Allerg3n

Thanks guys! Unfortunately will not be making any more - I'd have to really streamline things. This was a 9 month build, after all. In all seriousness though, it'd probably be relatively easy to kit out a DLT-19 if you had a good way of pre-cutting pine boards and a 3D printer to handle some of the miscellaneous parts/greeblies. The rest is PVC and a lot of simple tricks and nonsense. Unless you want lights and sound - then it gets a bit more complicated. Last build update - here's pics after weathering and clearcoating. Weathering was pretty much a thinned out black acrylic wash (probably 25% acrylic, 75% water), followed up with silver drybrush, especially on raised areas. I used a gloss clearcoat because it was the only thing we had lying around. Will probably re-coat with a semigloss eventually, but it looks badass enough for me right now. She's finally done! Thanks again - moving operations to the armor assembly thread.

Big [PIC HEAVY] post inbound... I'll leave descriptions a bit short and try to let the pics speak for themselves. Picking up from where my last post left off, at this point I started to build in the attachment for the legs. I carved out the front PVC piece and ran a screw through it, and sealed it with epoxy putty. Used a piece of scrap oak as the coupler for the legs. I was a dullard and did not take pics of carving. In order to make the legs functional, I drilled a 3/8" hole lengthwise through the coupler and carved a perpendicular channel into the hole. Then I used some 3/8" dowels and crafted a T-shaped axle. Some pics of the T-part: You can see the nut resting in the top of the T section below. That's what screws into the PVC above. I cut the angle brackets to the proper length and joined them together with some pins, nuts, and magic. A little sheet metal trim later and I ended up with this: Back (faces the underside of the barrel when closed) Front Magical contraption in the open position: And closed: Recessed channels on either side to allow legs to expand: Used another piece of dowel and a thumb screw to secure them to the barrel: Then, on to carving the sights. I started taking short cuts here because I'm rapidly running out of time to complete all these projects by Labor Day, and I honestly could take another 6 months just to finish the detail work on this gun. Sights were all carved out of spare balsa wood or pine. Front sight closed: Front sight open: Fun perspective shot; Rear sight closed. This is not as complete as it could be (the wing attachment to indicate distance isn't there) but I can always carve that and add it later. Rear sight open: More detail work... Carved a notch into the rest for the rear sight: Added the ejection hole (props again to Vince): Underside of leg attachment piece: I narrowed the strap attachment on the main barrel: And on to things that were irritating me. The rear metal piece had gone all wonky when I first attached it and was not sitting level with the top of the gun. So I popped it off and shimmed it up, then re-set it with JB Weld. Nice and level now. Repair from the side: The unscathed side (for reference): Corner shot of the repair: I added a "screw" disc to the top piece. This is attached to the wooden side because I need to open it to get to the electronics. Next I carved grips. This was done freehand using a Dremel (it shows), but from 5 feet away you can't much tell the difference. Did the same to the butt of the gun, and installed a disc as well. I thought this came out much better than the grips. For T-Track, I decided I didn't want to shell out major $$$ for exact replicas, since this whole build is neat but not exactly exact. So I took the more general advice to "find a rake" and dropped $10 at a hardware store. Trimmed up the pieces and attached with superglue and wire. You can also see in the following shots that I added some basswod to make the leg attachment piece stand out a bit more. This was glued on. I noticed when trying to attach the T-Tracks that I had inadvertently misaligned the barrel holes when I first drilled it several months ago. While this sucks, it's not *too* severe, and the added bonus is that my light effects will show through a bit more than they would have. The downside is that I have no place to attach a wire around the leg attachment screw because there aren't any holes in the barrel nearby: Rounded the edges on the legs: Assembled immediately prior to painting: For paint, I chose black Rustoleum Primer and Rustoleum Oil-Rubbed Bronze. I picked Rustoleum because it'll cover just about anything and I'm using a variety of materials in the build. Oil-rubbed bronze has a nice dark metallic look to it, so it comes out looking gunmetal black. Like this: The butt only got primed - I didn't use the bronze on it. I used some Raw Umber acrylic on it but it needs a bit more work to make it look like bakelite. I was a dunce and didn't tape up some of my joints, so I'll have to sand those out (that's why the front piece is crooked and the barrel doesn't screw in all the way). But all together, here's the "final" product (minus weathering and more "bake" in the bakelite): All that's left is the (minor) painting details, and a coat of semi-gloss polyurethane to protect it. It's been a long road, but boy will it be fun to troop with a working DLT-19! Thanks again everyone - looking forward to putting my armor together (hopefully it will go more quickly than this).

