NegativeEleven

There is a Grainger Supply here in town. I hadn't thought to try there. I've asked around at sign shops and always heard "we could special order it, but it won't be cheap" or "don't know what ABS is."

This question is asked a lot: "can I build a heavy rifle (dc-15x, dlt-19, dlt-20, endor rebel blaster, e-11 sniper) and hold it as a biker scout?" I think the answer is as follows: "If you think a blaster looks cool and you would enjoy building it, then build it." What do you do with that rifle when it's built? If you have a troop where there will be a 501st table display, ask whoever is setting it up if they'd like you to bring some props to display. If it's built well, and it's true to some Star Wars source material, then he'll say yes. Then it's there, you can pick it up and take a picture or two. An event where you don't have a table display (like a parade where your garrison will want you to look more canon), you probably don't want to be stuck dragging around a large heavy rifle anyway. Look at my avatar picture. That's not cannon. I was wearing boba and had my newly finished scout helmet on display. The TD picked up the tusken head that was also on display. That TD is now our Garrison CO, and he is fine with this sort of thing. This is a fun hobby, so have fun with it while respecting the mission of the 501st. I have a box of blasters that I bring to troops. I usually have 2 DL-44's (Endor and ANH), an extra scout blaster, and Hasbro mod/repaint versions of EE-3, E-11, DC-15, and DH-17. I'm working on a MerrSonn Power 5 that will eventually be for my girlfriend's officer costume, but until she gets that sewing done, it'll be displayed on the 501st table. I'm almost done with my sniper rifle (Marcel probably won't want me to call it a DC-15, since it's more like the MG-42 or Dengar's rifle). All those go out on display, sometimes they're picked up for photos. I didn't collect these specifically to carry as a biker scout. I love having this collection and it makes the table more interesting.

Ok, so my frame/oven isn't quite big enough to handle those barrel bucks, but the top cover turned out pretty good. I've got a few more sheets of styrene to try and maybe a couple of cuts in the barrel pieces will make them fit, but I really want the barrel to look like one solid piece when viewed from the side. I need to find a source for some other kind of plastic. Styrene cracks so easily, but I can drive less than a mile and pick up any size sheet I want. These are $10 sheets of .08 polystyrene. It's ok once it's on the gun. If I hadn't cracked it in a couple of places while trimming, I would leave this on there. I also need to make my scope mount smaller to match that raised part on the MG. And one pic for comparison to the original MG42...

and a little more work here: The bottom of the barrel is gonna be flat, but the top has tapers down toward the flash hider. The barrel also gets narrower (side to side) toward the flash hider. I'm gonna try to make a ridge with 3/4" pvc conduit (what my inner barrel is made of) so if I end up making a lot of these, it'll be a guide for trimming where to put the flash hider. I might eventually make another buck for a box to make it more seamlessly attach to the main gun body. For my rifle, I'll probably just freehand cut something out of sintra to make that look vaguely like the DC-15x or MG-42.

acetone will melt the plastic, so use very little. I filled in the seam on my helmet by melting the plastic I trimmed off into a paste with acetone, then spread the melted paste onto the seam. The plastic underneath reacted quickly to it and I spent a lot of time cleaning up the mess I made.

I'd cut the smaller circle on the bolt to match the square above it. That way, it'll fit that hole and you won't have to hold it in place while you tighten the nut inside. If you widen the visor hole to fit that circle, then when you're tightening the nut inside the helmet, the bolt is gonna spin. Looks to me, that is what cucblack did with his bolts (based on the picture. I went to Lowes and bought 1" (the circle on top) elevator bolts that extend 1.25" into the helmet because I bought my helmet from KS and he just sends little grey plastic circles (meant to be glued on feet of furniture). They're steel and don't have that extra raised inner circle, just the square part to hold it when tightening a nut on the other end. They're a little thinner than the plastic 3M headband bolts, but that just makes it easier to get them to sit flush against the visor.

I think the traditional thinking is that everything on the suit was designed for the bikes. The holster on the leg, the soft cod, the hip boxes are all easier on someone who is sitting on a speeder bike. The argument against adding heavy weapons to the scout CRL is that we are "biker scouts" first, "scout troopers" second. I can agree with that. I also know that it feels pretty awesome to carry a huge gun while wearing armor. Although, yesterday was my first chance to take the sniper rifle out with the scout armor (it was a con, so the rules are kinda relaxed)... and there's no way I'd be able to get that eyepiece to my face with the helmet on.

