 Hey everybody, welcome back to the Star Wars channel. My name is David and today we're going to talk about Han Solo's blaster. All right, why are we talking about Han Solo's blaster? Well, Halloween last year, 2018, I was Han Solo, hence the get up right now. Although I didn't have a goatee, I shaved that off and I also didn't wear glasses all through Halloween. It's kind of annoying, but how to be true to the character, right? How to be true to the character. Han Solo doesn't wear glasses. So yeah, I was old Han Solo and through the build, through the build, I was trying to come up with the right gun. I wanted the right gun because I already had the holster and I started running into some things, some issues and just wanted to share the build with you as I worked through making the Han Solo blaster, but then just talk about it. So if you're new to the channel, what I do is I do vintage toy reviews. I do the new toy reviews, unboxings. I look at the vintage books, the games, just anything. If it says Star Wars on it, I'm going to talk about it because I am a huge Star Wars fan. All right, so let's talk about Han Solo's blaster. Now in the films, we learned a little bit more about the gun from the movie Solo. Han's heavy blaster pistol was a modified gun that was originally owned by Tobias Beckett. The heavy blaster pistol was a DL-44 model that was manufactured by Blastek Industries and Han Solo prefers this and it becomes his only sidearm. You're going to see this gun all through the movies from before the Galactic Civil War to the beginnings of the Rebel Alliance and then all the way to the end were Han Solo dies on Star Killer base 30 years later. Now in the films, if you're talking about the actual prop, like the actual prop that Harrison Ford held in his hands. If you know the history of how Star Wars began, a lot of those ships and props, they were just cannibalized garbage really, just things found in the real world and then just put together and then a lot of the little extra pieces to make it look Star Wars-y was dubbed greeblees. So oftentimes you'll see prop builders or Star Wars builders say, oh, these are just greeblees and that's just code for just the extra little bits that make the prop look like it came from the Star Wars universe. Harrison Ford's prop gun was made by just putting other weapons together, most of which the base of it was a Mauser pistol and a modified barrel from an MG-81 machine gun. And then through the films, it's going to be the sidearm that you see Harrison Ford carry the most. It changes a little bit from movie to movie. You even see Luke holding it in Empire Strikes Back when he's on Dagobah. Now since that time, there's been several different versions of the toy released to the public. Now when I was a kid a long time back, the vintage Star Wars Han Solo Toy Blaster was originally released by Kenner in 1979. The gun said Star Wars right on the side of it and it had two different electronic sounds. Since that time, another mold was released and it's become the most popular mold that you see and you still see now. And the orange one was also released from Kenner, came out several years later. And then like I said rubies had the orange and white one, same mold again. It was called the Han Solo Blaster. And then I think we see one more version of this gun. It popped up in 1996. Disney released the orange version of the gun, but it had silver battle damage all over it. But that would be this mold right here. So this was made from the orange Han Solo Blaster. So if you go see the if you see the orange one out there, you'll know what I'm talking about. And for the most part, this is a really good prop. You can see that I've painted it to resemble more like Han Solo's heavy blaster. It is a good prop. It's good to carry around. It's good as a Star Wars replica. The thing that I didn't like about it was the fact that the scope is cemented down. It's part of the base of the gun and this keeps it from sliding into holsters. So if you buy a prop holster, obviously you'll buy it from a different manufacturer. This gun will not fit inside of it because of the thickness of what you're seeing right here. Han's scope sticks up away from the body of the gun. And that leads us to the blue Disney gun. I don't know where you can find this. Disney stops selling guns in their stores. And I think you can still find this on eBay. But that's where I had to find mine. This I think is the best replica out there. This is called the Rebel Blaster. And I think it best looks like Han's heavy pistol. So that would be this gun right here. This is the heavy blaster from Disney. It's originally blue. I didn't have to do any serious modification to this other than sand some words down with a sanding gun. But otherwise, it has the nice scope that's not touching the barrel, which means it can slide into the holster and the scope sits out of the holster, which is what you want. That's the look you want. All right. So let's talk really quick about how to mod your gun to look like this. Obviously with both weapons, you want to take sandpaper and sand down any words that say Kenner or Lucasards or a date, anything like that. You can just sand them down as much as possible just to get a smooth finish. And then you want to sand over any rough edges where the seam of the gun has come together and you can feel that seam or it obviously looks like a toy. If you have this version, if you have the rubies version or the orange version, I took a drill and I drilled all these holes out. Okay, you can see it really closely. All those holes have been drilled out because that's what the end of Han's gun looks like. If you wanted to get really detailed, you keep going and you drill out all those, but I didn't feel like I was that skilled. And then you just paint it. But I'll talk about the paint job with this gun instead, because this is the one that I used and I used the same technique for both. So basically this is three different cans of spray paint, three different cans of spray paint. It's a matte black and then it's the metal silver and then this kind of woody wood brown. And after you sand it and you kind of have done everything that you want to do to it, spray painted the entire gun in matte black, spray painted the entire gun in matte black every piece and maybe gave it three coats of black. Then taped the gun off and then went back and then just lightly did this handle. As you can see, it's not a sharp, sharp dark brown, but it's just enough that you can tell it's been colored. And the idea is Han holds this in his hand a lot and then the handle has worn with the oil from his hand. Then you're going to tape the ends off again and then you're going to paint the silver piece. So you're going to paint all of that silver and don't worry if it looks too bright. I got all the way inside the gun as well. And then after both ends were painted, I took the black spray paint again and stood way, way back like this. And I misted the entire gun so that the silver kind of flexed down and wasn't as shiny and it looked more battle damaging like it had actually shot and gave the handle a more rough worn look. Then the last thing I did was I went back in and did the detail. So I took the silver spray paint again, I spray painted the end of a Q-tip. And then I went through and hit all these edges where this might have hit a table or been bumped up against something and the black scratched off. And I think that's a good detail and gives it that Star Wars lived in universe feel. Oh, and if you're wondering, yes, both guns make noise. All right, so that's everything I can say about the Han Solo Blaster. Maybe you have one yourself and you're working on your own Han Solo build. I of course have the whole costume including the boots, belts, droid collar and everything. So if you have any other questions about the costume or something besides the gun, or if you have comments about the gun that you think might help other people, go ahead and leave those in the comment section below. May the force be with you guys. I'll see you next time. Bye.