postmortem01

This should be a lot of fun. I've wanted to do this blaster this way for over 10 years now. Really looking forward to seeing this one done right.

Couple more pictures...

PRAETORIAN BLASTERS - WHO WE ARE... We've been making blasters for the 501st and other costuming groups for over 10 years. We took a long break and reorganized. Nathan and I talked for a long time about having a different approach to making high-end rubber blasters for the 501st / costumers. What we wanted to focus on was quality. I know I've been saying that a lot lately but the reality is that we are going to great lengths to make these new blasters a much higher quality than what we'd produced in the past by creating molds that have splits designed to minimize the destruction of details. Separate molds for separate parts which not only creates an illusion of separate parts but actually produces separate parts with under cuts and higher detail. We're not interested in producing 20 blasters a week if they are not something we are proud of. The idea of Praetorian Blasters is brought about by the 501st Centurion status maintained on the FISD forum. Requirements have been set to reach "Centurion status". We wanted to make blasters that would excel beyond those requirements and set a new bar of quality. WHAT'S THE PLAN? Nathan and I have started work on the Praetorian DLT-19. We've taken two MG-34s that we have here at work and are combining the best components into one for molding. In the end, this hard rubber blaster will come complete with accurate fins including wire wrap, disc on the side of the grip and box on the feeder port. Things we will be doing that are standard for this blaster: Nozzle will be molded separately - This will allow for greater detail in the cone area where predecessors have had shallow details. This will also alleviate the need to vent expanding foam from the back of the blaster which has destroyed butt stock detail in the past. Receiver top will be molded separately - This will allow for visible "pass thru" area under the lid. When the box insert is in place, you won't actually be able to see through but the depth detail will be very nice. Bipod is molded separately - This bipod will have greater detail in the way we will be molding it. We will be increasing the stability of the connections as well. WHY CAN'T YOU MAKE THAT AREA HOLLOW? There are often questions about how we could go about making the barrels hollow and not clay in certain parts. We always put quality first. The fact is that, yes, we could make the barrel hollow. It would not be rubber at that point. It would need to be plastic or metal. That completely defeats the purpose of the rubber blaster. The entire reason for making blaster from rubber is durability. Secondary reasons are high quality detail and price. The level of detail that is possible with silicone molds and rubber cast parts is by far heads above other materials. We use EXACTLY the same processes and materials for all of the mainstream films and television shows. Aside from that, manufacturing hollow parts and pass thru areas severely drives the cost up. WHY ARE YOU BLASTERS SO EXPENSIVE? We are separating parts and making additional molds to bring you a high level of detail and trying to keep the cost down at an "affordable" level. I put affordable in quotation marks because there is always a discussion about why these blasters are so "expensive" (there they are again). They are not expensive. "Expensive" is relative as well as "affordable". Silicone, if you've ever purchased any for a project is about $100 per gallon. This is for tin-based silicones. With rubber parts, you are almost guaranteed that your molds will produce up to 20 parts before the silicone begins to break down. Many hobbyists and professionals will disagree with my "20" parts statement but it's the truth. You will still be able to pull parts from the mold beyond that number but the quality begins to drop. Higher quality and detail just costs more to maintain. As with our E-11 M38 and M19, we've made multiple molds out of the starting gate to ensure that we don't burn the molds out. We will most likely do the same for this blaster.

Ok. My apologies for placing this thread on the wrong forum. I'm going to start a new thread called "Praetorian Blasters - DLT-19". This will only apply to the DLT-19 as seen in ANH. I will try to transfer all of this data over to the new thread. If a moderator would like to delete this thread, that would be fine also.

We're starting with pretty nice MG-34 and moving some parts around to make it nicer. These will come standard with the charging handle. We will be casting several pieces separately to give you better details. THINGS WE CAN DO: We can and will make the nozzle barrel tip deep with a cone shaped opening. It will be slightly thickened to help in the casting process. The bipod will molded separately Foam venting will be done at the front of the blaster to keep the rear details intact and correct We are making the receiver cover separate so the detail of the opening will be more accurate. THINKS WE CANNOT DO: We cannot make the vent holes on the barrel deep without "dishing" built in. Rubber casting simply does not work that way. We cannot make the charging handle moveable. We cannot make the barrel disconnect. We actually could but it is cost prohibitive and may ruin the structure of the blaster.

How many Death Troopers are there out there? The DLT-19 Rogue One style has several modifications beyond/differing from the standard DLT-19. I'm just curious how many actual Death Troopers there are out there. Do they fall under the MEPD banner being that they carry heavy guns?

We have a lot of other projects already in the works. You'll see several more blaster projects surface within the next few weeks. We're looking forward to feedback on the blasters that we've already shipped out.

Rolf! You Ol' Sonnova Gun! How are you?!

Thanks for the welcome guys! Nathan and I are glad to be back in some capacity. We have some cool stuff coming. We'll show you guys more progress as we go so you can be more involved in the build process. We like the input and will try to give you guys the elements you need.

Thanks very much RoCKo. I appreciate it. It's nice to be back after about 8 years off.

The answer is that we COULD do it but we would not do it. That would simply drive the price up and the quality down. We try very hard to make these the best. Nathan and I are manufacturing these one at a time and discarding "bad" castings that do not meet our standards. We are not trying to produce these the same way we did for 10 years prior. We've made many more molds of the individual parts to create a cleaner final piece for everyone. The consequence of this is that they take WAY longer to make each. We are also trying to give you options. The DLT-19 is such a large gun and always has a high potential of failure during casting that we'd probably go the safest route on producing these the first time around. We are separating pieces from this original, similar to what we've done on the E-11, so the detail will be much higher and quality will be much higher as well. We are doing some really cool stuff with the DLT-19 that we haven't done in the past. I think everyone will be very please by the outcome. I should mention that we've pulled two candidates for molding from our weapons department. Oddly enough, one of them is the original MG-34 that we molded long ago. We will be using parts from both MGs and assembling them into, what we hope, is the definitive MG-34 for our project.