Han Solo’s DL-44 Blaster

My very first Star Wars-themed build was Obi-Wan’s lightsaber; I was very new to almost everything then, so while it turned out ok it’s still a little rough around the edges. For my second foray into Star Wars props I didn’t want to do another lightsaber (although I have several more of those in the queue!), so finding this blaster on Thingiverse was perfect. I’ve learned a lot since the lightsaber to apply to this one; I’m also still getting used to documenting a build, so bear with me if I’m missing steps / photos / information.

Sanding & Priming

I don’t remember how long the total print took; the sanding time took at least the same. I started with a 150 grit paper to knock down most of the uneven parts and then worked up to wet sanding at 800 – not sanding enough was my biggest mistake with the lightsaber. This was the first major print with my Ender 3 Pro and it turned out really well.

The first layer of primer showed decent results from all the sanding effort, although there were still some print lines showing. I re-sanded everything a second time (mostly wet sanding @ 400 grit) almost down to the plastic and put a little spot putty on some of the surfaces that were touching the print bed, then re-primed everything – the results were very noticeable! With the second primer layer everything looked pretty good, but there were still some minor artifacts here and there. I could have kept sanding and priming, but a better solution would probably have been to be a little more aggressive with sanding and more liberal with spot putty in the earlier stages. I decided to move on to painting, since it was already way better than my previous attempts.

Paint

Another first with this build was airbrushing; I picked up a cheap-ish airbrush/compressor kit not too long ago and was planning to try it out here. All I had to start with was some cheap craft acrylic paint and nothing specific to thin it with, so after a little internet research I decided to try thinning that with wiper fluid (I know, but there are a lot of homebrew options out there) and see what happened – which was nothing great. It just ended up giving a watery layer of mostly coloured paint that didn’t cover at all, and also sometimes clogged the brush (which was probably the cheap paint). I wasn’t sure if the wiper fluid was also partly responsible, but in any case I ordered some higher quality acrylics and actual thinning medium – so much better! With that working I went ahead and gave almost everything a couple of coats of black; the scope end caps and one of the knobs needed to be brassy, and the grips obviously some sort of wood colour.

While the sprayed black looked nice, it didn’t quite have the metal look you would expect from a gun. To fix this I tried out something I’ve seen in a ton of videos – graphite powder. It always made such a big difference in the examples I’ve seen, but since I’m pretty new to this I wasn’t expecting much from my sanded pencil powder. I was very wrong though! I’m not sure if it’s as easy to tell in the photos, but there was a very noticeable difference in person, it definitely looked a lot more like metal. Since the graphite was so successful I went ahead and used it on everything except the scope – in a lot of the reference material I saw the scope looked like it was made from a different metal. I left the two scope halves just black, and with a good coat of clear spray it did look like a painted metal piece.

You might notice the trigger installed; it was all done so I figured I might as well put that in place and get the pieces out of the way. The kit provides the internal structure for a working trigger and suggests using an elastic, but over time that would likely dry out and break with no way to repair it. I have a handful of various springs lying around, so I adjusted one enough to work with the mechanism here – unfortunately I forgot to take photos of that part! With all the paint done and a protective layer sprayed on everything, it’s finally time to start putting everything together!

Assembly

The assembly was relatively straightforward; at this point everything fit together more or less like it should, with a little sanding and minor paint touchups here and there. I used CA glue to attach everything (since it gives a nice strong bond with the PLA parts) and only came across a few small issues:

1. As per the included instructions, I glued the barrel and the flash hider parts together before sliding the whole thing onto the body, which proved to be a mistake. The added bulk of the flash hider (and especially the set screw in it) stuck out enough on the bottom that it got stuck on the body when trying to assemble them. Luckily I was able to clip one side of the barrel over the lip and squeeze the body together just enough to pop it on.

2. I had to file down a small part of the front grille so that the scope crossbar fit properly; I think this was just a result of the spacers printing a little thinner than they should have. It was a minor issue though and it’s very difficult to see once everything is assembled.

