Blog — Star Wars

Starships in bottles have been VERY popular.  I'm continuing to make new ones.  Star Trek and Star Wars are currently very well represented with X-Wing, Enterprise and Star Destroyer ships.  Firefly fans are also covered with the Serenity.  Even Space Battleship Yamato is making an appearance. I've started doing comic book and collectibles shows.  I've gotten some very cool requests that I'm working on.  The TARDIS from Doctor Who.  The Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean.  I'm also going to be doing a few Star Wars asteroid chase scenes. You can purchase Starships in a Bottle here. New ships...

Star Trek has a bit of history with starships in a bottle. In both the The Next Generation and Voyager you can find episodes where a crew member has built a starship in a bottle.  I wanted to try my hand at it but I'm also a Star Wars fan. So I built one of each.  I have an X-Wing fighter and USS Voyager in their own bottle. I printed some terrain to shape to go in the bottles as mounts for the ships.  Both are loaded up in beer sized bottles complete with corks.  The Voyager model already sold....

I finished two more blasters and had to make to two more mounts. The E-11 stormtrooper blaster and Mandy’s IB-94 pistol.  The IB-94 is a Rubies repaint. I’ve had it laying around waiting for a repaint for quite a while.  I tried a few new techniques with this one.  I initially filled the plastic Rubies blaster with sand to give it some weight. It worked surprisingly well and it now how a good feel in the hand.  I also used alcohol ink on the grips to give it a wood look. You apply the alcohol ink in drops and use...

My first install of Simple Blaster OS is going in a Hasbro E-11 conversion.  I’ve been meaning to do a E-11 blaster for while and just haven’t gotten around to it. I actually have two Hasbro E-11 blasters now.  The video below goes over the resin printed parts I’m using.  I really liked the old DoopyDoo kits but they are not available any more. Plus I wanted to get a bit more accuracy by resin printing the parts. So I’ve made some modifications to E-11 parts I’ve found online to both fit a Hasbro E-11 and accept the electronics.  ...

7/115/2023 Update - Revised connection diagram and code    I've been having a blast building Star Wars blasters.  Adding the electronic sound and lights has not been as fun.  There are options available but all of them are bit more complicated than what I have been looking for.  Proffieboards are great but they are expensive and currently hard to find.  FX Blaster OS is free but requires specific hardware and just won't run on any old Arduino board.  I wanted something that could be easily loaded on just about any Arduino board and with simple functionality.  When I build a...