Do-It-Yourself E-11 Blaster Stand

Suspend · March 30, 2018

Hey guys and gals, I finally finished my Stormtrooper blaster and I've been searching all over the internet for a suitable blaster stand to put it on display. I'm not really a fan of the transparent acrylic ones and any other stands I saw were either no longer being made, out of stock, or just too darn expensive. That's when I stumbled across Matt's Shack (click for the original blog article). Matt has created a great little stand that you can do on a budget. Parts were about $20 and the data plate was about $20, although I did have some paint and a wooden dowel left over from my blaster build so I didn't have to buy those. You can certainly follow Matt's article but I thought I'd post my build here since I made a few modification to the dimensions and hole spacing.

Here's the completed stand:

It's really easy to put together and something I built in a few days. Most of that time was waiting for paint to dry.

Materials:

Base : An oak board I got from Home Depot. 3/4" thick, 3 1/2" wide, 4 feet long, but you really only need 2 feet.

Poles : 5/8" Wooden Dowel. 10 inches long is fine.

Holder : 1 1/2" ABS Plastic Pipe Coupling cut in half

Plaque : E-Bay (captain-america-tfa)

Misc - 2 small screws for the data plate, 4 drywall screws for the dowel ends, black EVA crafting foam and contact cement for the padding.

Build:

Starting with the base. The 3/4" thick by 3 1/2" wide were already perfect. I just needed to trim the length to 2 feet.

I used a router with a roman ogee bit to give some detail to the edges.

Give it a quick hit with sandpaper to clean up the edges so there are no little bits of wood left hanging on.

Next I painted the base with wood primer.

My original idea was to get rid of the wood grain. I thought if I painted on several coats of primer and then sanded it down I would get rid of the grain and leave a smooth surface. That wasn't the case. After 4 coats and sanding, it pretty much did nothing to hide the grain and wasted a lot of time. Then I switched to filler/primer I had leftover from my blaster build and still no change to the grain. I figured fine, I'll keep the wood grain look. :-)

Next I moved onto the pipe coupling...

Using the grid guide on my cutting mat, I found the center point and cut the coupling in half.

I sanded down the cut areas so they were nice and smooth and used a Dremel with a sanding drum to take off the little ridge in the center of the coupling.

I marked the center point where the dowels would attach and drilled a small pilot hole. Then I used a 5/8" spade bit to make a recess for the dowel to fit into. Be careful not to drill right through your coupling.

I cut a 5/8" wooden dowel into two segments. One 4 inches long and one 5 inches long.

I painted the wooden dowels with primer and sanded them down with 400 grit for a slightly smoother finish. Next I drilled a pilot hole into the ends and used a black drywall screw to attach the pipe couplings to the wooden dowels.

Next I used masking tape to mask off the center part of the coupling where the crafting foam will be glued. Then I used some leftover spray paint. I used Tamiya Grey Primer to prime the dowels and couplings and painted them with some Rust-oleum Silver I found in the cupboard.

I then removed the masking tape from the couplings and cut two rectangles of black crafting foam which were glued onto the coupling with contact cement.

Next I drilled the holes for the dowels in the base. I used the same 5/8" spade bit to drill a recess where the dowels will fit into. Maybe 1/4" deep. Again, be careful not to drill right through the base. These are the spacings I used for the holes. Measurements are taken from the outer edge of the board (not the edge of the routering) to the center of the hole.

Then I painted the base. I had quite a bit of spray paint leftover from my blaster build. So even though it's not really meant for wood. I primed the base (again) with Tamiya Grey Primer and gave the base 3 coats of Tamiya TS-14 Black Gloss and 2 coats of Tamiya TS-13 Gloss Clear. These are the same paints I used for the handle (grip) of my E-11 so I had lots left over.

Sorry, no photos of the painting in-progress.

Once everything was completely dry flipped the board over to work on the bottom. The spade bit I used for countersinking the dowels on the top left a nice (smaller) hole in the bottom for the drywall screw. I just had to countersink this hole so that the base would sit completely flat. I drilled a pilot hole in the bottom of the wooden dowels and screwed the drywall screws in from the bottom to hold the dowels in place. (There's lots of overspray but I didn't care what the bottom looks like)

Lastly I attached the E-11 Plaque I found on ebay from Captain-America-TFA. If you click this link it should take you to the purchase page but in case the listing changes, just search ebay for "Custom E-11 Blaster Plate" and you should find it. I think he's on ETSY too. I just used some small black screws I had leftover.