Reach M6G Build

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JeffZugale

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Greetings, Spartans! I'm new to making stuff, just finished an Oscillation Overthruster made for an Xmas present, which you can see here: http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=253309

To finish it in time for Xmas, I had to put off working on my first Halo weapon, a Reach M6G. Here's how it's gone so far...

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Grabbed a bunch of reference from online, which I'm sure you'll recognize. I brought it into Illustrator and played with the scale; the stated dimensions on Halo Wikia matched the reference best with a version at .40 S&W (10.2mm) caliber rather than the game-canon .50 magnum (12.7mm) for both barrel diameter and cartridge size in magazine, so I'm building it at that size. It's a slightly more "human" scale, but still a very large pistol. In the shot above it's the one on the right.

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I made my own set of blueprints, because I like doing that, plus this was before I joined the site, heh... I parted out a frame from them, printed it out twice and spray-mounted it to 1/2" plywood. Then I drilled and cut with a jigsaw to a rough edge, then cleaned up with rasps and files by hand. One frame is for a one-off fully finished piece for me, the other is intended to make a master buck for molding and casting.

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I decided to carve the muzzle block from a big block of balsa wood I had lying around. Carving the barrel slot was easy with my table-jigsaw, but the slot for the frame was a lot more difficult, requiring hand-sawing, a wood chisel and much hand-filed cleanup. Before I started carving, I realized the bump on the top of the frame would force me to cut too far into the block, so I just sliced it off level with the base of the action slide plane.

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Parting out some more from my blueprints, time to make the upper side pieces. Still with 1/2" (actually it's 15/32") plywood, I cut them out with the combo-saw and cleaned up that curved bout with sanding drums that go on a drill press. I made 2 sets, then with a belt sander took them down to 11/32" thickness to match the blueprints. At this point, I stopped working on them to get the Overthruster done in time for the holidays.

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In between paint passes on the Overthruster I had a lot of wait time, so I put it to happy use carving out more of the barrel block. Turned out to be difficult to drill the large hole after already cutting the slot; careful attempts with a power drill going slow were chewing the balsa in a frightening way. I switched to turning a series of drill bits by hand and then filing. Once the hole was close to size, I wrapped 80-grit sandpaper around a 9/16" dowel to finish the work. Not shown here, I then hand-drilled a 1/2" hole for the steel tube I found for the barrel - the inside diameter is almost exactly the proper size for a .40.

Hope you like it so far! I'll be working on it more tonight, update to follow soon.
 
No, i cut it rough and then hand-rasped and filed it... aka "the hard, slow, old-fashioned way" :) All of the small curves on the frame done same.
 
Got some worktime last night, here's pics:

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Slide body and tail block cut and belt-sanded to size, marked for carving. Still working with pieces of the same balsa block I used for the muzzle block. Below, after carving out notches and cuts with knife, saw and file, I stuck the slide parts on the frame with small dots of Tacky Glue just to see what it looks like. Coming out okay, but needs refinement.

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Also, I realized I made a pretty big mistake; I glued the sides on the frame in the wrong position vertically. They're too high; I should have measured twice before I cut the frame down and cut it right along the line where slide joins body. It's about 1/4" too far up as measured from the top of the grip frame opening. Solutions all involve cutting; I may switch to the other frame I already cut to try over, and come back to this frame later. Eh, it happens, it's not a huge deal at the moment.
 
Started carving the under-barrel laser sight out of a block of "2x2" pine, which is of course more like 1 5/8" square. It's wide enough, but not quite tall enough, so i had to cut a little piece to stick on the bottom. Very happy with my mini-table saw and belt sander purchases, because this went really quickly.

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A bit of good ol' Titebond II and my little clamps, and that should take care of it. I left some overlap to have extra for sand-down.

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As I mentioned, I should have been more careful with measurements before I glued the side bits on frame 1; first pic below shows the incorrect setup on left, correct (but not glued) on the right. I trimmed down frame 2 and marked it for the side rail placement. Then, time to forget fear and just fix the problem. I used a chisel and hammer to break the glued-on rails off frame 1, cleaned up the sides on the belt sander and then cut it down to the same size as frame 2. Now they both match, yay! But I need to cut out 2 new side rails, boo.

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That's it for this week, didn't have a lot of time to work. More next week!
 
Last Thursday night's progress! Not a lot, but at least I had fun... Here's the laser sight block belt-sanded to its proper front-to-back width ramp, then marked up for beveling and insets:

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Next, a 1/2" Forstner bit to start drilling out the rounded inset. I made a little dipstick to check the depth, because it was too shallow to mark the bit with tape.

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And now the fun part - I'd never used my Dremel router table for routing, so here's where I learn how. I set it up with Dremel's square end mill and only took off 1/8" depth at a time. The first part seemed to work pretty well!

