gazmosis[501st] Posted June 10, 2012 Report Posted June 10, 2012 I wanted to share my new blaster with everyone. I really didn't know how things were going to go so I did NOT take build pics but I will share the methods I used to reach the conclusion. This is my new pride and joy! First Iwant to thank Smitty (Chris from the Alabama Garrison) fro selling me the folding stock and throwing in a resin Hengstler! You are da friggin' MAN!) And Striker (Pete from the Ohio Garrison for the resin M-38 scope). And Doopy Do's. for theit basic pipe blaster kit. I started off with the 1/16" wall 1 1/2 " O.D. clear plastic tube. The tubing is not as soft as PVC and almost brittle making drilling the vent holes a slow go. The 1/16 walls don't hold their shape very well as I found when I cut out the charging handle slot. I used the 1.5 inch Blaster Builder's templates. My computer didn't recognize the file, so after changing the format I was able to print it. I found I still needed to reduce it 7% to fit the pipe perfect. My two main objectives were to attach a steel Sterling stock to a plastic blaster, and make the charging bolt functional. After drilling out the holes and making all necessary cuts I tackled the stock first. I had always believed that the arms of the folding stock hinged on a pin that ran through the cylinder attached to the bottom of the barrel. As you can see, this is NOT the case. the stubs off the ends are hollow. the stock fits over these stubs and are held in place by (what are commonly known as ) "the rivets'' which fit into the stubs. The "rivets" are then held in place by retaining pins that fit into the holes and pass through holes in the "rivets". The doopy kit comes with the Cylinder, but it is flat on both sides. It is also slightly smaller than the real cylinder. I need to glue small ABS disks on the ends of the doopy cylinder. Then I found a hard plastic tube (which I used later for the power cylinders on the mag housing) which was the same diameter and wall thickness as the stubs on the real Sterling. I drilled out the ends of the cylinder and glued lengths of the tube in place and cut them to size. I drilled out the pin holes and all fit together well. When drilling the barrel holes, the template requires you to drill/cut a keyhole shaped vent on the underside of the front of the barrelThis is for the stock retaining clip to go into. This clip holds the stock to the gun barrel until the butt cap is detached and folded down. The pencil points at the retaining clip.Note the position of the clip to the line just below it. As the butt end is folded down, the clip slides back allowing the stock to detach from the barrel.When it was time to attach the cylinder to the barrel body, I just inserted the stock clip and glued the cylinder in place. Once the glue was set, I spread the arms of the folding stock and detached it completely from the barrel allowing me to continue with the build. The build went on pretty standard as Doopy do'd builds go. It came to the point that I wanted to make the charging bolt functional. The bolt that comes with the doopy kit is too big in diameter and too small in length. Looking in my local Menards, I dedided to use a 1 X 6 galvanized steel nipple as my bolt. I cut the threads off and inserted it in the pipe until it reached the front of the ejection port opening. I marked where the charging handle would attach. I noticed that the doopy's charging handle had a round base on it. This round bas was much bigger than the channel that the handle slides through. I can only assume that this base was added to the mold for more gluing surface. Anyway, if it was going to be part of a functioning bolt, the base had to go. Once sanded off, the handle was close to the exact width as the channel.Now all I needed to do was to attach the RESIN handle to the STEEL bolt. Hmmmmm. Glue was NOT an option here seeing as I was going to pulling on it so it needed to be attached with hardware. One thing I have found with the resin is that it drills out easily and taps threads even easier. All you need is the screw, the bolt or whatever. As long as you drill the proper size hole and drive it straight it will cut its own threads into the resin and hold tight! Once I decided on a fastener(nut and bolt combo with locking washer) I drilled out the bolt hole in the charging hanldle, screwed the bolt into the handle to create the threads, backed the bolt out to cut the head off. I then took the cutting wheel on my Dremel tool to cut a channel in the end of the bolt so I could use a screw driver to screw it back into the charging handle. Once this was done, I drilled a hole at the previously marked location on the metal bolt in the gun itself. Then I just attached the charging handle to the charging bolt with the nut and washer from the inside of the bolt. This step could only be done with the main bolt in the gun. It all needed to be taken apart then re-assembled after painting.The detail on the charging bolt was the best I could come up with. I marked off the diagonal stripe using reference pics from other troopers real Sterlings, and using my dremel with the cutting wheel, removed the metal along and around the stripe until the stripe was slightly raised. The real bolt is cast steel so it is baby smooth. Mine looks a little hammered but I could not find a real way to "sand" this smooth. TOO LATE NOW! *****COOL PART FIND ALERT!!!