Pedro's ANH DL-44 - Denix + Todd's + Scratch

Howdy folks. I thought I'd post a thread about a project I've been working on for a few months, one which has been done to death but still gets me pumped every time I see one. I'm building a Han Solo DL-44 (hero version) from ANH, using a Denix Mauser base (with wood grips), some excellent parts from Todd's costumes, and a Hensoldt replica scratchbuilt/converted from a cheapo scope. I've been working on this for a while so this is not exactly in chronological order.


I actually started on the scope first. After scouring the web and eBay for something affordable that resembles Han's scope I pretty much gave up and am building it from scratch, with a bell scavenged from a pretty cheap scope I picked up on eBay. Originally I sawed off one of the bells, planning on using what was left along with a scratch built mount, but the innards (don't know the correct term) were right up against the remaining tube and I couldn't figure out how to remove them. I gradually decided I needed an all metal mount anyway so decided to use a 7/8" aluminum tube so I could use Todd's scope mount. I picked up the tube on Amazon for a couple bucks and used the removable rear bell from the other scope. It was a 1" tube so I had to figure out how to reduce it to meet the 7/8" aluminum. I cut short slice from the 1" tube and used it as a spacer, filling the steps with Bondo and sanding smooth.


Original scope bell and spacer


I'm pretty pleased, it matches the shape of the Hensoldt well though the taper where it meets the tube isn't 100% perfect. Unfortunately since the filler is Bondo I won't be able to blue the scope easily, so I guess it will be paint. I also used a tubing cutter to scribe a line near the tip to represent the brass parts. I haven't sorted out a front lense yet, if anyone knows where to get a cheap lense I'm open to ideas!




As likely everyone knows the finish on the Denix is pretty nasty, far from smooth with poor paint application and some metal pitting. I did the standard sand sand sand working up from 250 to 500 grit and have gotten it pretty smooth. Some flat surfaces and angles (base of the barrel etc) were worked with files to get clean angles. This was a lot of work but I find it very satisfying and meditative, great while binge watching Netflix.

Before sanding


After



There are a bunch of details that need fixing, once again nothing too original. I repaired the knurl on the hammer, bolt, and sight slider (should I try to rework this to a diamond knurl?). I also re-shaped the top of the hammer with files and a sanding drum/dremel. I wanted to remove the raised bit on the left side but coudldn't think of a way to re-scribe the circles so left it as is. A bit of widening between the trigger guard and handle, and reshaped the blocky trigger. Removed all nasty seams. Finally I removed as much of the V shaped bit at the front of the sight as I could without exposing the hole, and reshaped the front a bit to more closely resemble a real Mauser.




Original trigger


Refined trigger



The Denix is also missing the magazine cover detail. I scribed this in and drilled a countersink for the button. Scribing this stuff is a bitch! I started with a very sharp scribing point and enlarged the lines with my trusty Tamiya scriber. The rear end of the upper is missing a bunch of detail where the real gun would come apart. I wasn't brave enough to do what Lukesfather did on this amazing build, but instead scribed a simplified version of the parting lines. Did I mention scribing pot metal sucks? I have 1 nasty miss that was too deep to remove but I think it came out ok.





Moving on, I was ready to start mating the Denix with Todd's flash hider/bull barrel. Hacked off the Denix barrel with a hack saw and miter box, thankfully it came out pretty straight and a little filing cleaned it up. I recently got a cheap drill press from Harbor Freight for this project, and drilled out the hole for the bull barrel.




Here's a quick dry-fit to see how it's coming along. That's a knurled nut stuck to the scope with sticky tac, more on that later.



That's all the pictures I have cleaned up so far, I'll post more soon. Comments and suggestions are welcome, the more I work on it the more accurate I end up needing it to be, this damn thing is a blast, and addictive!

I've made some progress on this blaster, but not as quickly as I'd like. Who's idea was it to have a bunch of kids anyway??


Not having done much cold bluing before I did some experiments with a couple different products. I've had a bottle of Blacken-It from MicroMark forever, and also ordered some Birchwood Casey Aluminum Black. They sent Perma-Blue by accident, so I ended up with a free bottle to use on Todd's steel parts. I did a lot of experimentation to see which seemed to work best on the Denix. I'm posting this stuff as potentially informative info for those who haven't messed with this stuff before, so skip if you're already pro!


I ended up going with Aluminum Black (big surprise), which behaves very similarly to Blacken-It with slightly different color tone. The Perma-Blue doesn't do much to the pot metal. After deciding on AB I did a quick application to the bolt. This part is much brighter on real Mausers so I wasn't after a really dark finish, so this is a single application. Here's how it looks after brushing it on (ugly and not promising!):



And here after rubbing it gently with 0000 steel wool. Much better, whee!



A side note, it's really hard to photograph these metal parts and illustrate what they really look like.


Here's the upper section before blueing. This is all cleaned up and polished (up to 500 grit sandpaper I believe). I did some accurizing to this part, lots of filing to clean up the lines, removed the raised bumps where the sight mounts and countersunk the holes. I also added those little half circle cutouts on the top in front of the sight mount, probably the wrong gun terms for all of this. Pew pew!





