When I made my 'hero' build, I gutted an HCG for the shrouds. The parts left behind were pretty nice though and it would be a shame to waste them. Much of the resin is hollow and has moving parts, so it is fairly light weight and looks real clean. The metal parts felt too thin to me for my 'hero', but again, work great on a lighter build.

So my goal here is to salvage the HCG that was left behind after taking the shrouds and making a 'lightweight' pulse for use at long cons or by my wife. I plan to add sound, but we'll see how that works out...


So this is what is left after you take apart the HCG.



I have heard many say the HCG shrouds practically fall off as the glue holding it on crumbles. That was not the case for me. It required a heat gun and lots of effort/force. I did do a little damage and the area below the ejection port which is the thinnest and easily most fragile part of the setup. This resin is crazy receptive to super glue, so I think it will be fine.



I am thinking about going with the "forward barrel" look of the screen used stunts. Loosening up the barrel and vent requires breaking the glue free at the back of the barrel and just sliding it out the front of the vent triangle. The vent is then just attached with 2 screws.



The magazine itself is a bit of a problem. The original setup involved magnets inside the shroud holding the magazine in place. The mag release on resin thompson is non functional (it flexes, but doesn't truly do anything). But i may just delete the magazine all together to fit sound parts.


Still overall it is a nice foundation and I am feeling pretty good about the direction.

For the shroud, I considered hollowing out a spat shroud, trying to get a matsuo shroud, and even fabbing my own, but all those options are relatively heavy as they are solid resin and my own creations have not worked out as well as I planned (see the melted shroud look on my kid's 2/3 scale pulse! )

So with a 'magazine delete' as a possibility, and the goal being as light as possible, I think I solved my "shroud" problem nicely with a Matrix/Snow wolf shroud. The mag base holds on even without a mag in place, and it is the thinnest, lightest thing around.

With some tweaking and I can make this work!


Quite a bit of cutting is necessary for it to fit around top of the grenade launcher area, and it became clear the shrouds were a bit 'tall'. There was a fairly massive gap where the bottom of grenade launcher mates up to the mag portion of the shroud.


To fix this, I will kill two birds with one stone. I feel like that plate where the counter rests is too large anyways, so I will just remove some material in that spot to make it more accurate and tighten up the fit. I will also cut down the back of the shroud near the stock opening since I will be cutting and filling anyways.




And now I am at the point of no return

Made some progress on the shrouds. Pretty smooth process so far.

Just cut, sanded and epoxied the mag portions back. On the rear I cut, heated, bent, and bondo'd.


Also I decided to at least try out the "Stunt" look (Forward vent) to see how I like it.

Used a dowel rod to push the barrel a bit forward and re-drilled the pilot holes in the grenade launcher so the vent can sit forward (but still be moved back if I decide I don't like it).



Shrouds have a nice snug fit now. I should finish the repaint today.



Lights and sounds still need to be figured out.

You're repair job looks great, but I'm not sold on the "stunt" look. As you know I'm battling the same thing on my upgraded resin PR, and screen accurate or not, it just feels wrong to me.

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Agreed. Fantastic looking build but that barrel/vent should really be pushed back.

lol, awe come on guys, it isn't THAT ugly is it?

OK...it might be.

Still on the fence though. It's ugly, but its 'different'. I would have the only one like it in the world!

Well, it is soemthing new. I say rock it, it's screen accurate.

When renovating the airsoft shrouds, I forgot to mention I did move the...trapezoids? I tossed the steel ones, bondo'd over the opening and reattached some lightweight, and in my opinion more accurate, ones made from plastruct.




Then I attached the HCG counter from my other pulse and here she is in all her 'accurate', but ugly glory!






If anyone isn't familiar with why I did the forward look, its is because of this:


Perhaps it was a mistake that got someone fired, or maybe no one cared, but this rifle got the most screen time of any other rifle. in addition to the scenes where the "forward hero" was featured, it appears ALL the stunt rifles were molded off this one. They are wall to wall, man!





So two questions:

1- Unofficial bathroom scale puts this guy at 6.8 lbs. Who has one lighter?! I think that is pretty light.

2- "forward vent" look - Yay or Nay!? Odds are I will revert it to a more idealized state once an actual con rolls around, but this is hilarious to me. "Screen Accurate" (but hideous!) or "idealized"? What say you?...

OK, I never knew there was a non foam/rubber rifle with the pushed forward vent. That's something new to me.

I think you should make a spring/lock system so you can switch between forward and idealised at the flick of a switch

That is a nifty idea! May just have to explore that further

At first I wasn't willing to get behind the forward vent version because I had no idea there even WAS a forward vent version. But after the pure proof...it's screen accurate and should be accepted. Having said that...you are gonna be doing a lot of explaining and I can see that getting frustrating.

I still really dig the concept of being the "odd man out" once in a while. Seems to be quite the prominent prop and it has character for sure.

You know what...I kinda like it

I kinda like it too... I do like the idealised ones... As someone said recently on another thread, the quality of build on the gear we now have made / make is far superior to the stuff literally chucked together in short timescales for a movie... But I like this prop being quite 'canon'...

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"Errr... Roger that's a 2-1-6..."

Thanks guys. I thought I would tire of it kind of quickly, but I think it has actually grown on me MORE since I finished it.

I have noticed I need to get the barrel further back. I like the vent where it is, but the barrel sticks out too far past the vent. Should be a quick fix, though.