**** I was in PEP BOYS getting oil for my van and one aisle over in the anti=freeze/coolant section I saw a coil that goes over coolant hoses that preventes them from kinking when they bend. Although I needed to trim a little off the length and stretch it out a tad for coil spacing, this became my new bolt spring. For $8 it was TOTALLY worth it for me!!! Another part that I didn't want to glue was the mag housing. Although I never heard of one breaking away, I just wanted more security. After marking its location on the gun body, I drilled holes in the gun body then marked those holes with the mag housing in place then drilled holes in it. I then simply attached them with screws and washers from the inside. You can see the screw heads with the bolt drawn back.**CHALLENGE ALERT!!!**** I found that the bolt does NOT slide through the gun well with screw heads and bolt nuts in the way. Wherever I had these (mag housing and the nut on the screw that attached the scope rail to the rear sight) I needed to cut that metal away from the bolt itself. When I was done, the bolt no longer looked like a tube, but a tube with a bunch of chunks cut out of it. NEXT CHALLENGE...was keeping this all in place. The rear cap on the doopy kit is much too big to use on the clear tubing. This was a blessing of sorts because the real Sterling's butt cap has a collar that is attached to the main body. This collar has channels in it that match with nubs on the inside of the cap. This allows the cap to be placed onto the gun, then twisted and locked into place reataining the spring and bolt within the gun. It also serves as a locking mechanism for the folding stock, but I didn't want to go that deep. ANYHOO! Using a ring of plastic That I made from extra gun barrel material (I needed to cut it at the bottom to allow it to wrap AROUND the gun body) I created this collar. You can see it poking out in front of the butt cap.This gave this a little more accurate look.The scope rail was nothing special. 3/4" metal bar stock. Bent/trimmed in the front to set into the vent hole and kept in place by screw/nut/washer combo in the rear sight. I did need to place a small nut into the rear sight under the scope rail. This propped up the scope rail a tad keeping it level across the top of the gun. (see charging handle pic above) . I like a bit of a longer magazine. The doopy kit has the tiniest mag and it lacks the mag retaining clip detail in the rear. I built my own mag with scrap ABS and a little body filler . In doing this, I did need to hollow out the mag housing removing quite a bit of resin from inside. In doing this, it gave the chance to use a small rare earth magnet strategically placed within the mag housing as a way to attach the power cylinder plate without glue. you can slighty see the magnet on the bottom of the power cylinder plate. As for the cylinders themselves. As I mentioned before, I found this hard plastic tubing I used for the nubs on the ends of the cylinder that the folding stock hinges on. This looked like the right size for the power cylinders so I went for it. I used Andy (PGHtrooper21) build as a guide for approximate sizing. I found tubing that was slightly bigger that the first mentioned tubing. I used this to make the end caps. Since they are hollow, I need to glue some scrap ABS to the ends and sand them round to make them undeed..."caps". I installed the tiny nuts and screw prior to gluing. I built the mounting plate from scrap ABS. As for the three capacitors in the center, I used the frame from a styrene model kit that looked like the right diameter. I cut three pieces that looked about right for the lengh. I taper sanded the ends. Drilled three matching holes in the center between the main cylinders. I melted the backs together to keep them in place. For the capacitor wires in front, I used an old modeler's trick for making spark plug wires for car models and antennae for tanks. I gently heated a length of the same frame I used to make the capacitors. When thoroughly heated, the frame pulls apart into a string of styrene. The farther you pull it, the thinner the string. I pulled it until I was happy with the diameter. I cut them to length and bent them. With a drop of super glue...installed.A pic of the magnet on the bottomThe wire is elecrical wire from a model train kit wrapped around a pencil for the coiled effect. The only other thing I wanted to talk about was the paint itself. The folding stock I received was a dark, gun metal gray. Not black. I have read many suggestions on real Sterling builds to NOT strip the paint....leave it as is. The is what I did. I found a dark gray at the same PEP BOYS I found the bolt spring. I did paint the main handle gloss black just for a little contrast.I painted the area below the trigger silver and used the same paint to slightly weather other areas on the blaster. That's it and I hope you like it!!!! Quote
MartinSivertsen[501st] Posted June 10, 2012 Report Posted June 10, 2012 Very nice! A real folding stock adds a lot to the overall look of the blaster. Quote
Evilboy[501st] Posted June 10, 2012 Report Posted June 10, 2012 A real stock is on My "Bucket List" of Mods... Quote
matt black Posted June 12, 2012 Report Posted June 12, 2012 What a fantastic build! Almost indistinguishable from the real thing Quote
Smitty Posted June 12, 2012 Report Posted June 12, 2012 Man you got yourself one snazzy looking blaster! Glad I could lend a helping hand. That stock has been sitting in the bottom of my gun safe for over a year just waiting on the perfect home. Glad to see it put to good use! Quote
jkno Posted June 12, 2012 Report Posted June 12, 2012 Really great job on this. A real folding stock adds so much to a blaster. Congrats!! Quote
Evilboy[501st] Posted June 12, 2012 Report Posted June 12, 2012 would you take the bolt carrier out and show us some detail of how you put that together Please? Quote
