liamgileshanna
New Member
Hi Guys.
This is my first post here, or anywhere else in fact in relation to Cosplay and Prob Building.
I have always been an avid "maker" with an err on more practical things like like storage units, work space and cabinets.
I caught the "prop making" bug relatively recently after binging on the Tested channel on YouTube, with Adam Savages "One Day Builds" a major highlight.
By day I am a Product Specialist for a major Industrial Optical Company, designing and using Industrial Endoscopy equipment for use in an abundance of applications including Aerospace, Gas Turbine Systems, Power Generation, Nuclear, Security, Defense, Automotive and Oil and Gas, so spend the majority of my time travelling around Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Russia, with trips to Tokyo in between, so I do have my fair opportunity to stock up on as much RPT thread reading and YouTube binging whilst travelling.
Equally, and perhaps more positively, my access to the aforementioned environments, and a multitude of different countries and cultures allows to me stock up on some interesting parts and greeblies that may not be readily available to everybody else. As such my garage/workshop has quite a large stockpile of "interesting parts" as I like to call them - or Junk, as my wife likes to call them...
My other passion is Photography (mainly 35mm and 120 film) which I am sure will manifest over the coming months!
After spending so many months reading and gleening information from TheRPF, I thought it was about time to finally contribute to such an amazing forum, and this weekend, I managed to complete my own "One Day Build" - A DL-44 Blaster, lightly inspired by the Han Solo "Greedo Killer Edition" - A write up will follow...
Please do not expect a completely "Screen Accurate" model, this was my first every build, the first time I have every tried weathering techniques, and I only used parts that I had lying around with only the vaguest reference to any "credible material" and a base of a £2.99 (Colourful) Mauser Toy from eBay...
Throughout the course of this thread, I will try my best to explain how I started, what I used and the various steps used to achieve the above, which I have to say, for a first attempt, I am really impressed with.
I will be making another two blasters in the coming weeks/months as travel and personal duties allow (I am expecting a Baby in September).
1. A More screen accurate version, based either on the Greedo Killer, or maybe a Force Awakens Tribute.
2. A modern take on a DL-44 of the future, perhaps using a slightly different base, but introducing more modern heat sink technology and an adapted sighting system – a mere homage to the DL-44 that we all know and love!
- - - Updated - - -
1. So it begins:
Here we have the basis for my “model”, a £2.99 Mauser Toy (with fetching colours) flashing lights and reverberating action…
Snazzy…
And here we have it out of the package with some dimensions:
- - - Updated - - -
2. Black to Basics:
I started with a basic coat of Flat black paint. Like I said at the beginning of this thread, for this example, I was limiting myself to what I had available, no special parts, no special materials or paints etc, just what I had in the garage.
This happened to be some basic, Flat Black auto spray paint (long story short - another passion of mine, drifting, and I have a flat black E46 drift car for “weekends” also). I also had some Silver metallic Paint and Gold Metallic paint of the same brand, which I would later use for weathering…
(You can actually see the barrel section being painted in the above image (although I ended up discarding this portion – more on that later…)
Here is the model now hanging from my rafters to “dry” – note the QAV250 and Turnigy FPV racers in the background ;-)
3. Always talkin’ ‘bout the weather:
Now I missed one photo of the barrel assembly, but I used some machined parts from a previous project for the barrel, which looked remarkably “barrel like”, and I just added various different coats of silver, flat black and gold auto spray paint, with a good amount of rubbing down with wire wool and a sanding sponge in between to make the cheap plastic “wonder gun” look remotely metallic…
For the flash hider, I was stumped for some, time, until I looked across the shop from my roll cab, and saw this bottle of Redex Diesel Cleaner:
Perfect (ish) – I drained the contents into a Powerade bottle (transferring the label and making sure it was clearly marked of course!!). Drilled lots (and lots and lots) of holes into it at 10mm intervals, gave it the 3 colour spray paint treatment (erring on the side of silver here) and clamped it to the barrel using a very small jubilee clip.