Quick update - finished the gun this weekend. Big post with lots of pics inbound soon. Had to make a few sacrifices (and discovered that I misaligned my barrel holes) but I think it easily passes the 5 Foot Rule and it looks pretty badass to boot. Standby...

Thanks guys! ATA accidentally shipped the wrong kit, which is why the ribbed shoulder straps are in the pic with the wrong knee plate...We just use canvas/elastic straps for the shoulders, correct? They have to be white and 2" wide, as I recall. I guess if I ever wanted to "revert" and go clean I've got all the parts I need to do it - but where's the fun in that?

I have an obligatory brown box pic, but it's on my wife's phone and inaccessible at the moment...will update this post when I can get it. Obligatory shot of parts layout: Pauldron courtesy of Trooperbay. Boots courtesy of Lands' End. Gloves are cheapie $5 black PVC from Amazon. Huge shout out to Anthony (Blaster 8266) for ammo pouches (not shown) - due to arrive any day now. I realize the knee is the wrong type - I have the correct diamond sniper plate in my possession but accidentally grabbed the regular TK plate in my haste to get a picture. Mad props to ATA - awesome to work with and buy armor from. I've been perusing threads on strapping, snap plates, and the like in between furious bouts of sanding/carving for my DLT-19. That said I'm looking forward to hitting the dunes outside Mos Eisley with you all in the next few months!

Updates! Bought a new camera - it is a joy to use. Pics from now on will be taken using it, so hopefully quality should be much better. On to the build! Carved out the middle barrel sight with some scrap oak and fixed it to my PVC ring. Used JB Weld putty to form the rest of the ring. Lots of sanding - still some left to do on the surface of the sight. Started sanding/crafting the tip of the barrel. My legs won't be removable, but I'm going to try to make them at least functional. I cut/sanded part of the PVC ring to match the gun as much as possible, but unfortunately the original gun is just a bit too narrow in some places. I don't want to have to cut into the barrel underneath, so I'm leaving this for now. I also hand-filed the notches into the front section. This is the top: Here's the left side of that piece: A look down the barrel... I added a shield to cover the electronics and to imitate the feed cover tray. The mesh isn't canon but helps contain the wires and let sound through, and when it's all finished in black it shouldn't stick out too much. Here are some of the condensed electronic guts of the gun. In this first shot, (looking top down) the Arduino is buried on the bottom left, and the mp3 board from China is oriented vertically on the right. Here's the inside of the ammo feed cover box. Speaker amp, batteries, speakers. Tried brushing up some of the sanding around my inlay. Some examples: Looks ugly, but feels really smooth. Hoping it will look better when painted: And one shot for funzies: ### I found some angled shelf brackets at Lowe's that will make perfect legs. Need to assemble the attachment to fix them to the barrel. After that, minor detail work. I need a sight for the very front of the barrel, a rear sight, a carved-out depression for the spent shell casings (as discussed earlier), and grooves in my grips and on the back of the butt. Then t-track and wire. Then on to painting! Saw some cheap paint today and picked up white primer, silver undercoat, black top coat, and satin finish. The end is in sight! /also, if anyone would like me to take pics of a part of the gun with the new camera, just let me know. I can capture a lot more detail a lot more reliably now.

Happy birthday Dirty!

OK - so I thought it would just be simpler to make a video showing the effects. Here it is on Vimeo: Here's a second one where I turned a light off so you can see a bit better: Apologies for picture/audio quality - I was using a 2012 Nexus 7 to film this and the front-facing camera isn't all that great.

Sorry for delays in posting - life has gone a bit crazy. Big developments though - got the barrel drilled, batteries in, and everything working electronically. Also just received word from ATA that my armor should be here Thursday. I'm going to have a lot to do! Pictures to follow in the next day or so... And thanks again for all your comments and support. I'm having a "blast" with this.