gazmosis[501st] Posted June 12, 2012 Author Report Posted June 12, 2012 I hope this will help! As with the real Sterling, the end butt cap turns and comes off.You can see the channels I needed to carve in the "collar" to accomodate the nubs on the inside of the rear butt cap. This is what locks the butt cap on in its final position. Next, in order to get the spring out, I needed to pull the screw/nut combo that holds the scope rail to the rear sight.Once that was removed, the spring slid out. I loosened the nut and lockwasher to free the charging handle from the bolt itself. You can see the channel I needed to cut in the bolt end after I removed the head. I did this so I could use a screwdriver to set the threaded bolt shaft into the resin charging handle.You can see here what I needed to cut away from the bolt so that the screws that mount the mag housing and the rear scope rail screw didn't interfere with its movement inside the tube.Re-assembly starts by lining up the charging handle hole.The threaded shaft is inserted and the washer and nut are put in place and tightened down. Because of the lock washer, it really doesn't need to be heavilly torqued. Just enough to keep it snug.The spring is inserted next, the screw/nut combo to install the scope rail is tightened, and the butt cap replaced. All buttoned up! Quote
Arnie_DK[TK] Posted June 12, 2012 Report Posted June 12, 2012 Loving it! Do you have any wip shots of the bolt?? How did you make it? Quote
gazmosis[501st] Posted June 12, 2012 Author Report Posted June 12, 2012 Like I had mentioned before, Morten, I did NOT (foolishly!!!) take any build pics because I really didn't know how I was going to do things and made it up as I went along. I didn't want to take a picture of me screwing up!!!! Anyway, The bolt is a 1 US inch or 25 MM by 6 US inch or 151 MM galvanized pipe that I cut the threads off each side. I then gave the edges a little taper grind just to make sure it would not hang up on the inside walls of the pipe. Depending on which pipe or tube you are using for your build, I would take it into your hardware store just to make sure you buy the right size pipe for your bolt. I then slid the bolt into the tube until it sat where I wanted it. Using reference pics from other REAL Sterling builds, I marked the diagonal stripe. Then using the same cutting wheel on my Dremel tool that I used to cut off the threads, I gently ground along and around the stripe making it raised slightly. Because I was using a small gringing disk it did not make for the smoothest finish around the stripe, but it was all I could do. Quote
Arnie_DK[TK] Posted June 12, 2012 Report Posted June 12, 2012 You did that only with a grinding disc on your Dremel!! Amazing! With a bit of sanding/filing, I think that surface can become real smooth. Have to give it a try sometime. I really want a better bolt in my MR. Thanks for sharing Quote
gazmosis[501st] Posted June 13, 2012 Author Report Posted June 13, 2012 If you have success getting it smoother, please let me know how you went about it!!! Quote
Evilboy[501st] Posted June 13, 2012 Report Posted June 13, 2012 Use some steel wire and polishing brushes on the Dremel and you should get a really nice finish on that Bolt Carrier... Quote
gazmosis[501st] Posted June 13, 2012 Author Report Posted June 13, 2012 It's not so much the finish as I am looking to smoth the hammered look. Additional metal will need to be removed for a smoother surface Quote
Jodo Kast 3 Posted June 17, 2012 Report Posted June 17, 2012 Steve, When U drilled into the bottom of the charging handle, what size drill bit did you use? Gonna try that neat little trick..... JK3 Quote
gazmosis[501st] Posted June 18, 2012 Author Report Posted June 18, 2012 I didn't have a plan when going into that other than I was sure that I was going to use a nut, lock washer and screw combo. #1 I found a screw that would be long enough to thread into the charging handle then go through the outer shell of the barrel, then through the bolt itself and still be able to put a washer over it and thread a nut. As for the size of the screw itself and the hole I drilled...I picked a screw that fit within the bottom of the charging handle. Then chose a bit that was a tad smaller to allow the threads to cut into the resin. I did practice on some scrap plastic prior to make sure the drill bit was correct. . Quote
Jodo Kast 3 Posted June 21, 2012 Report Posted June 21, 2012 Steve, How long is the charging bolt? I found a piece of PVC that I want to use, but I don`t know the length of the bolt itself....Can`t even find the answer on google! Help! Quote
gazmosis[501st] Posted June 22, 2012 Author Report Posted June 22, 2012 I cut the threads off a 1 X 6 galvanized nipple. So that would probably put it in the 4-4 1/2" range? Quote
Evilboy[501st] Posted June 22, 2012 Report Posted June 22, 2012 I will do this on my next Doopys build... Quote
Jodo Kast 3 Posted June 23, 2012 Report Posted June 23, 2012 Steve, Sounds good. I`m gonna split the difference and go with 4.25 inches. I`m off to Pep Boys to get my springs. JK3 Quote
gazmosis[501st] Posted June 23, 2012 Author Report Posted June 23, 2012 No more assuming....i put a tape to it. 4 inches exactly Quote
Jodo Kast 3 Posted June 24, 2012 Report Posted June 24, 2012 (edited) Good man... I went with 4 inches for our builds as well. 4.25 just looked a little long. I`m using a ton of your mods...I will try and post some pics as well.. Anyway, any advice of placement of the mag housing? I`m going to do the same thing and drill into the resin mag housing and use screws from the inside to hold it. JK3 Edited June 24, 2012 by Jodo Kast 3 Quote
gazmosis[501st] Posted June 25, 2012 Author Report Posted June 25, 2012 (edited) --------- ---------- These were the two links I used to reference all the part locations Edited September 30, 2021 by gmrhodes13 link not working removed Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.