Hey all, this is sort of a rough tutorial to help get you all started on the new gun kit. I would suggest reading the entirety of this tutorial before starting, as there are optional steps that one might want to take into consideration before doing certain things. A lot of it is very similar to my V2 kit, so I may skim over some things here, but this should cover most of the build and the newer changes.
Here is the kit as it comes to you (note, I have both versions of the finishing bundle pictured).
The first thing you are going to want to do is clean up the kit. Clean up is fairly minimal, but keep an eye out for seam lines and rouge air bubbles. You will also want to cut the trim off the bottom of the gun body. It comes off fairly easy with a few passes of an exacto knife.
Once off, be sure to sand down the remaining bits of the trim.
You will notice that the inside of your gun box has posts for mounting the base plate. You can drill directly through the markings on the posts, or put your base plate in place and use the holes as a guide as pictured above.
You may have also noticed that the Trigger Box and the left side of the Rear Instrument Bar have corresponding markings. These are drill points, and will line up with each other once drilled. While you are at it, make sure you drill the hole for the green barrel extension lever.
To run wires to the switches in your Trigger Box, you are going to want to use a larger bit to drill a hole down the length of Rear Instrument Bar. A 1/4" drill bit should do the trick. Make sure you take it slow, as you don’t want to go off course or go too fast and split the resin.
You want to stop drilling when you reach the open box towards the right side of the bar. I don’t have it pictured, but after this step you will want to place your drill bit inside of this box, aiming towards the gun body, and at an angle drill a hole so you can run wires from this box to the inside of the gun body. Here is an example of this hole on an earlier version of the kit. Look for the hole on the far right with the two sets of wires coming out of it.
The access panel for the Trigger Box is similar to the Base Plate. There are markings for drill points, or you can use the holes in the panel as guide points.
To attach the Trigger Box, take a couple of threaded rods or long set screws and imbed them into Rear Instrument Bar as pictured above. My rods screwed in tightly, but I added a drop of super glue into each hole before screwing them in just for added grip. You will want them to stick out about 1/4".
A couple of nut on the inside will hold the Trigger Box in place. If you are familiar with my old kit you will know this is a huge time saver compared to what was previously required.
Now you can put on the access panel with a couple of Allen head bolts. The actual movie props did not have a panel like this, so if you wanted to go for utmost accuracy you would have to putty over the seams and seal this panel off, possibly permanently.
The rear handle is secured with a single screw through the mounting peg below the rear handle hole on the gun box. You may add glue for additional hold, but the screw alone should suffice. Once secure you will want to use plumbers putty to add a fake weld around the edge where the handle and gun body meet (take off your Trigger Box while adding the fake weld).
The rear grip has two markings to identify where the rivets go. If you don’t own a rivets gun you can use a couple of Allen head bolts like I did above.
If you went with the normal version of the Finishing Bundle, then you will be constructing your front handle like above. Take your pipe (OD = 1.25", ID = 1.125"), cut it to length, glue the ear assembly to one end, putty and smooth out the seam, then glue on the front grip. If you are using the new Front Barrel Assembly version of the kit, you can skip this step.
To run wires to the light on the ear, and hide them, you will want to drill a hole down the length of the ear, into the center of the barrel. You can run your wire through this hole to your light. Just make sure to putty over the hole when you are done.
Before we move on to the rotation, you as a builder are going to need to make a decision regarding the relationship between the barrel lock and the tube that makes up the front handle. If you pay close attention to the movie props, you may have noticed that the barrel lock hangs over the front handle tube by about 1/4". This step, while optional, is showing you how to modify the Front Barrel Assembly to better match what is seen in the film. For my purposes, I am only going to take off about 1/8" rater than the full 1/4", reason for which I will explain later.
Here is the mod in place. After marking my cut, all I did was use an exacto knife to cut 1/8" off the tube, then sanded down in a few places. The modification took me, maybe, 5 minutes tops.
You may have noticed that V3.0 does not come with a rotation kit. This is because I have come up with a better way to do rotation that opens up space inside the front handle for possible barrel extension systems. To make your handle rotate, the first thing you will want to do is drill a hole through your handle. Since there is already a hole on the side of the barrel lock, it seems to me that this is a logical spot to drill this hole.
Next, take your handle and put it over the peg. Take a set screw and tighten it down through the hole you drilled in the step above. Do not tighten to the point that you strip the threads you are making, but just tight enough that it starts to make a slight mark on the peg.
Start to turn the handle back and fourth a few times so this set screw digs a notch into the peg (I like having the base plate attached while doing this so I don’t rotate too far). Remove your handle and you will see the path of the screw is now carved into the peg.
Cut a slot along this path. Now put your handle back on and tighten the set screw so it slides into this slot. The set screw acts as a pin to prevent the front handle from sliding off, and the slot allows the handle to rotate.
So going back to above; why did I only take 1/8" off of my handle instead of the full 1/4"? I did this because I wanted to use the hole in the barrel lock for my set screw, and if I took off anymore from the handle, it would expose the slot I carved in the rotation steps. If the builder wants to go the full 1/4" overlap, then this slot, and the set screw hole, would need to be relocated, possibly through the grip. It is possible, but I’m going to leave it to the builder to figure it out.
And there you go. I think the total time to get to this point was maybe 90 minutes.
When I come back I’ll see if I can get something together to show you how to make your barrel extend.
If anyone has any ideas to further this tutorial, or how to do things better/more-efficiently, please let us know.