3. The rear crossbar pin also had some fit issues, I had to shorten it quite a bit since the whole hammer assembly blocks that hole once it’s inserted. Again this was a minor issue, and once you get the correct length it doesn’t really change anything about the assembly.

I did a little thinking about the scope in particular, and what I wanted to do with the lenses – even though a lens would technically be transparent anyway I didn’t really like the idea of just leaving the scope open at both ends. I tried cutting a circle of very thin plastic from some packaging in order to glue it to the back of the end caps before attaching them but I didn’t really like the look with the lens set so far back, so instead I ordered a couple of small 1/8″ acrylic sheets and hopefully I can cut some proper size circles from that.

Once the sheets arrived I traced the inside diameter of the lens caps on the protective paper backing, and used a Dremel (with the drill press stand attachment) to cut them out and sand them relatively round. I do have an actual disc sander, but it’s winter at the moment and it makes more mess than I can easily contain indoors, plus it takes up a lot more space! I probably could have rounded the lenses better with a less aggressive sanding drum, but they fit pretty well and since they’re inset into the scope any issues won’t be very noticeable. I also wanted to put some sort of sighting markings on one of them, so using a knife I eyeballed some grooves into the rear lens and traced them with a permanent marker. I didn’t realise until after that I should have done this on the front lens – when you actually put your eye up to the scope the markings on the rear lens sort of just blur away and you don’t really see them.

Fun fact that I somehow forgot about: CA glue isn’t the best choice for acrylic! I definitely remembered once I glued in the lenses and saw how foggy they became almost immediately. It worked out pretty well in the end though – a little toothpaste and cotton swabs was enough to polish out almost all the fog, and what’s left around the edge mostly ends up looking like glass weathering on an older scope. With that, the whole blaster was assembled and it was time to start thinking about weathering.

Weathering & Finishing Up

I didn’t want the blaster to be too heavily weathered, and I didn’t try for any sort of screen accuracy but instead just tried for a look that I liked. I dry-brushed some silver on most of the exposed edges, and some other places that I felt would get worn. I used a little extra on places like the trigger and hammer top, and added additional scratches here and there. After letting that dry for a full day, I did a couple of passes with some washes: a raw umber wash that was applied to the handle and to the brass parts, and a raw / burnt sienna wash that I used in many of the corners and grooves that would likely get dirty.

I wanted to add some heat discolouration to the end of the barrel, so I tried the same technique I used in one of the models – dry brushing some metallic gold, purple and blue. I’m not thrilled with the gold, it’s a little too opaque and the transition with the rest of the blaster seems a little abrupt; I could maybe have thinned it a little, or tried to feather the edge a bit more. This might have been easier to accomplish with the airbrush, but I’m not really confident enough in my skills there yet to try that sort of detail work. Once all the paint was dry, a good coat of clear matte spray finished everything off!

With the blaster completed, the only thing left was some sort of stand to display it. I considered another printed one, but that would mean a lot more sanding and finishing work that I wasn’t prepared to do. Luckily I have some scrap pieces of PVC foam ceiling tiles leftover from a bathroom reno; it’s relatively soft and easy to cut/sand, so I took a few measurements from the blaster and drew up a basic template for the stand. No fancy designs or anything on this one but it will get the job done! The cut pieces just needed a few adjustments to get the blaster sitting straight, and then some light sanding. I was originally planning to just paint the stand straight black, but then I got the idea of trying to make it look somewhat like carbonite – it fits the theme and isn’t quite as boring. The foam board is soft enough that you can easily texture just by pressing something into it, and a large bolt with a round head seemed to do what I needed. Some primer, aluminum metallic spray and an attempt to layer darker colours later and the stand was done! I can’t say it looks exactly like carbonite, but it’s definitely more interesting than a plain flat colour and it holds the blaster so success.

All things considered, I’m very pleased with how this project turned out. It shows significant improvement in almost every aspect over my previous prop attempt, and once again I learned a lot to apply next time.

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