Stormtrooper Doopydoo’s E11 blaster scope

After building out a Rubie’s Stormtrooper E11 blaster, I was ready to try putting together a Doopydoo’s E11 blaster kit. I was disappointed with the scope on the Rubie’s blaster, so the first thing I wanted to do was make the scope on the Doopydoo’s more realistic. This included hollowing it out and using real lenses on both sides.

I used a grinding tip on a rotary tool to start removing resin from the scope, starting in the middle and going wider until it was big enough to fit a lens that I scavenged from a cheap iphone zoom lens.

I had to make it wider than I wanted since I wanted to keep the lens in the housing that it came in.

Once it fit in snugly, I used spade drill bits to make the hole deeper into the scope. I had to be careful not to go too far since the front and back of the scope don’t match up – the front is smaller and lower than the back. I decided to cut about an inch or so off from the front of the scope in order to finish hollowing out the middle. I used a coping saw to do this.

Then using spade drill bits, grinding tips on the rotary tool, and small metal files, I got the scope hollowed out to a point that I liked.

I was initially going to use a clear piece of plastic or cdrom to create a target reticle, but I couldn’t draw on crosshairs that looked good. So instead I tried using two small wires sitting perpendicular to one another. I used a pin vice to drill the holes where the wires would slide into about an inch and a half from the back lens and pushed the wires in.

Although not the best looking target reticle, I think it’s interesting and different.

Hollowing out the scope and figuring out how I was going to set up the lenses and target reticle took the longest in this build. Once those were done, I shaved down the three larger molded screw heads on the front of the scope. I had real screws to replace the fake ones, so I drilled holes for all five.

Then I painted the interior of the scope flat black and once that dried, I used green stuff to stick the two parts of the scope back together. I was going to use glue for this, but I spaced out and for some reason skipped that step and went straight to the green stuff.

After it hardened, I sanded the green stuff down. I kept testing the strength of the bond where I used green stuff as glue and it seems to be holding up very well. Hopefully there will be no issues in the future.

Then it was on to painting. Primer, bronze, and flat black were used in that order. My goal was to use the sanding method to sand off the top black layer and show the bronze layer underneath for weathering. But I guess I suck at this method because I would get a spot with decent bronze showing, but with a white spot in the middle where it was sanded down to the resin.

I ended up using gold paint (ran out of bronze) on a paint brush and drybrushing it for the desired weathering effects. My drybrushing skills are also not great, but it turned out decent.

I also used the white crayon technique to make the lettering pop, it was a lot easier than I was expecting it to be (and way easier than painting the letters white). It also looks really cool.

Once all the painting and weathering was done, I put the screws in. I didn’t glue or cut any of the screws, I actually screwed them in. They were a pretty snug fit and not loose at all.

Next up in my Doopydoo’s build is the grip with a movable trigger.