I got motorcycle gloves with 4 ribs on eBay for $25 and paid a friend $15 to mod them last year. Now they're starting to tear. They're a little small and I have ridden my motorcycle wearing them a few times, so the stress on the area between the glove and index finger was really stressed. I was also getting sick of re-gluing the suede parts down with E-6000. I decided to order these on Tuesday, got em today (Friday). The sizing chart was right on (I ordered medium). The leather seems thinner and more flexible than my old gloves, but they also seem to be more padded. I don't mind if he's using a cheaper leather because they still look great and more flexibility is a good thing. For $35+shipping, these are amazing. Someone should edit the first post with the store's web address http://www.scoutgloves.com instead of that out-dated ebay link.

Does your barrel taper towards the flash hider? The MG looks like it's the same width as the body for about 12cm/4inches then starts to taper down. It's hard to tell in your pictures if you did that or kept it the same width/height for the whole length. Keeping it flat would be easier than getting that angle symmetrical on two vac-form molds.

Back to the rifle topic, and to Goubatsu, I'm using the MG-42 for most of my reference material, rather than screen grabs from Battlefront. The MG-42 was seen in the original trilogy (Dengar had one). Since the earlier model, the MG-34, was used as the basis for the DLT, it's not too far out there to assume the Battlefront designers would have tried to emulate a similar gun if they did half the research that 501st costume builders do. I'm also going back to Marcel's build fairly often because he did a great job on that, especially in capturing the details from Battlefront that are obviously different from the MG-42, most notably the top of the barrel.

Hope to spend tomorrow carving out vac-form bucks for the barrel and hopefully pulling styrene over them on Friday so I can carry this thing at X-Con Myrtle Beach on Saturday looking better than it did 2 weeks ago.

There's many threads on the 501st forum where people complain about the quality of CushmanCreations or say that they mailed a check and never heard back from them. As for building it yourself, check out Gaunt's thread http://forum.bikerscout.net/index.php?showtopic=11793. There's pictures of my DC-15x build and his DLT-19 build. Unfortunately, neither is done yet. Mine is 3 layers of 3/4" pine. I don't exactly have a template because Silverboyd cut it out as he was cutting out his own DLT body. The DC is different, so I had a lot of free-hand sanding and carving to do. You can find the WOF templates for the MG-42 (although a lot of people will be quick to point out that the DC15 is not exactly built like that) posted several places (hell, I'll just put a link to the one on my webhost) and you'll notice a scale at the bottom. That's one meter, broken up into 10 sections and the small checkered squares are 1cm each. I dropped that image in Adobe Illustrator and scaled it till it matched, so I could quickly reference the sizes.

Well, I think that EU stuff is still up for consideration for reference material. Disney has said they're going to create a new level of canon "legendary" for that stuff. It's not going away. I think it'll be treated more like Batman's Year One or Marvel's What If.

I hope to post pictures of those molds in a couple of days over on Gaunt's build thread. Like I said, the top cover is almost done, but the barrel ones are just blocks of wood with a slight slope carved into them. I think the barrel is gonna have to be 3 pieces: 2 sides (with half of the bottom on each) and the rounded top. My rifle body is 3 layers of 3/4" pine.

As Gaunt says, there isn't one in the CRL, so anything you carry besides an approved holdout blaster is technically "wrong" in the eyes of the 501st. That said, most troops aren't "canon" events and you can get away with a little bit. If one shows up on the CRL, and that's up to the command staff, then you probably want to have that one. The DC-15x is only seen in that video game and one of the Sideshow Collectables scout statues. And those two differ in a few ways. I haven't seen a third source, and technically 3 sources with pictures are needed to add something to the CRL. I'm working on vac-form molds for the barrel of the DC-15x if that helps sway you at all. I'm using the WOF template for the German MG-42 as a template. I'm mirroring the left side of the barrel since the right side is open on the MG. Mine's gonna have a 3/4" PVC conduit inner barrel, probably sitting on an aluminum "U" channel for strength. I'm almost done with the vac-form mold for the top cover of the MG-42. I know the screencaps from Battlefront don't really show it, but I think it'll look good and I can also use them to make an MG-42 if someone wants Dengar's rifle. I agree with the discussion over in the scouts barracks here, that there should really only be one scout sniper at a troop. I know of one in my garrison, and he's has seniority. If he'll be at a troop with his, I won't bring mine.

A trick I did before I made myself a blaster with magnets is a thin elastic strap around my leg just above the boot. When the blaster was in the holster, I just stretched the elastic over the little rings on the back of the blaster to keep it from wiggling. You had to really look hard to see it.

I used sintra, curved with a heat gun to make my blaster fit tight in a SC holster. I did something similar with Rustbucket's KS holster with foam. We also have the magnets in our blasters though.

