phillbarron
Active Member
Hello there,
I've been stealing your wisdom over the last year or so to build a DL-44 and thought I'd share the results along with heartfelt thanks to everyone who posted such wonderfully clear photos and tutorials. I knew I wanted the ANH version, partly because it's my favourite of the films and partly because I had the Palitoy (Kenner?) one as a kid and loved it.
After much deliberation, I went for a Denix build with a DEC aluminium kit.
Living in the UK, the Denix can only be sold if (something like) 50% of it is a bright colour, so it arrived like this:
Which was handy. The DEC kit arrived like this:
... and is just beautiful. Breathtakingly so.
I've built prop type things before, but mostly using whatever I had lying around the house. Basically lots of papier mache and bottle tops. I've always regarded buying a kit like this as cheating ... but I'm so glad I did in this case.
Seeing as this is the single most expensive prop I've built coupled with zero metal working experience and a complete inability to cut anything in a straight line, I approached the gun with extreme nervousness. The first cut may be the deepest, but it's definitely the scariest!
But it worked out alright in the end.
After the usual bluing, filing, sanding, swearing and the odd bit of bleeding.
I've done as many of the 'standard' mods as I could - removing the rear sight lump, the washer-type protrusions on the sides of the sight, the firing pin amongst others. I couldn't figure out how to mill in the ejector so settled for bluing it in with a template.
One thing I went for which I hadn't seen on other people's Denix builds was rounding the front end of the rear sight (one the lump had been removed) to get a more accurate look. Apologies if everyone else did this and I wasn't paying enough attention.
The only other thing I've done which is maybe slightly different is opting to build a reticle as opposed to printing one:
Does anyone know why these photos have uploaded sideways?
I took a toy magnifying glass,cut off the handle and removed the lens, then chopped up a couple of sewing needles, heated them and pushed them through the plastic. It just felt a bit more real to me than a printed version. I guess I could have made a smaller one and mounted it deeper in the sight ... but I didn't.
All this plus a grip screw I struggled to find (because gun parts are hard to get over here) left me with this:
Okay, so I still need to darken the grips and maybe add light and sound in the future, but for the purposes of running around the house shouting pew pew at imaginary baddies, it works for me.
Next up: the belt.
I've been stealing your wisdom over the last year or so to build a DL-44 and thought I'd share the results along with heartfelt thanks to everyone who posted such wonderfully clear photos and tutorials. I knew I wanted the ANH version, partly because it's my favourite of the films and partly because I had the Palitoy (Kenner?) one as a kid and loved it.
After much deliberation, I went for a Denix build with a DEC aluminium kit.
Living in the UK, the Denix can only be sold if (something like) 50% of it is a bright colour, so it arrived like this:
Which was handy. The DEC kit arrived like this:
... and is just beautiful. Breathtakingly so.
I've built prop type things before, but mostly using whatever I had lying around the house. Basically lots of papier mache and bottle tops. I've always regarded buying a kit like this as cheating ... but I'm so glad I did in this case.
Seeing as this is the single most expensive prop I've built coupled with zero metal working experience and a complete inability to cut anything in a straight line, I approached the gun with extreme nervousness. The first cut may be the deepest, but it's definitely the scariest!
But it worked out alright in the end.
After the usual bluing, filing, sanding, swearing and the odd bit of bleeding.
I've done as many of the 'standard' mods as I could - removing the rear sight lump, the washer-type protrusions on the sides of the sight, the firing pin amongst others. I couldn't figure out how to mill in the ejector so settled for bluing it in with a template.
One thing I went for which I hadn't seen on other people's Denix builds was rounding the front end of the rear sight (one the lump had been removed) to get a more accurate look. Apologies if everyone else did this and I wasn't paying enough attention.
The only other thing I've done which is maybe slightly different is opting to build a reticle as opposed to printing one:
Does anyone know why these photos have uploaded sideways?
I took a toy magnifying glass,cut off the handle and removed the lens, then chopped up a couple of sewing needles, heated them and pushed them through the plastic. It just felt a bit more real to me than a printed version. I guess I could have made a smaller one and mounted it deeper in the sight ... but I didn't.
All this plus a grip screw I struggled to find (because gun parts are hard to get over here) left me with this:
Okay, so I still need to darken the grips and maybe add light and sound in the future, but for the purposes of running around the house shouting pew pew at imaginary baddies, it works for me.
Next up: the belt.
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