Here is an image of the two blasters I was working on (at this point, I hadn’t decided which one to use):
4. Out of Sight:
The next part which I thought was going to be an absolute nightmare, actually solved itself very well. My mother in law, on clearing out her garage, found a very small, 4x mag gun sight, and asked me if I wanted it.
The answer of course, was yes!
Here it is:
Now one end actually does screw off, which would make a much more “screen accurate ish” addition to the blaster, but the scope, after some internal cleaning of the optics, actually presented a very good image, and I was reluctant to tear it apart and stop it from working (now) I will 100% be making a more accurate version of this blaster in the future, and this will be addressed there…
For the sight mount and rail, I used some basic metal “parts” left over from a recent kitchen fit, I fixed these with a combination of epoxy and torx screws I had lying around from a recent bike build, using one long metal pice (painted black and weathered) and a small “L bracket” for the angle.
For the rails, I actually made my own from a plastic bicycle tyre lever which I re-shaped, sanded, and filed two grooves (one down each side) for the scope to clamp on to.
Luckily the scope came with mounts which I re-positioned and fixed into place:
The scope mounting screws were already rusty, which I liked!
5. Play Time:
So that’s it.
It was completed from start to finish in around 3 hours so qualifies remotely as a “one day build”.
It was my first attempt, and I do not make any claims towards a screen accurate version, just one inspired by what I could remember from the film, some basic google images and my understanding of how it should look.
I will most definitely be completing some more blasters, and definitely a light sabre in the near future.
Next for me right now, is a belt and holster to go with this first incarnation of the blaster.
I hope you enjoyed the write up as much as I enjoyed building it, and I must say, without a long delay at Dubai X airport 2 months ago, I would never have discovered the Tested channel on YouTube, which led me to TheRPF and ended up making a maker in less than 50 days.
I could listen to anything that Adam Savage has to say and he has truly contributed to my new found release for inherent “fandom”.
I will leave you with some simple images of the finished “prop”, I do have a video showing the sound FX etc, but not 100% sure how to upload that yet as the link keeps getting blocked:
- - - Updated - - -
Sorry guys, I tested it first, but now the links only go to the image location and do not display. Being a "forum newb" does anybody have any tips?
This is my first post here, or anywhere else in fact in relation to Cosplay and Prob Building.
I have always been an avid "maker" with an err on more practical things like like storage units, work space and cabinets.
I caught the "prop making" bug relatively recently after binging on the Tested channel on YouTube, with Adam Savages "One Day Builds" a major highlight.
By day I am a Product Specialist for a major Industrial Optical Company, designing and using Industrial Endoscopy equipment for use in an abundance of applications including Aerospace, Gas Turbine Systems, Power Generation, Nuclear, Security, Defense, Automotive and Oil and Gas, so spend the majority of my time travelling around Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Russia, with trips to Tokyo in between, so I do have my fair opportunity to stock up on as much RPT thread reading and YouTube binging whilst travelling.
Equally, and perhaps more positively, my access to the aforementioned environments, and a multitude of different countries and cultures allows to me stock up on some interesting parts and greeblies that may not be readily available to everybody else. As such my garage/workshop has quite a large stockpile of "interesting parts" as I like to call them - or Junk, as my wife likes to call them...
My other passion is Photography (mainly 35mm and 120 film) which I am sure will manifest over the coming months!
After spending so many months reading and gleening information from TheRPF, I thought it was about time to finally contribute to such an amazing forum, and this weekend, I managed to complete my own "One Day Build" - A DL-44 Blaster, lightly inspired by the Han Solo "Greedo Killer Edition" - A write up will follow...
Please do not expect a completely "Screen Accurate" model, this was my first every build, the first time I have every tried weathering techniques, and I only used parts that I had lying around with only the vaguest reference to any "credible material" and a base of a £2.99 (Colourful) Mauser Toy from eBay...
Throughout the course of this thread, I will try my best to explain how I started, what I used and the various steps used to achieve the above, which I have to say, for a first attempt, I am really impressed with.
I will be making another two blasters in the coming weeks/months as travel and personal duties allow (I am expecting a Baby in September).
1. A More screen accurate version, based either on the Greedo Killer, or maybe a Force Awakens Tribute.
2. A modern take on a DL-44 of the future, perhaps using a slightly different base, but introducing more modern heat sink technology and an adapted sighting system – a mere homage to the DL-44 that we all know and love!
