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Well I finally got a moment off work over Christmas and had just enough days to get obsessively stuck in to a new E-11 build. I'm building this one totally from scratch with the exception of a grip casting and a mag casting I had lying around. The rest of the build is my laser cut plastic parts and some found items. All my reference and measurements come from the "Best Sterling Templates Ever" thread that can be found here. I have used the actual templates we built up and relied entirely on the measurements and reference photos so generously provided by the team of real Sterling owners who contributed to that thread - sskunky, Christian, Lichtbringer and DaveJ - so a huge thanks goes out to them for giving me a chance to do a scratch build with accurate specs and skip the BBC plans altogether. Another huge thanks goes to Andy PlayfulWolfCub who made some corrections to errors I made in the blueprints and sent me literally hundreds of reference pics of his Sterling for me to work from. For those of you wondering when these templates are going to go public, the answer is soon. This build has allowed me to correct a few small errors and as soon as I'm done adjusting the template booklet I'll post it for all to grab Well without further ado - onto the build. I didn't get as far along in the four days I worked on it as I would have liked but these things always take longer than anticipated don't they? Here's what I've done so far anyways... THE TRIGGER ASSEMBLY I started with the trigger assembly. I know this is unusual but I have a plan to create a functional trigger assembly that will allow the bolt to be cocked and fired when the trigger is pulled. As a result I needed to build the rest of the blaster around the trigger assembly to be sure that everything was slotting together correctly. First I drew up my plans for how I thought a working trigger assembly might be constructed. This is basically a modified version of the real Sterling trigger function, greatly simplified after the manner of a toy dart gun: Basically the trigger should push the bolt catch down far enough to release the bolt and have it slam forward: Now heads up here: I have no idea of this will work. It's purely theoretical and until the whole thing is assembled I won't know if it succeeds or not. If it doesn't it's no big loss, I'll just have a static prop. If it works however it will add some fun. I started out with all my appropriate cut parts: The laser cutter cuts very sharp straight edges so I had to use the sanding drum on my dremel to shape the front portion of the trigger with the correct rounded edge. You can see the shape in this pic better: I glued the inner workings onto the right hand face of the trigger assembly in order to install the parts and rubber bands: I made short video of the parts in action but I can't embed Mobile Me gallery videos for some reason so if you're really keen to see it, you'll have to click here: http://gallery.me.co...3/TriggerAction This is the finished "sandwich" of parts: I've only painted the parts of the trigger assembly that will end up exposed after final construction. This is simply because paint and glue don't play well together and I want to be gluing plastic to plastic, not plastic to paint, for durability. The next step was to prepare the grip mount, which is this bit here: You can see in this image from Christian that, whereas most parts of the Sterling were butt braised on, the grip mount was flange braised: So I needed to create the flange edge for my grip mount pieces. I needed to make sure that the angle at which the flanges spread fit the barrel casing perfectly so I came up with this system: I took the plastic grip mount pieces and sandwiched them between two pieces of wood and set them in the oven for ten minutes Then I wrapped my receiver tube in foil to protect it from any heat transfer And literally pressed the tube into the soft heated plastic until I got a flange flare I was happy with: Then I had to set about making a trigger guard. I happened to find a strip of copper hanging around my man cave that was the correct 1.6mm thickness. I transferred the trigger guard template flat onto the copper strip with a pencil: Once I was satisfied with the measurements I clamped the copper strip down and cut it to shape using a jewelry saw: Lather, rinse and repeat for the other end and we're ready to go. The tricky part was the bending. The copper is soft so bending it is easy enough, but getting the precise shape of the Sterling trigger took some concentration. Initially I printed the trigger guard shaping template and bent the strip while laying it against this shape on the paper, but ultimately the best way to do it was to bend it in position against the trigger assembly using reference photos and some tricky yoga positions. This trigger guard shape varies slightly from the real Sterling trigger guard in that I've removed the small curl at the top front. It does however insert properly into the trigger group like it should, but will be held with glue instead of a swiveling pin: All that was left now was to paint everything up. It may seem odd to paint the entire grip and trigger assembly up before it is attached to the barrel casing, but as this section layers black pieces on top of silver I needed to do it prior to assembly. Again I've taped up the pieces to prevent paint spray reaching the parts I want to glue: Painted the grip while I was at it just to maximize my fume inhalation opportunities: Here's a pic of my finished trigger assembly next to a photo Andy PlayfulWolfCub's sent me of his real trigger assembly: and here it is with the whole shebang assembled and the selector switch in place: You can see in this pic the great texture that the hammered black spray paint Seantrooper put me on to gives the parts. Very close to the wrinkle paint (sometimes incorrectly referred to as parkerizing) used on commercial Sterling L2A3's, and a pretty convincing metal simulation. The actual Hammered Black is gloss so it requires a satin overcoat to knock it back. THE SELECTOR SWITCH The selector switch was an easy part. Again I need to use the dremel to shape a curve into the base but then it was a simple assembly and paint job: I painted a layer of Krylon Crafters metallic on first and let it dry. Then I gave it a coat of the black satin and while it was still wet, I lightly whipped a piece of sandpaper over the switch to produce the weathering.