Rebel Hardware Competition - BlasTech SE-16D Heavy Blaster Pistol

I found this trigger assembly/lower receiver in a box marked "carbine parts" at a gun show. I have never been able to figure out what it is. At first I thought it was from a Thompson, but it doesn"t match up. So much for the Pulse Rifle! You might not be able to find this item easily, but the techniques I used to convert it can be applied to any base gun, whether it be real or a toy. Pictured with it are a bunch of model kit parts. I ended up adding others, and not using some of the ones pictured. Some of the source kits include the Renwall/Revell Visible V8 Engine, a Testors 1/35 scale Howitzer gun, an MPC/ERTL Peterbilt Wrecker kit and wing parts from a commercial airliner kit.
I found the flash suppressor and the bit of receiver barrel it screws onto at a hole-in-the-wall antique store. I don"t know what gun this is from, either! But here you see how I married it to the base gun. I had to cut away part of the tube with a hacksaw to make it fit properly in the recess, as there were metal struts running from either side of the magazine well. Two-part epoxy and zap-a-gap hold it in place, and modeling putty smoothes the transition. Putty was also used to fill stamped-in lettering on flat portions near the barrel"s threads. Also seen here is a resin casting of the M32 tank scope used on ESB weapons. I bought it cheaply as a reject so it had lots of air bubbles to fill.
I wanted this weapon to have a scope but didn"t want the "Tasco hunting scope" look. I also wanted to keep it a bit sleek so a side-mounted scope (ala ESB) was out. So I decided Star Wars weaponry can have "through the barrel" sighting capability. Viola, the M32 would be butted right up to the back end of the barrel, having no upper receiver at all.
The front of the base gun had a recess that was part of the mechanism by which bullets were brought out of the clip and into the receiver. This recess had holes enabling one to see all the way through the gun. I didn"t want that, so it was time to add greeblies. Part of the underside of an airplane wing covered most of the space. That grill-like detail from the bottom is a landing gear recess. The piece didn"t have much detail toward the top so I covered it with engine parts from the wrecker kit. Another wrecker part was added along the bottom to hide the edge of the hacked-up airplane part.
Along the bottom, where an ammo clip once was, I needed to add more parts. More of the airplane wing came in handy again, with an added bit of detailing from another anonymous donor kit. Most of the wing was covered, though, with a part from the Howitzer that I zap-a-gapped right onto the bottom of the magazine well.
As seen in the inset pics, I needed to cover the open nature of the top of the gun as well. Three more wrecker parts did the trick. The large one is an engine block cover. Its shape matches nicely with the underside of the scope. Another part fit in a recess in the back of the gun so well it was as if it was designed to.
Along the left side of the gun: the forward part has a two hatch covers from the Howitzer. Plugging holes (previously used to attach this gun to its original upper receiver) behind the trigger: one small anonymous part that disappeared before photographing the finished item (but can be seen in the in-progress shots), and a knob-like part from the Visible V8 kit. Since I had decided not to use the traditional V8 piston halves, it was neat to find a place for another V8 part.

Behind that is another Howitzer part. It"s held in by an axle cap from the same kit, but glued in such a way to allow the flat part to pivot around the round part. Instant safety switch!

That assembly caps off one end of a metal rod (simply a leftover aluminum shaft from a pop rivet) that goes through another hole in the side of the gun to a matching one on the other side, again capped with a Howitzer axle cap. This pin serves as an attachment point for the back of the M32 scope, although I had to add material to the scope base to make it reach low enough while still being level.

On either side of the long wrecker engine cover part, drilled holes and glued in more pop rivet shafts, two per side. You can see the remains of two more that I put in the wrong place. I left them there as extra detailing. These shafts fit into corresponding holes drilled into the bottom of the scope. That attachment was then reinforced with zap-a-gap (or equivalent).

On the right side of the gun are more Howitzer axle caps filling holes, another hatch cover, and an aluminum Vader chestbox rod from GT. Since something similar appears on the Vibro-Axe, I figured it was "admissible".

Inside the barrel is a chrome truck rim from the wrecker. Since the training remote fires stun blasts from those things, I figured more powerful blasts would too. I"m not sure I"ll leave it there, though.

Painting was done in sections and in layers, in different shades. (It was a shame to lose the authentic age-old patina of the original gun, but it was unavoidable.) Before attachment the scope was painted bright gold, then gloss black, and then shot with dullcoat with the endcap masked off. Careful weathering reveals the gold beneath, which is close enough to "brass" for me. The rest of the blaster was sprayed with a satin black automotive spraypaint designed for metal surfaces (possibly "self-etching", although the can doesn"t use this phrase). A layer of a metallic grey passing for gunmetal was applied, then alternating light mistings of satin black and more gunmetal until the desired result was achieved. The flash suppressor was heavily blued rather than painted. Ultra flat black was sprayed into the end for "carbon scoring", although most of that was burned off with a propane torch in an attempt to give it real scoring. It burned off the bluing, too. Might have to re-blue it before it rusts.

Finally, the blaster was lightly weathered, revealing the differently-shaded paint coats, which is a good thing.

I named it BlasTech SE-16D Heavy Blaster Pistol after searching Star Wars weapons for something that looked somewhat like mine. I finally settled on Ponda Baba"s gun, a BlasTech SE-14C; the prop was also built from a carbine and the look was close enough for me to decide my blaster was a later model.