges slightly) and put together, they just need some small tweaks then they're ready for silicone, same goes for the trigger.







For the sight, I ordered some glass cabochons which ought to fit into them for the glass lens of the scope, I'm looking forward to getting this thing completely finished, and we're almost there!

 

[Mollins]

More work done, general filling and sanding and whatnot!

The main body of the blaster has been getting filler primer coats and sanding to get it even, we were thinking of going for a really really smooth finish, but decided against it, and instead, we'll be giving it a very very slight texture with some paint, should help it look nice when weathered up fully.




A jig was built to shape the trigger guard, both the jig and the trigger guard itself are made from sintra, after the jig was made, a strip of sintra was simply heated up and bent into shape around the jig.



The trimmed trigger guard was then dry fit to check for any fitting issues/make sure it looked right, and it did so work progressed.



The trigger was given a tighter/cleaner fit with a bondo squish (for those who don't know, you fill the area with bondo, then push the part you want to have fit, into the bondo and let the bondo set, giving a pretty much perfect impression)




The bondo was then sanded down and cleaned up, as can be seen below. This photo shows pretty much the whole kit of the blaster (minus a cabachon for the scope lens and a spring for the trigger), not finished yet, but almost done.



Since this is for a full costume, a holster has also been made, from sintra (just like almost everything on the blaster itself )





The holster will be covered in some black leather and lined with somethign soft (I'm thinking a felt ought to work fine)

 

[Unfated]

It's really looking great!

 

[Mollins]

It's really looking great!

Thanks Unfated! We're pleased with how it's looking.

Everything is essentially finished at this point, just final paint layers needed on the majority of things, then I'll be pouring silicone over these bad boys!
Been a fun built, and one that went surprisingly quickly (just hope there's interest, heh)



Other than the trigger (which is already finished) these parts just need their final paint layer then they're ready to be moulded, the flat side pieces will be done as a flat back mould, and the trigger and trigger guard will both be simple two part moulds.




Here you can see the attachment method for the scope. We chose to put the scope attachment part on the scope itself to allow for easier moulding, since it eliminates the deep undercuts from the main body mould.
They were done by dremeling out the shape on the main body, then doing bondo squishes with the scope until it fit properly. In the final pieces, these ought to fit nicely with minimal work needed to clean up/fill the join line between the mounts and the body.



Here's the scope in it's current state, it just needs a little bit more cleanup then it'll also be done, just going to do a simple two piece mould for it.



And finally a (slightly out of focus, unfortunately) shot of the main body as it stands, it's done at this point, pretty much in terms of filling any imperfections, it's just waiting on the last layer of paint, then I'll let it sit for a few days before I clay it up to mould.

All said and done, the gun will end up as an 8 (maybe 9, I'm not sure yet) piece kit, including a spring for the trigger mechanism, rod for the trigger mechanism, and a cabochon for the back of the scope, and it'll be super simple to put together. I'll put up an INT thread in the JY.

 

[Mollins]

So, the masters are in fact now finished, and pretty much ready to be moulded, so I'll be making a start on that in the coming week.

I'm just waiting on getting my hands on some vinyl decals to put in the recesses of the grips, and then I'll be able to do the main body of the blaster, but everything else can get moulded.

First up, here's the side parts, these are one of the big differences from the real life Blaster, their design has been simplified a lot for the show, with some details being either removed completely, or just simplified in shape.



Here is the trigger, the shape on the back is to allow for the spring to push back against the trigger when it's installed, allowing for it to be tactile and non stationary.



Trigger Guard - Not a whole lot to see, but each end has registration posts to allow for an easy and accurate fit to the main body of the blaster



Next up is the sight, built over an acrylic tube, and shaped with a combination of apoxie sculpt and bondo, you can see the registration/locating posts on the bottom of the scope mounts, to allow for easy fitting.





Finally, the main body of the blaster, built up from many layers of sintra, with some plastic tubing for the barrel, then a wholee lot of bondo, sanding and paint! You can see the posts on either side of the main part, those are so the side parts fit on nicely, as simple as slotting them on over the pegs.
You can also see the negatives for the registration posts on the scope, as wel las the slots for the trigger and trigger guard to fit into on the underside of the blaster.










Now you've seen all the parts separately, how about seeing them all together for the first time?









And a couple of shots of the blaster in hand, to give a sense of the size/scale of the thing.








With all of that, the build for this blaster is now completed, and I move onto moulding and casting, I'll maintain updates and photos as I do that, all the way through to a completed blaster. If you're interested, you can take a look in the JY at the interest thread for a run on these here: http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=247431

 

[Imperiala5ylum]

Coming along nicely, hope it's finished soon!


For the Empire

 

[Unfated]

Looks great all together.

 

[Mollins]

Coming along nicely, hope it's finished soon!

Thanks!

Looks great all together.

Thanks also =]


So, I finally got around to starting to mould it up, got the side parts under silicone now





This will be ready to demould tomorrow, then I'll get started on claying up the other parts.

 

[Mollins]

So, I demoulded the side parts last night, came out nicely



I also managed to get the trigger and trigger guard clayed up and half the mould poured, ought to be able to get it opened tomorrow and sort out pouring the second half.







Once the mould is done on those parts, I'll be cutting sprueing/veining into them to make sure I'm not getting air bubbles in my castings.

 

[Mollins]

I got the trigger and trigger guards opened up today and cleaned out any clay that was in the way, then rebuilt the boxes around them and clayed up the gaps around them and got the second half of the mould poured.

 

[Mollins]

I got the scope clayed up and the first half of the mould poured, I neglected to take photos before pouring the mould (whoops!), but remembered to get a shot of the cured first half.



I poured the second half of the mould today, but, it's going to need to be repoured (hopefully I won't need to do the whole mould again, only the second half), as I neglected to realise the silicone I was using to pour was a brush-up silicone (d'oh!), so it's a lot thicker and not levelling itself.

 

[Mollins]

No big updates so far, I managed to get the second half of the mould re-poured, here's the finished scope mould:



I'm waiting on some new resin coming in before I'm able to fully test out the moulds with a few test pours to get rid of any kinks.

I also have some more silicone coming in, and will be moulding the main body, then it'll all be done!

In the mean time, thought I'd also show off the progress we've been making on the actual Kanan costume, in light of the lack of proper updating on the blaster progress:



That's all for now!

 

[Mollins]

Apologies for the severe lack of updates in this thread as of late! We have been busy making the costume itself as well as a Fred Colon costume, but good news is I got all the moulds finished, and here's a set of cast pieces from them.



These will be cleaned up then the entire blaster put together.

 

[Blaxmyth]

Fred Colon costume?! Looking forward to seeing this!

 

[Mollins]

Haha, well, if you wanna see my Fred, you can do so here.

We've got the gun fully finished now, with kits finally being offered up in the JY as a run, in the meantime, I thought I'd share a photo of the gun finished up and painted with the costume!



Gives a nice sense of scale (and shows off the full costume too )

 

[Blaxmyth]

That is fantastic! Wonderful work!

And I enjoyed seeing your Discworld pics of Fred - and was that Angua with him? Love to see a thread about this if you have time!