OK all, time for next round of updates... lots of little things accomplished. First off, after installing threads in the barrel, I realized that I'd inadvertently made my barrel about 2" longer than it was before, *and* I'd messed up the spacing between the holes in the barrel. Oops. Off to the hardware store I went - $5 later and I had another PVC pipe and thread insert. Went ahead and glued all that up, trimmed the barrel to the proper length, and now I just need to add new holes. The gun now appropriately measures right about 48". Here's the right side: And the left side: I also reshaped the right side a bit - brought the front back and put more of an indent in back. Since my batteries should be arriving soon, I needed to make space for some of my electronics. The metal feed cover is big enough to hold batteries, amp, speakers, and wire - but my Arduino and mp3 player had no place to go. I started carving some room out in the feed section: My Dremel was my friend :-) None of this is actually wired yet, but with the lid closed you'll be able to see the chips inside. I need to come up with a good way of anchoring them so they don't rattle around, and possibly a screen to cover them and the wiring from view. Vince - I may create a shield that gives the appearance of a feed tray which also doubles as a screen for the electronics. Will probably be one of the last things I do. I cut a ring of PVC and used plumber's putty to sculpt the rest notch for the main sight (which I haven't built yet). Glued that in place and also cut and glued a thin strip of metal which will sit at the bottom of the base of the barrel: I probably need to screw this in for additional reinforcement (plus I believe the original had two screws installed here): Anyway, lots of details. Work continues down the barrel - will be drilling holes with my dad's drill press this weekend. Progress! Cheers mates!

Ah, cool! I hadn't seen these yet. Thanks for posting - this will definitely help.

Thanks Vince - I did ask, but I'm not clear on some of what you're describing. Mostly I've been using the pics in this thread as a reference: http://www.gunpics.net/german/mg34/CGN/MG34DisCGN.html combined with the template files I downloaded online. I've still got some sculpting to do on the stock - here's a reference pic as an example. The green line shows where I've currently got things divided between wood and PVC - I need to sculpt back the wood to get the right shape (marked where the crosshatched orange box is). I've also got to carve out the indent on the bottom (at the very left side of the green line). I'm not very familiar with some gun terms - apologies for my ignorance - is this what you mean by the insert for the feed tray: http://www.gunpics.net/german/mg34/CGN/MG34_035.JPG? Haven't built one yet to try and conserve space for the electronics, but I can certainly attempt one for greater accuracy. Is this what you mean by ejection port (green arrow)? If so, I haven't carved it out yet...honestly I hadn't paid that much attention at all to where the lever was in relation to what the port would look like. This is certainly doable though. My original plan was to work my way up the gun from the butt to the tip of the barrel. I was going to do the stand last - probably by fashioning aluminum angle pieces into the rough shape I need and combining with whatever PVC/wood I have handy. I may try to make it functional (with springs, etc.) but this will depend on time. Last night I incorporated some PVC connector pieces into the barrel components - just jamming them together and taking them apart was making them a bit too loose. Installed a 1/4" connection in the main barrel with some JB Weld PVC Putty. Cut up the female connector for the larger end of the barrel Doesn't look pretty, but works and the barrel is straight

Now that I have all my switches working, I wanted to figure out a way to mount the weapon selector switch on the gun. I figured the safety selector would be a good place. I know the original switch would slide up and down, but I rigged up a pushbutton alternative instead. I carved the switch components out of spare balsa wood and glued a 1/8" magnet to the top of the switch. Then I carved out a furniture button and drilled a hole for a second 1/8" magnet. This way if the switch needs maintenance I can take the switch cap off to replace it. A little glue got it all in place. I did a little bit more detail work around the top edge but forgot to take pictures before I went to bed. Will update with that later.

Electronics are working! Here's a Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/86566355 Now I can focus on doing more detail work to the body of the gun without having to worry about if this will all work in the end. Nothing like a little win to keep one motivated! Thanks again for your encouragement - I'm looking forward to pulling this whole thing together. Batteries are on order and should arrive in 2 weeks, and in the meantime I'll be working on the barrel and other details. Cheers mates!

