m41a pb

At long last, my Pulse Rifle is finished. Well, 99.99% finished. This was the longest running build I’ve every had. And to be honest, what’s left is little more than touch up. The M41A Pulse rifle is the standard issue field weapon of the United States Colonial Marine Corps. First seen in the major motion film “Aliens.” It probably has the best introduction a weapon could ever have.

"I wanna introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A Pulse Rifle. Ten millimeter, with over-and-under thirty millimeter pump action grenade launcher."

“I wanna introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A Pulse Rifle. Ten millimeter, with over-and-under thirty millimeter pump action grenade launcher.”

Well hell ya! With friends like that, your list of enemies would be small at best. Step one was of course the parts list. Using real guns was out of the question. The cost of the parts and my limited experience in gun smithing made it a easy to crossed off the list. The base gun used is a M1a1 Thompson, aka Tommy Gun. Fortunately for me, Airsoft make a usable replicate. Not anywhere as pricey as the real thing. But still expensive enough to make me second guess my desire to cut it us if necessary. The grenade launcher is a Remington 870 covered by a Benelli shotgun heat shield. I found a parted out 870 in a pawn shop the i was planning to use. And a toy 1:1  Benelli for the heat shield. For the iconic outer shell, I found a complete resin kit that I planned to hollow out and form around the base as needed. The final parts needed complete the build were the Hyperdyne Labs LED counter and sound card.

During the time of this build. Several Pulse Rifles came on the market from Airsoft to Hollywood Collectibles. It was almost disheartening that I was spending hours/years working on something that I could order from Amazon. But this was not about the destination, but the journey. So, about a month ago. For whatever reason, the motivation came to complete this project and move on to the next. Up til this point I had been working on the weapon in sections. All that really needed to be done was to assemble them into one unit. Well sounds easy enough. But this was the hardest part of all. The first major change to complete the kit was to abandon the 870 grenade launcher. I had to take the hollywood approach and fake it. It still looks good, although it would have been nice to be able to load and eject  shells. The up side was that I used the 870 to build up a real tactical shot gun. This also gave me a place to put the electronics. Getting the electronics installed and working was more than a milestone. It was the first step in final assembly and the start of several trips to the hardware store. Trying to get all the pieces to fit almost broke me. In the end, and several shots of sambuca later, we find ourselves a 99.99%.

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I call her,”Newts’ Revenge.”

         Although there are still a few things to do. I wanted to share what I had while the high was still good. I need a break from this build. At the very least. This gives me a safe place to store it until the fire is reignited.