Here is the fourth and final post chronicling the build of my T21 blaster!
Really the only thing left to talk about is finishing up the barrel, painting (including weathering), and the sling.
For starters, here’s another part that I know nothing about but since I saw others putting it on theirs I built one for mine. It’s a sight of some sort.
I needed a short section of PVC cut approximately in half with another curved plastic piece to fit inside it. I couldn’t find two sections of PVC that fit together in this way so I used a leftover piece from my armor build. I heated it up with a candle to get it to bend the way I wanted it to.
Added some more plastic, following the design of those that have gone before me:
And because my fellow T21 builders bondo’d their sights, I did the same and then naturally sanded it down afterwards.
With the barrel and its sights complete it was time to give it several light coats of paint.
Next came weathering. I’ve been blown away by the craftsmanship of some of the weathering jobs done on other guns out there. I can’t touch that level of detail and accuracy but as my first attempt at this sort of thing I’m extremely pleased with the result. I think this thing is gonna rock when trooping with it.
Last thing to do before calling it done was to add the sling. I got two slings from a local military depot store in order to construct this single sling for this gun.
The end that loops around the barrel is pretty simple (you just loop it around the barrel). But I had to find a way to attach the other side. The slings had some hardware already attached to them so I simply chopped a piece up so I could screw it to the stock of the gun. I did this using some tough pliers used for cutting metal and files.
And here it is after installing the sling:
I can’t wait to finish the rest of the sandtrooper and troop with this thing. It was an exciting process, made possible by all of the resource materials and posts of those who have built these already. Yeah, it took a LONG time. But like I said at the beginning of Part 1, it was extremely rewarding to come home from a day of sitting in a cubicle all day looking at a computer screen to get dirty building something with my hands.