When Tamer and I were gathering pieces for this project, he actually was able to grab several of the guns and sent em to me so that I could choose the best one for my needs. The vintage death star playset gun has a couple of common problems which include, one, the simple compression joint where the moving part of the gun attaches to the gunmount, is usually loose with wear like our example here and will not stay in the level position. I will fix this problem when the time comes. two,the little upper and lower barrels are almost always either damaged or missing, three, the main barrel which is that pointy affair that you see me holding in the first pic, is almost always either warped, chewed up, or missing and has a cheesy little t-shaped peg that fits into the gun body and is usually very loose. Looking back at the Kenner prototype pic back on page 1, You can see that the proto team has altered the barrel end of the gun just to the right of that vertical rectangle shape that you can see on the left side of my ruler. they have infact cut the gun there and then have installed three new barrels. "the upperand lower barrels may be something else entirely like targeting devices or even exhaust ports for the main barrel. Using known parts of the walker as size referance, I have scaled the drawing at 1/6th of our toy walker's size and have scaled some of the barrel measurements from that pic. The main barrel is approx 5 1/4 inches long from the right side of that vertical rectangle which is where the barrel on the proto pic version starts. this main barrel should have an outside diameter or around 12mm. the lower barrel is approx 2.62 1/2 inches long starting at the right side"as the pic shows" of that vertical bock. Now the pointy stock barrel is almost the same length and attaches to the gun body recessed back into that cylindar to the point where we want to cut it. Now it is necessary to measure from the right side of that block to the inside of the rear bulkhead when the gun is slid into it's furthest forward position to determine if there is enough room for a 5 1/4 inch main barrel when the gun is in it's stowed position. What I was afraid of is that we would be short of room and that is what happened. from the block to the bulkhead measures 4 3/8 inches. Since i anticipated this and since i want to maintain an appearance that is as close to possible as the prototype gun, my plan is to allow the barrel to travel or recess back into the body of the gun, either for stowage of the gun or for some real howitzer recoil action. My plan is to set the barrel's stowed position at 4inches past the block to allow a bit of room from the rear bulkhead and give us a little play if I have the furthest forward position of the gun to far forward to allow for the future built front bulkhead. In the firing position, the barrel is slid out to it's opertion length of 5 1/4 inches past the block.lateral straightness of the oscilating barrel can be maintained by cutting the forward hole in the right place at the right diameter and then possibly by fashoning some kind of lateral bearing sleeve in the interior of the gun accessable from underneith the middle in front of the hinge mount assembly. the pegged hinge is set low enough that extra length required to hit the bearing sleeve will easily clear and pass through above. Now to limit and secure the in and out movement of the barrel, I figure that a thin channel with down pointed slots at either end of the 1 1/4 worth of barrel travel in the body of the gun would allow a small wire stop drilled into the side of the barrel at the right place to limit the barrel position at either end and allow it to be moved by twisting the barrel till the pin hits the horizontal groove and then sliding forward or back to the alternate position and then twisting the barrel down to lock into position. I believe that it will work fine but may be a booger to get into place. Now you know why I wanted to work on the gun part of this project first. Here lies several wrinkles that needed to be ironed out to make the thing work.
back to the subject of the guns. Although I have no more chair mounts, I could utilize one of those extra guns to set up a scene like the one that Lee showed us. Scratchbuilding a mount for the gun might not be too hard.
Enough darn typing. here are some pics.
