Sheartech rubber Bapty

[Hausi]

So after building a heavy metal (almost) all real parts Bapty and my special "Move Along"/SWAT Bapty based on a Doopy kit, it was time for something new, the all metal blaster is slightly too heavy for trooping while the Doopy kit on the other hand is a little too fragile and I wanted something that could also be handed to kids - no worries. 

So I went for Mark´s rubber bapty and ordered it unpainted as I planned to paint it myself. What I like about it: great details and very sturdy, communicating with Mark was great too, he´s a nice guy - always kept me updated about the progress and sent some pics - and he was even so kind to add some goodies, stickers, a pin and a patch, thanks for that!

What I didn´t like so much: the grip was very rough, looked as if it was ground down with a file and the mag with the wood inside didn´t look right as the mag´s walls are way too thick. 

Here it is as it arrived:

So I decided to rework most of this baby.

[Hausi]

First I sanded the grip smooth:

then I sawed off the rubber mag and dremeled out the mag slot to fit a real cut off sterling mag with a wooden insert.

I also tried to enhance the casting line along the sides of the back end which was originally cast of aluminium:

The rubber Hengstler counter has some nice and sharp details too but the plugs aren´t there, so I just fitted some plugs that match the original´s:

and after painting it looked like this:

 

[Hausi]

I also took the blaster apart to rework the shape and position where the trigger guard attaches and repainted the whole thing. Mark told me that painting his rubber blaster doesn´t work very well but as I´ve had good results with painting rubber props before, I gave it a try. I thoroughly cleaned it and gave it a first coat with some special primer intended for plastics. 

I then painted the scope with plastikoat brass

and the Hengstler with some grey primer for the back end and plastikoat brass for the front.

For the blaster I´ve used some acrylic spraypaints: gunmetal first, a very fine coat (a mere dusting) with chocolate brown to emulate rust, then I applied Revell color stop to all parts using a brush, to emulate paint chips. 

I then painted them with acrylic black spray paint in a satin finish. I used a white wax crayon for the lettering on the scope (the scope was the only part that received a  satin clear coat).

After rubbing off the color stop, I gave it some washes with watered down acrylic black and earth.

and here come some pics of the finished blaster in different lighting conditions.

[Hausi]

 

[DarthStevius]

looks so much better. well done mate 

[RoCKo]

I can only echo! Way better! A lot more natural wear and tear... 

Well done!   

[dutchy]

That is a thing of beauty!

[CableGuy]

Yes. Lovely work on that. Great job. :-)

[Hausi]

Allright folks, here´s an update: probably because of the extensive paintjob I have given this rubber blaster, the T-tracks - which are part of the mold so it´s all one piece - became tacky and seem to "melt", so for all of you getting one of these bad boys, consider thoroughly if you want to paint it. 

I decided to cut them off and replace them with some black plastic tracks, so I cut them off using my trusty exacto blade... aaaand cut myself. 

put a band aid on it  and continued:

As you can see, I have decided to go for the "Move along"-layout of tracks (above the rubber bapty you can see my SWAT-level DD Bapty with the same tracks-layout) and drilled holes accordingly. 

I then used some black plastic T-tracks from Super6 Props, cut them to shape and used my heatgun to bend them. 

Here´s what the original screen-used prop looks like:

And here is what my finished blaster looks like (the Sheartech blaster is the one at the bottom, DD at the top)

And finally a pic showing it with some other project I´m working on atm. 

Oh yeah, and I can definitely say that I prefer working on Sandtrooper lids...

 

[bigwam]

Nice work, Urs!

[doubledx]

awesome, cool work