With that done I worked up the nerve to start blueing the rest of the mauser. I'm still not sure what the best pre-finish steps are. I did a ton of reading on the RPF and elsewhere, everyone has an opinion. It should be really smooth, but not too smooth, hit it with steel wool right before blueing, heat it or don't, etc. In the end I think having it warm helps (I used a heat gun) but isn't totally neccessary. It still seems to blue well when polished very smooth. And most importantly, make sure it's very clean/degreased and use gloves! So, here's the Mauser upper after a couple dips in the Aluminum Black bath (ziplock bag). The dull one is right out of the bath, the shine comes after using 0000 steel wool (lightly!).





After I was satisfied I gave it a rubdown with 3in1 oil to protect and shine it a bit. Another note, on the upper I was trying to get it REALLY black, so it went through probably 12 applications. I think I went too far, as it was starting to pit and just loose some surface smoothness without getting any blacker. I think about 3 is about right, which is what I used on the lower.


Speaking of which...now that I was satisfied that I could blue the thing, I started on the lower. The "mystery disk" had me worried but I came up with a nice look. First I found the center of the "would be" disk. I poked a scriber through a piece of 400 grit sandpaper and centered it in the disk, then spun the paper around the scriber to get the swirl marks, which are probably innacurate but look cool.





Then I cut a disk from sticky back vinyl mask and stuck it in place before applying Aluminum Black. Here's the gun after blueing, no seepage under the mask! Notice all the weird colors you get from the reaction, which pretty much disappear after steel wool and oil.





And after steel wool and oil, looking pretty good! I was originally testing having the center dot just blued, but decided to drill it as you can see in the pics below. I can't remember, I think the bull barrel in the test fit has been worked on, I'll talk about that in another post.





Cheers!

Looking fantastic! With using the aluminum black - what type of oil did you apply? just regular gun oil?

Egon said:

Looking fantastic! With using the aluminum black - what type of oil did you apply? just regular gun oil?

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Thanks! I'm pretty happy with the way it's coming out. It's really addictive though, the feeling of that heavy blaster in my hand has me hooked on building blasters for good I fear!

I'm using 3 in 1 oil, a general purpose oil you can get at groceries and stuff. http://www.3inone.com/products/multi-purpose/ It seems to work well and I head read about others using it, but don't take this word as any kind of expertise, I can't say if real gun oil or something else might be better. I'd like to apply some kind of wax or coating that I can shine up a bit when I'm done, any advice from the experts? I've read good things about Renaissance Wax.

I've been working on the Todd's Costumes flash hider the last couple of days, which is painted black. On the flat areas I was able to sand off the paint and it's looking great. Any ideas on how to remove the paint from the ridged area? It seems to be impervious to every solvent I've tried, and I don't want to dull the ridges by sanding (or spend a zillion hours trying to sand in between each one!).

so, the mottled discoloration, with steel wool can be smoothed out like that? I was worried I'd scrape off all the blueing when I did mine

thd9791 said:

so, the mottled discoloration, with steel wool can be smoothed out like that? I was worried I'd scrape off all the blueing when I did mine

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Yep, it goes away all by itself with a light rubbing with 0000 steel wool, and the oil evens out the color a bit more. I did steel wool lightly between AB applications as well.

Thats great thank you! I plan on blueing my ESB and the ANH I did didn't come out too well, probably because I didn't do that!

Though, I had to spray paint it all one color so the grill didn't look out of place lol

Heheh...I kept feeling the call of paint but really really wanted the blued metal look (even though the original probably was painted). I'll live with the grill color mismatch in exchange for the richer blued color. I may even try to paint the grills to match, we'll see.

Another update, let's look at the Todd's Costumes bull barrel. I like the design a lot, a simple method to attach it. Of course I didn't get the hole in the Mauser drilled completely straight so I wasn't able to use the threads to screw it on. I fudged the hole a bit and did some hand filing to remove the threads and reshape the insert so I could get it on the gun straight using JB Weld.

The bull barrel had some pretty obvious machining marks, especially on the flat underside. I used hand files and sandpaper to smooth the whole thing out (you can still see remnants of the swirls on the underside below). It's so nice working with steel instead of the Denix pot metal, it's hard stuff but the result polishes up so nicely! I also worked on the chamfers at the base of the barrel, enlarging them to match the real prop better. Todd's barrel has 2 extra small bevels past the two correct side chamfers, I'm not sure why. I left these alone, they're barely visible.



I really like the work that kpax and Lukesfather (plus a few other folks I'm sure) did stamping serial numbers and proof marks on the blaster. I didn't want to spend a ton of money or time finding the perfect font, but I did pick up a basic 1/8" stamping set from Harbor Freight to do the serial numbers. It's hard to get these aligned and I had to file off and redo the barrel stamps a few times, but I think they came out nicely. Still need to do the serial on the hammer, which I've botched about 6 times, argh!



