Re: A DL-44 build for ME my blaster builds thread: UPDATE ADDED E11
UPDATE time:
I did some minor work on my Electronics ANH Hero... and accurized the trigger on my Luke, but the big build was my ANH Live Fire:
So here it is. A Real Wartime commercial C96 Broomhandle Mauser. Mine was made sometime between 1914-1918. The condition was great. It had a natural patina, that matched the original prop pre-production shots well, and the bore had good rifling with some slight pitting. The only real pitting was under the grips, as they looked like they'd never been removed.
The grips were the worst part, as you can see have seen some use. Apparently some wood boring insect made its way into the grips once.
Otherwise it was a great base to start my conversion.
The first thing to tackle was the scope mount, as it would be the hardest part to figure out how to do it and let the ammo feed and everything internally to work properly. I talked to Enaswede and VFX Freak via email, as remarkably we were all starting and working on our live fires at the same time! So VFX Freak decided he’d use extra cross bar thumb nuts, turned dow to the right dimensions and weld them as a base to thread the rods into. Eliminating the need to drill into the lower receiver. Enaswede’s gun smith drilled, tapped, and flush mounted the threaded rods… then cut to size and epoxied them together to the lower receiver.
I wanted to avoid drilling into the body of the gun, and I didn’t have access to welding equipment, although I can weld a pretty good bead.
So I did some research and decided to silver solder/braze and go with VFX Freak’s idea of turned down cross bar thumb nuts. So I lathed down extra thumb nuts to the correct thickness and width, using the DEC washer/spacers as a guide. Then I used some MuggyWeld SSQ-6 silver solder paste and MAP torch to braze them on.
It was pretty hard to say the least. You need to heat the metal to a pretty high temp to get the solder to flow and the steel gets dark red. You need some sturdy clamps that can handle heat. I killed two clamps, and eventually tried to use some vice grips. They handled the heat perfectly, but the aluminum cross bar bent! Luckily it was easy to bend back while warm, so no harm/no foul.
After some clean up and re-bluing
It took a lot of trial and error to get them lined up perfectly, as the force from the torch flame moves things around too when the solder flows. After the first test firing the rear mount broke loose, because all the solder got sucked up into the threads and not enough remained on the base for a good weld. So I re-did it, and got it all aligned perfectly and all is good now. Whew…
For the mystery disc, I decided to go with the masked/blue approach again. I know that the original prop was probably painted on the lower receiver, but I couldn’t bring myself to want to paint it. So I lightly sanded and masked… then blued around it with some birchwood casey super blue.
I also decided the original prop probably didn’t have a hole in the mystery disc…rather a painted spot where paint got through whatever greeblie was there. So I just used a drop of super blue for it. Probably need to darken it a little more.
My sleeve barrel wouldn’t slide far enough back to make it look prop accurate for me, so I had to file away some of the barrel material to get it to sit where I thought it should. I used reference pics of course to get there.
Like this pic of the esb stunt, that was presumably cast from the original prop
These are before it was tightened down, and I’ve since adjusted it more… for a PERFECT Fit… need to get pics of it soon.
I also decided the adjust the bevels of the bull barrel to more closely match what I see on the original prop
Compared to the stock kit part on my MGC
So here she is
With her MGC sister.
My other real hensoldt. 99% acurate now that I adjusted the front lens bezel
I also used the reference pics to get the cross bar scratches as best I could
I tried to get the front of the cross bar scratches correct too
I decided to try to get the sigh greeblie lengths more correct. Still idealized, and they are sitting on TOP of the full sized T track rather than cut down T track piece, but here you go
compared to my MGC
So there it is. I did some early test firings, but only had some private load ammo that was too light and wouldn’t cycle the gun. I now have some factory fiocchi and new springs on the gun, so will go shoot again soon. ^_^
here’s the early videos:
and the overview video