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So I put the fence on the table and proceeded to do all the insets and well... um. Not the best job, really. I guess for a router table n00b it's not the worst it could be, but it's far from pro work. :\

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Fortunately it's nothing I can't fix with hand tools and Plastic Wood, heh! I was also able to clean up the insets on the front and back which I'd previously done with table jigsaw and files. Much nicer now.

Lesson learned: next time I'll measure more carefully and either put tape marks on the table for the stop points, or I'll clamp on something to hard-block the piece from going too far. Instead of trying to do it "by feel", oops. :)
 
Another short night, but here's the progress. Beveled all the edges and plastic-wooded the errors:

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Better! More routing to do on this but I think I'll get back to the main body for a while. Next week I'll start the big shroud over the top front muzzle block. I think I'm gonna make it out of 4 slabs of 1/2" MDF glued together.
 
LOL no glue tabs on wood!

Thursday 2/4 session, started on the over-barrel: Blueprint with overlay calling out specific parts; Chunk o' pine to carve down to shape. OOPS. while cutting on it, dropped the block and broke the back off of it.

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Ah well, no big deal. Mark it up and get cutting. Trusty 4-color pen helps me mark all the lines! I've discovered a problem with my table-jigsaw (more on that below), so these delicate cuts need old-fashioned coping saw work. It went faster than you might think, with a brand-new blade and ripsawing nice soft pine.

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A bit of belt-sander cleanup, and let's have a look at what we've got:

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Definitely shaping up, though obviously a long way to go. Here's the story of parts so far, spread out:

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This week, finishing the over-barrel parts. I think I'll go to 1/8" plywood for the rest of the side pieces instead of the MDF I cut - don't worry, I'll find a use for that. I need a filler block for the back of the barrel assembly. Probably going to trim the frame under the barrel more to make it so I don't have to rout out the under-barrel as much to attach it.

The saw: while I was cutting the MDF slabs I noticed that the saw was pulling them away from a straight cut. I'd seen this before but it wasn't pressing; now that I'm trying to get more precision cuts, it's a problem. I got out my square to check the blade alignment, and...

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Yep, that sucker ain't even close to square. Thanks Jaime.

It's not hard to adjust, thankfully, so it shall be fixed!
 
Thanks Soldier! For something with this much volume, I think wood will just go faster. I could also use various kinds of foam, but I want something reasonably solid. Learning from this first one, the second one that I'll make right after this will be done quite a bit differently, especially the front barrel sections. The balsa muzzle block isn't going to stand up well over time.
 
I used Eva foam when I built mine (it was my very first build) and there are a few things I wish I could have done but it would mess with the integrity of the foam

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Only meager progress last night, I got home late from a frustrating work day. My frustration didn't end in the shop, because this is what I found when I tried to adjust the saw blade:

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It's probably not immediately obvious, but the whole bottom left structure where the saw bolts to the work plate is pretty much just crumbled away. Looks like stress fracturing, and there's more of it around the other bolt holes. It's DEAD, Jim. Clearly that saw isn't up to the kind of work that I do, as it only lasted 7 months of (to me) light weekender use. Gonna have to step up to a small band saw; recommendations welcome. I may make a project out of using the still-decent guts of the saw and an aluminum plate to resurrect it, but that's probably not as cost-effective as a new band saw.

Happily, the $6 hand coping saw that I bought at the same time works just fine, so I did this tiny bit:

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Measured the overbarrel side plates on 1/8" hobby plywood, then cut them out with the coping saw and cleaned 'em up on the belt sander. I also sanded the muzzle block some more to get the vertical side angle better for putting on the side plates. Looking at how that goes with the plans, I think rather than attaching the plates to the block and trying to get them angled properly, I'll instead build the plates into a box that's angled properly and then build the front end assembly around that.

This week's takeaways: 1. you get what you pay for, 2. I need to get serious about dust collection... my shop is a mess!!
 
Hey, sorry for posting late! I did work last Thursday but have been very busy especially over the weekend so this is first chance I've had to upload.

Right, back to it: As I said, building a box for the overbarrel sides. Cut a piece of 1/4" MDF to the proper size, belt-sanded the sides to the marked angle, and then on this flat piece, stuck it to the left side piece. Of course, then I remembered I'd better mark all the cuts and drill points, so I did that. Did them on the right side *before* gluing it on, then with razor saw did the rear cut. Disc sander took care of the rounded front, and then I marked center and drilled in a bit with 1/16" pin vise.

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I've decided I don't want to cut far into the underbarrel to mount it, so here I've marked the frame to cut away enough so I can rout it 1/16" deep and glue it on. To handle the back piece of the box (above), I also measured a notch in the top of the frame, that small rectangle on the left top.

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Frame in the vise and held together by hand, here's what it looks like. Also with the parts laid out.

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Next time, I'm going to turn it like this and glue it together...

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...and then sand down the side rails, plus lots of routing. Stay tuned...
 
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