- - - Updated - - -
1. So it begins:
Here we have the basis for my “model”, a £2.99 Mauser Toy (with fetching colours) flashing lights and reverberating action…
Snazzy…
And here we have it out of the package with some dimensions:
- - - Updated - - -
2. Black to Basics:
I started with a basic coat of Flat black paint. Like I said at the beginning of this thread, for this example, I was limiting myself to what I had available, no special parts, no special materials or paints etc, just what I had in the garage.
This happened to be some basic, Flat Black auto spray paint (long story short - another passion of mine, drifting, and I have a flat black E46 drift car for “weekends” also). I also had some Silver metallic Paint and Gold Metallic paint of the same brand, which I would later use for weathering…
(You can actually see the barrel section being painted in the above image (although I ended up discarding this portion – more on that later…)
Here is the model now hanging from my rafters to “dry” – note the QAV250 and Turnigy FPV racers in the background ;-)
3. Always talkin’ ‘bout the weather:
Now I missed one photo of the barrel assembly, but I used some machined parts from a previous project for the barrel, which looked remarkably “barrel like”, and I just added various different coats of silver, flat black and gold auto spray paint, with a good amount of rubbing down with wire wool and a sanding sponge in between to make the cheap plastic “wonder gun” look remotely metallic…
For the flash hider, I was stumped for some, time, until I looked across the shop from my roll cab, and saw this bottle of Redex Diesel Cleaner:
Perfect (ish) – I drained the contents into a Powerade bottle (transferring the label and making sure it was clearly marked of course!!). Drilled lots (and lots and lots) of holes into it at 10mm intervals, gave it the 3 colour spray paint treatment (erring on the side of silver here) and clamped it to the barrel using a very small jubilee clip.
Here is an image of the two blasters I was working on (at this point, I hadn’t decided which one to use):
4. Out of Sight:
The next part which I thought was going to be an absolute nightmare, actually solved itself very well. My mother in law, on clearing out her garage, found a very small, 4x mag gun sight, and asked me if I wanted it.
The answer of course, was yes!
Here it is:
Now one end actually does screw off, which would make a much more “screen accurate ish” addition to the blaster, but the scope, after some internal cleaning of the optics, actually presented a very good image, and I was reluctant to tear it apart and stop it from working (now) I will 100% be making a more accurate version of this blaster in the future, and this will be addressed there…
For the sight mount and rail, I used some basic metal “parts” left over from a recent kitchen fit, I fixed these with a combination of epoxy and torx screws I had lying around from a recent bike build, using one long metal pice (painted black and weathered) and a small “L bracket” for the angle.
For the rails, I actually made my own from a plastic bicycle tyre lever which I re-shaped, sanded, and filed two grooves (one down each side) for the scope to clamp on to.
Luckily the scope came with mounts which I re-positioned and fixed into place:
The scope mounting screws were already rusty, which I liked!
5. Play Time:
So that’s it.
It was completed from start to finish in around 3 hours so qualifies remotely as a “one day build”.
It was my first attempt, and I do not make any claims towards a screen accurate version, just one inspired by what I could remember from the film, some basic google images and my understanding of how it should look.
I will most definitely be completing some more blasters, and definitely a light sabre in the near future.
Next for me right now, is a belt and holster to go with this first incarnation of the blaster.
I hope you enjoyed the write up as much as I enjoyed building it, and I must say, without a long delay at Dubai X airport 2 months ago, I would never have discovered the Tested channel on YouTube, which led me to TheRPF and ended up making a maker in less than 50 days.
I could listen to anything that Adam Savage has to say and he has truly contributed to my new found release for inherent “fandom”.
I will leave you with some simple images of the finished “prop”, I do have a video showing the sound FX etc, but not 100% sure how to upload that yet as the link keeps getting blocked:
- - - Updated - - -
Sorry guys, I tested it first, but now the links only go to the image location and do not display. Being a "forum newb" does anybody have any tips?
Last edited:
It turned out really well and the weathering is very good!
