Scope the situation

I decided that I want to put a scope on my Megatron P38.  The silencer and stock are more work and money than I want to spend, but Megatron needs his fusion cannon.  I started searching for the correct original Bushnell Phantom from the UNCLE gun, and much to my horror, I discovered that it got used on Cara Dune's blaster from The Mandalorian.  Yup, the scope I need for Megatron got used for a Star Wars prop.  Which means that they're practically unobtainaium anymore. For reference, this is what the scope should look like(Pic stolen from the RPF forum)

So I went with the next best thing, A vintage Bushnell Phantom Magnum.  The Magnum is a little bigger than the regular Phantom, but I think it's actually closer to the proper proportions compared to the original G1 toy.

The real problem with the Magnum is that the scope tube is just a tube, it doesn't have the box around the center like the standard Phantom does.  At first, I thought that was just the mount, but the box is actually part of the scope it's self.  I've decided to make it part of the mount for my scope anyway, so I started sketching.  Mounting a scope to a P38 is kind of wonky too, but we'll deal with that in a later post.

Sacrilege!

If you're a purist, you may want to just skip to the next post.  Here's the part that separates my Megatron clone from the others floating around the internet.  All the other ones I've seen are painted, then have Decepticon stickers put on them.  Given the value of original P38s, that's understandable, but I don't want people to think I'm a poser.  So I'm going to engrave the logos into the slide, because it's my gun, and I can.  I've never engraved on moderately hard steel before, so I wasn't sure if my engraver would last, but it held up just fine.

Weld, it's about time.

With the frame piece machined, it's time to weld it all together.  Almost.  As you can see, the angles of the two pieces didn't match and there was a lot of overlap.  So I had to fixture and mill them to match.

To hold everything while I welded, I made myself a jig.  It's a pretty basic jig that just locates on some pin holes.  Because the exact alloy is unknown but similar to 4140, that's how I decided to weld it.  Preheated it up to around 400°F and went for it, then slow cooled it back to room temp.  All the impact from the slide and barrel are on the new front section, so weld strength isn't something I'm overly worried about.  Plus, they made these frames out of aluminum too, and even soft 4140 is tougher than 7075 aluminum.

With the welding done, I could get all the parts fitted and functional.  I haven't done any cosmetic finishing on the welds yet, just did what I needed to make it work.  For what it's worth, my P38 parts kit was made in 1961, though I bought some of the early style grips for it, which are the correct style for Megatron.

Finishing with the danger glitter

If you're a regular follower of this blog, you'll know that dropping off the face of the internet is a thing that I sometimes do.  Stuff comes up, stuff gets put on the back burner, stuff gets picked up again.  Life was a serious struggle for a while there, but I'm back for now.

Time to finish up making the danger glitter on my Megatron P38 project.  Have I mentioned how much I hate machining steel?  There is nothing about it that I like.  I miss my aluminum.  But steel is what I got so steel is what I'll cut.  Few pictures and fewer words because I didn't take may pics along the way.  It took 3 more setups to get the machining finished on this frame chunk.