Ok...finally have a trial fit together.
I think Romans Empire had it right, I think my booster AND grenade had a lot of wear on their threads or had their threads made at the end of the run or something.
With a dremel and sanding cylinder i sanded the threads down on both ends of the adapter and both pieces now screw on farily easily. (Woohoo!)
Had to do the same with the balance pipe adapter too. No biggy, just an hour or two in a high temperature garage with high humidity
After all this time I finally see what it'll look like. All pieces are real except the calc bubble. I have a real calculator, just haven't pulled the bubble strip yet. I wish i had a before pic of the grenade. I used steel wire brush dremel bit and took it down to a shiny original steel and used perma blue. Had no real idea what I was doing...learned an important lesson. You're not coloring the steel, your oxidizing it. Yep, it's black rust so to speak and if you don't hit it with steel wool or wet/dry sandpaper it starts developing rust colored rust
So a note to those who haven't done it yet. They say did it or coat it for less than a minute, dunk it in water to neutralize the solution, dry, and then steel wool or sandpaper lightly.
As i wrote earlier, i had to blast it with a torch to get the stem off the grenade. That actually darkened the stem to the color you see there. I did dunk it in some brass black, but it literally had no effect. I couldn't darken the spoke cover either. Had to hit it with a wire brush first. Dunking it didn't turn it much at all, but it darkened up over the course of a week to that color.
Sink knob, clamp, and balance pipe are all as they were. I haven't done anything to any of them. The clamp isn't a dead on match to ANH, but i really like the natural weathering on it.
Big thanks to Teecrooz, without whom this would still be a fantasy
Can't believe it's finally coming together, and pretty nicely as well. Only paranoid part left is drilling for the d-ring. Hopefully the dremel drill press works well for that.
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