That's heavy. Mine are bigger and when packed for shipping, the whole package is around 1 lb according to the post office. I suggest you use hot glue to put some foam down in the holster to hold it tight. Make sure you can't see it from the outside. If you can, drill into the pressure button and embed magnets then put a steel plate behind the holster. I've some older scouts with a strap over top of the holster (the way DL-44 or E-11 belt holsters are), but that probably will keep your GML from approving you.

Sorry, just realized that in a hurry last week, I posted this on Marcel's build thread. I deleted and am reposting it here. This was my quick finish so I could carry the rifle at my Star Wars Day party last weekend. Repainted it black before I took it out. I'm the mando holding the rifle. Another neat blaster I should post up build pics for is the Endor DL-44 in my holster there. I'm going to make vac-form bucks to do the top cover sometime in the next week. I'm also going to vac-form the outer barrel for it once I get some measurements from Marcel. I bought 6 sheets of styrene cut to the size of my oven so I can heat to form. Hopefully I won't mess up any of them, but in my limited experience, I probably will. I think both halves of the barrel will fit on one sheet and the top cover on another, so I have 3 tries at each once the molds are ready.

Couldn't see if you posted somewhere else. I completely understand if you've been too busy to get those measurements done. I know you have both the DC-15x you constructed and an MG-42, right? How does the barrel on yours compare to the MG-42 in size? The WOF template looks like 52cm long, 4cm wide at the flash hider and 6cm wide where it attaches to the body. I'm thinking this week, I'm gonna carve some vac-form bucks out of lumber to make the outer square barrel for my rifle. I think I'll leave the bottom closed, wide holes down the sides and staggered circular holes in the top. Gotta decide if I wanna do rounded top or the flat panels coming to a point. Either way, I think I can get that vac-formed as two pieces (left/right), with sunken divots where the holes are to be drilled. I was going to just make a frame from flat aluminum bars and make the actual outside from sintra, but there's so many people who seem interested in this project, I figured I'd make something that can easily be replicated to save whoever builds the next one some work. I'm also going to vac-form the cover that goes over the main body of the MG-42 with some of the details for the top.

If I had time, I'd be cropping and reposting all the pictures Silverboyd has sent me via facebook of his build. He'll be done in a couple of weeks. He plans to carry it at a troop next month. I might finish mine before that, but it's not looking good with all the other projects I want to finish before my May 3rd (Star Wars Day Eve party).

Mine slides on like a t-shirt and opens with 2" velcro at the neck down to a couple of inches below what's visible under the armor. That way I can put it on myself and not have to rely on someone else to make sure the back is lined up right, like with the cummerbund. I met a much older scout (joined 501st in 1998) and noticed his vest had snaps embedded in the velcro (on both vest and bund) so he could be sure he lined it up. The snaps don't show on the outside. That's definitely how I'll do my next one.

Wait. Are we allowed to have a seam down the front like that? I have been wanting to make a new one, but I can salvage mine if I'm allowed to have a visible seam in the front.

Here's about all the progress you'll see from me till at least next month. I'm using an aluminum FOR SALE sign to replicate the top cover piece on the MG-42. Obviously, I need to trim it down, and I don't know if I'll be able to bend it in all the directions necessary. That piece may end up needing to be vac-formed. I'm still thinking of doing that for the squared part of the barrel, so I'll have both pieces able to be copied if anyone wants them when I'm done. I think the scope mount is a little tall. I tried a couple of times to cut a rectangular piece of 3/4" wood, but I really need to replace my jigsaw because it cannot cut a straight line. I took a 1" x 3/4" piece and made one straight cut on it with the circular saw, then screwed a 1/8" piece of steel to the top for the rail. Those scope rings are a little big, so I've got sticky-backed 1/8" styrofoam pads in there holding the scope tight. I might need to swap those out, but the ones I have that are more accurate (same as the ones on the Hasbro Rebel Blaster) are painted white on my Cobra Viper rifle! The flash hider is the screw-on part for the tip of an old ROTJ Luke lightsaber. I sanded off any text on the rest of it a long time ago, so I couldn't tell you which it was. It's not Rubie's or Hasbro... maybe Tiger or Kenner or something. The part with the holes, I measured that and cut from sintra. I evenly spaced the holes on the flat piece of sintra before I heated and wrapped it around. I still have to bondo the seam and clean up the holes so they look uniform. I've got a screw glued into the red funnel piece from previous pics. I'm gonna try to center that on the other part and then bondo till it looks like one piece.

After about 4 months of trooping, I decided to move my pouches. They were attached to the top of the cummerbund, but I now hang them from inside the armor because they were weighing down the cummerbund. The pouches won't need to be washed like the bund will. That black line between the chest armor and the bund was one of the most annoying things to correct on the whole costume. My bund snaps to the vest and I have suspenders hanging from the shoulder bridge to hold it up.