Hi all, Thanks again for your advice last month. I've been working on the bucket some more and finally got to a place where I'm pretty comfortable with it - almost finished I think! Front: Right 3/4: Right: Left 3/4: Left: Closeup of eyes: Closeup of teeth (I tried filing just a bit more out of these as suggested previously): Ultimately I think I'd like to apply for SWAT as the Cantina Captain (orange pauldron). I did some research on Look Sir Droids and tried to count up the number of blue stripes on his tubes - I got to 12 on the right cheek and at least 11 on the left. Does anyone know if the number of stripes has been determined yet for that trooper? If I'm off it's no big deal - I'll just redo the stripes if/when I decide to apply for SWAT. The other thing I was wondering is which ear bump the black stripe should go on - from the high-res stills it looks like its not the front bump, but the one behind it. Still have little things to correct with this helmet - I'm going to get white paint today for the screws and I need to touch up the blue stripes since they're still ragged, but all in all I think it's come together fairly well. Thanks again for your help and feedback!

Looks great! I'm hoping to be in your position soon - put in for ATA last September and it should be here around May-ish (I hope!)

Quick update - it's been a while! I finally got through the electronics hurdle I've been facing. Basically I was having a problem with the Chinese MP3 player I ordered - it wouldn't play sounds from any of the SD chips I had. After several weeks now of trial and error and ordering different SD chips, I finally found a combo that worked. I managed to fry my audio amp in the process but have another on order from China. Should be here in the next week or two. This is big news because I'll finally be able to stuff the electronics into the gun to test it out, once I get all this stuff together. Most of the gun is sculpted and I have to do finishing details on the barrel as well as build the stand, but other than that I think I'm in good position to finish in early spring. I need to get T-Track too but that's small potatoes. In the meantime I did some more detail work... Added the on/off switch to the side of the gun: Added the bottom (non-functional) release switch: Fitted the ammo feed cover for my Li-ion batteries (haven't purchased these yet - they're expensive!): In between all this I've been working on my helmet - I will update that thread in the next week or two, as I've been slowly hand-painting all the decals on it. French Blue MM enamel paint is on its way for the tube stripes.

Thanks guys! I'll take some closeups of ears/teeth when I get home. Here's the full-size image for the front: http://i.imgur.com/FO3SiKp.jpg and for the rear (you can see the ear gaps a bit more clearly here): http://i.imgur.com/QNtMyyw.jpg Sorry for pic quality - my cell phone doesn't have a great camera.

Hey guys, I hit a brick wall with electronics for my DLT-19 build, so I've been casting about for something to do. Thought I'd try putting my bucket together over the weekend - here are the results: Front Left Side Right Side Rear I think it came together fairly well, but any feedback would be appreciated. I messed up both sets of ears trying to get them flush - the fronts pulled together pretty well, but I still have some gaps in the back. :-/ How huge of an issue is that for deployment/SWAT? Here's a link to the full file: http://imgur.com/QNtMyyw Is there an easy way to get replacement ears? I chewed through both of my sets and arrived at the version you see here. Thanks again for your help - gotta gather my supplies to start painting. Cheers!

More progress! Sculpted more of the side: Finished details on the side/bottom for the "rail": Added the metal plate behind the top piece and the dividers in the feed section: Added the ammo feed cover box: Replaced the acorn nuts on the handle with pegs: Here's a couple shots from the front: I got my battery holder today - it almost fits into the ammo feed box (I need to do some slight trimming where I folded it on the bottom). This weekend I'm going to try to get that fitted along with some fake switches/details on the left side of the gun and along the bottom. Will probably try to drill the appropriate holes for my on/off switch as well. Moving right along! PS - if anyone is noticing things that are incorrect or small details I could correct, please feel free to point them out! I'm going for "reasonably accurate" since I didn't order a kit that was molded from an original :-D

Musically? Jedi Rocks (it's catchier). Is some of the CGI annoying? Yes.

I'm interested, ian, but I bet the shipping from UK to the States would be pretty prohibitive for just one washer... I think there's an appliance store near me that carries them...