And finally a couple more bits. Got the trigger reshaping finished:


And I have the scope base just about done as well. I blued the metal parts with Aluminum Black. These are actually aluminum and behaved a lot differently than the pot metal. I had it polished up pretty smooth but it really wouldn't take the stuff well, so I roughened it with 350 grit sandpaper and was able to get it looking nice. The color matches the blued Denix very well. Since there's a band of putty/primer where the bell meets the tube I had to paint that area, got a pretty good match though slightly too light. I'll darken it a bit with Tamiya Smoke when I get back to it. Painting the brass parts, adding a front lense, and finishing up the knob are next up.

Forgot to mention, the Todd's bull barrel is blued with Perma Blue, works great on steel as advertised. Also I stripped the blueing from the butt of the gun before stamping the serial number, then re-blued around the scribed lines to simulate the bare metal of this part on a real Mauser. I hit the little rectangle that should be the release button with Perma Blue to give it a slightly darkened but different color than the near black around.

I love the scribing on the back of the Mauser. I've been thinking doing the same with mine, do you think it can be done with just needle files? Because that's all I've got.:lol

Great looking build!

Pedro said:

I've been working on the Todd's Costumes flash hider the last couple of days, which is painted black. On the flat areas I was able to sand off the paint and it's looking great. Any ideas on how to remove the paint from the ridged area? It seems to be impervious to every solvent I've tried, and I don't want to dull the ridges by sanding (or spend a zillion hours trying to sand in between each one!).

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I didn't have any luck getting it all off either. I think maybe it's anodized?

For the lines on the back and mag cover I scribed with a really sharp tipped scriber followed by my Tamiya scriber to enlarge the lines, using label maker tape as guides. This is really difficult when compared to scribing plastic, but slow and steady wins the race. Here are the tools:


I did manage to get most of the paint off of the flash hider last night. I used a brass wire brush in my dremel and it went pretty quickly. It left behind a slight brassy tint but I think that will go away with further cleaning/weathering.


Also took a few minutes to paint the tips of the scope with Testors gold enamel. I'll mask bits of this for scratches and paint over with black. Looks pretty convincing I think! I may have forgot to mention the notches I cut to match the real scope, using a hack saw and files to square up and enlarge.

Oh my!!! This is just amazing, beautiful and inspiring work. Do u think a dremel engraver would do the trick and make life just a little easier? This project is frame worthy by the way.

Thanks for the praise! Are you asking about a dremel for the serial numbers, or scribed lines? In either case it wouldn't have worked well for me, I'm not steady enough to do those lines by hand. I did some testing with various bits and even the soft pot metal of the denix is pretty tough for the dremel, I killed one flat engraving bit cutting those notches into the upper by te extractor. With the right bit and a steady hand I suppose one could pull it off though.

I got some work done on the scope knob this weekend, it's just about done. I was going to use a knurled nut I found for pen mandrels but JohnG found faucet adapter that's a better size and knurl, so I stole his idea. His cool scope is at http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=261848. Anyway, I bought two adapters from Amazon and cut them up with a hack saw, one using most of the knurled section for the lower knob, and a "2 knurl" slice for the top from the second. I filled the center with epoxy putty (best I could come up with) to make 'em solid. I made a couple runs at rigging them up to turn but couldn't get the holes drilled precisely enough so I think I give up on that. I also filed down the knurl a bit to flatten the diamonds, which looks a lot more like the real Hensoldt scopes.

The disk on the top is a brass stamping blank cut down to size (still a bit big I think). For the base I resorted to stacks of sheet styrene bent and filed to shape, having decided that metal parts are too hard (for now at least). Such a pleasure working with plastic again after all the blood and sweat working on metal! But I would like to replace with aluminum stock or something in the future. Black in the pics is just spraypaint.

Anyway, it looks cool and I'm really happy.

Bottom knob after cutting and filing the knurl


Assembled windage


Word of warning - When I painted the gold parts on the scope I taped off the blued aluminum. Blue masking tape actually pulled up some of the darkened metal! Not a very strong finish. So I reblued it, and the Aluminum Black softened the enamel paint. Time for a repaint I guess.

I'm considering reworking the ring at the base of the grip. Anyone have pics of the real deal that would help? Most of the prop photos don't show it well, and I see a lot of variations on real mausers so I'm not quite sure what to shoot for.

I've been on vacation for a week so haven't done much. I re-blued some of the scope that was getting scratched up from too much handling. The Aluminum Black and 3in1 oil softened up the gold enamel paint, so had to repaint the scope tips. Classic modeling catch 22!

I've had this extractor sitting around for a while, finally got around to gluing it on. It's cut from aluminum sheet (mostly shaped with a dremel), with AB finish, CA glued onto the Denix bolt. Looks pretty good I think! I toyed with the idea of trying to mill it using my drill press or a Dremel or something but decided not to risk it.



STILL waiting for my scope mount from Todd's but I'm otherwise very close! I'm trying to decide how to weather the flash hider. I might just AB it, but I'm thinking of trying to parkerize it. I believe the original may have been parkerized based on the look and some stuff I've read about the MG81, but I'm no expert. Anyone want to weigh in or have examples of what they've done? It seems to darken ok with AB but the look is a bit to shiny/metallic I think.

Hot damn that's looking good. The details that you scribed into the back of the Denix look fantastic, as do the serial numbers. I might have to try both of these mods on mine.