Tear this ship apart until you find those plans!

[Cob]

Whelp, my big damn adventure is off to a start.

The mailman walked a mysterious package from a far away land down the driveway this morning.  I knew what horrible secret lay within...


I'm "on the list" for a ANH TK Stunt kit from ATA; so I got about 6 months to figure out how to assemble this E11.

IComm and Aker amp arrived yesterday (I really wanted to play with it, but it seems really tuned for having the speaker's head inside a bucket.)

[Cob]

Feeling a little more confident on the E-11 kit.  Everything is washed and I've started to trim and file down the marks from the mold.  I've got a hairline crack in the end cap and a casting defect in either the muzzle flash guard or the ejector port guard (I can't tell them apart yet.) that I'll need to deal with.  Not sure what folks use to patch resin yet. =)

I bought a dremel, but scared to use it given how easy it has been to move material with a file and xacto blade.  I'm planning on replacing the screws in the hand grip and muzzle with some M6 socket cap screws as the first "mod"-- I figure it will be easier to drill parts before they are glued together. 

Also picked up some E-6000 glue at Michaels, but I've also read that some sort of superglue is better on the resin kits.  Not sure yet.

[Cob]

I got a small vise which seems like it will make hacksawing the heads off of bolts a lot easier than it was squatting in the driveway.. (Did I mention I don't really have a "shop"?)

I have an album up on Google now, but there's not much in it yet.  Pictures from the weekend are annotated now; I've found these sorts of things super helpful so hopefully it will be a great resource for others once I'm all done (eventually).

https://plus.google.com/photos/107640738206085783074/albums/5983722434816620593?hl=en_US

I was setting up last night to get some shorts of hacksawing off the 3/4" bolts for the front of the muzzle, but had to abort to deal with other stuff.  Other than that, it will probably just be more cleaning and trimming stuff this week, and maybe some scary dremel use this weekend.

[Daverian]

I've got one of those

[Cob]

Album above updated with a few more WIP pics.  Working on the replacement screw modification for the muzzle; similar to this build on whitearmor -- http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/19872-dm101-doopys-e11-blaster-build/

Screwheads are now all sawed off and ready to be glued -- just need to make the holes for them in the resin.

Working on the muzzle of the E11, I used a dremel-press to make some guide holes for a 3/8" drill bit; don't have a press for a normal drill so I figured I would just get some familiarity with the dremel and worry about the how to clear the full hole.  I then figured maybe I could just hollow out the appropriate size hole by moving it around in the press and that seemed to go very badly.

One the hole that went well, I used a 3/8" drill bit as a "hand turned bore" and that worked out great.  I will repeat this with hand grip mod later.



On the bad hole, I quit before it's totally wrecked.  It's smaller than it needs to be, but I can't use the hand-bore method here anymore since the bit won't get situated.  I may try and find something to patch it with, and then redrill it?

[Cob]

Got some added confidence from the awesome folks on whitearmor.net and front and holes for the socket-cap screws are all drilled on the pistol grip and the muzzle of the blaster.   

https://plus.google.com/photos/+JoshuaHughes-Megalomaniac/albums/5983722434816620593

Next point of work will probably be trimming and cleaning up the muzzle flash guard for attachment.  It also has a chip missing from a bubble in the resin, so I am looking forward to playing with the bondo this weekend.

[Cob]

Argh, my ATA kit ships tomorrow!! and I have still done jack-all on wrapping this blaster up!

<wilhelm scream>

[stevo502]

Now you've got motivation

[RainTrooper]

Nice! Let me know if you have questions with that ATA. Glad to help!

[Cob]

Well, the big brown boxes are here!   ... This is gonna take me awhile.

Bass "the backup plan" Amsterdam chelsea boots show up later this week, so I'm thinking of starting on the shins first I guess?  I'm now on the waiting list for TKboots (8 weeks estimate), so I think I'm going to leave the bass Amsterdams black and then strip/repaint if TKboots falls through for whatever reason.  Wasn't sure what the pocketbook would look like when ATA was ready to drop, so I've been holding off on tools and other parts.

Thinking of hitting the shins first.  Scary stuff.

<hides behind the shield generator until all the shooting is over>

[maxsteele]

Ask all the questions you need!  My build thread on whitearmor.net turned into 20 pages.    I second, third, and fourth guessed every cut I made.  You may have more confidence than I did. 

[Cob]

Started my own white armor build thread last night:
http://www.whitearmor.net/forum/topic/29020-cobs-ata-tk-wall-of-shame-no-new-hope-for-these-stunts/

Build gallery started!
https://plus.google.com/photos/107640738206085783074/albums/6075861070775095249?authkey=CI6q4onUjaOfzAE

Started on forearms instead of shins.  I think I can mainly leave the sizing on them as-is, just need to clean up the edges so they stop removing skin on my thumbs.  Left forearm arm is a little roomy once it's on, but it's at the regulation minimum size right now.