Thanks everyone for your support & comments - this is slowly but surely coming along as I get time in the evenings (and it's keeping me from playing too many video games, so there's that). Here's what I've been up to: Trigger: I carved out two trigger pieces and sandwiched a micro momentary trigger switch between them. Drilled the wire hole and verified it worked, then pulled it out of the gun - this will be one of the last pieces I glue in place. Top: I finally found furniture buttons to use on the top piece - got them at Hobby Lobby. This piece is pretty much finished now. Left side update: Finished the left side handle and sanded the handle down to fit my grip pieces: Added the (non-functional) flange on the bottom: Carved out the side piece where the sight will be mounted. The shaded area will eventually become the location of my on/off switch - I've got to carve it out and install a sliding switch, and inlay some material that will preserve the look of the release switch on the mg-34. Right side update: Installed metal "track" for the grip handle: Carved out the side piece: I was working on forming the metal box today - got something roughly cut out but the dimensions are a bit wonky. I'm wondering how to attach it while still preserving my ability to pull the top up & open - if anyone has any thoughts I'd certainly welcome your advice. Part of me wants to do a hinge, but I'm not quite sure where I'd hide it. The other complication is that it will be stuffed with batteries, a speaker, and possibly even my arduino (if I can get it all to fit). The other thing I've been wondering over - what have people used for the selector switch on the left side of the gun (above the trigger)? I'd like to make that a functional piece to change the firing mode on the arduino, but I can't seem to find a switch like that anywhere...my thought for now is to carve/make something up to put in place there, and put a momentary switch underneath it. It'd be a bit counter-intuitive because you'd have to press it in rather than turn the selector, but I'm not set on doing it that way either. Cheers!

Updates! It's been a busy month. For starters, I got pretty much everything sanded down to the proper width. I also installed the right side grip (used an old flashlight handle) and started installing hardware/greeblies. For the most part this has been a mix of post screws and threaded rods that actually serve a purpose (like holding the thing together). You can see the Arduino Nano knockoff in the pic above. I fried the first one by not paying attention to my circuit and had to order a second (whoops). On the bright side, I successfully wrote a program that lights up the barrel and creates a cool effect. Here's a closeup of the handle/grips: I sanded the grips down from 3/4" board so they're about 1/4" thick now. I'll engrave details later with my Dremel. It's not perfect, but my goal on this build is only "rough approximation", so with a little more work I think it'll do just fine. I've also been making use of a lot of wood epoxy - in the pic above you can see where I had to epoxy my trigger guard back on after I accidentally snapped it off. Here's a shot with the top in place - that took a lot of sanding (could still use more, probably): I drilled wiring holes for the barrel lighting and worked it into my barrel attachment: And my major accomplishment so far: the track-mounted LED assembly: I used an old 2-liter soda bottle and cut sections of it out, hot glued them together, and glued posts onto it for the LED mounts. Using clear plastic helps spread the light around and you can't really see much even with the barrel full of holes (it'll have T-track in it anyway as well). Here's closeup of the front assembly for the LED track: All the LEDs are Adafuit Neopixels - at first I tried using the bare versions but they were crazy hard to solder with my big fat soldering gun. Neopixels are easy to program for - Adafruit publishes the library - and crazy easy to install. All in all, things are really coming together. I've been trying to work from the back of the gun forward in terms of adding details (there are lots!). I have all the electronics to start programming sounds, but I think I'll hold of on that for a month or two so I can maximize the nice fall weather to work outside. It gets dark early nowadays...

OK - got some time to crank away this past weekend - time for an update! I assembeld the main body and side pieces, and installed a 3/8" diameter metal rod through the body of the gun. This metal rod serves as an attachment point for the barrel. I glued two PVC couplers together and found a washer that was the inner diameter of the coupler. A few more washers and a nut later, and I was able to connect the coupler to the gun. Sanded the butt down into roughly its final form, and glued it to the body with a PVC ring as a coupler: I had forgotten to make the center tab on the top of the receiver long enough to fit as a hinge. So I borrowed a trick from Warmachine/Hordes assembly and used a metal pin and some Gorilla Glue to install a tab that will serve as a hinge point: After that I used the blueprints to carve out the "wings" for the sides of the top piece. I pinned, glued, and clamped them onto the top piece as well. Sanded down pieces to use as grips until they were about 3/8" thick: Still need to sand a bit more and actually fashion the "grip" part out of these, but that's a lot of detail work. As it stands now (sans the top piece - not sure why I didn't have it in place when taking this picture): Most of the work to be done on the gun now is in the details - sanding out the body where I need to and making cuts in right places, etc. I also have some work to do on the barrel, but I need to buy a P-clamp or two to finish those. In other news, my Arduino clone came yesterday and I successully got it working and running a simple 4-pin LED light. I have about 1/3rd of the electronics I need - the rest should arrive from China in the next 2-3 weeks. I'm hoping to have the body work pretty much done by then, so I can start building the feeder box and planning out how to wire the circuits. Cheers mates!