Empire Strikes Back: Hoth electrobinoculars

[superjedi]

Hi everyone,
Been busy with school and that darn "real life" so I haven't been as active on my boards as I used to, but I had some time recently to work on some hobby stuff and wanted to share.

I'm a Star Wars nut, and my collecting focus in recent years has been prop and costume replicas. I'm mainly into Boba Fett and all of his cool armor and weapons, but I do other things, too. Recently a friend on the RPF offered a kit for the electrobinoculars that Luke used on Hoth in ESB. The kit was based on a casting of a Simrad LP7 laser rangefinder like this



He sculpted and cast the prop-specific parts and did a limited run. Here's the parts layout.
In this pic I've already put together some of small subassemblies and the 2 parts of the main body, which is hollow cast.



It was a pretty straightforward kit to build. The parts required only minimal cleanup, and then painting. I assembled as much as I could using real screws, per the actual prop.
The other small parts were glued on.
I primed the kit, and then painted it in a flat white.



There are several reference pics of the actual prop on display at the various SW exhibits, so I tried to match the chipping patterns as closely as I could. I used a size 0 brush and a charcoal gray color.



The kit came with 3 acrylic lenses; 2 clear (as seen below), and one smoked.



All I have left to do on them is to add a leather strap, and add one more "dummy" screw in between the 2 eyepieces.

It's a pretty cool looking prop, and I'll enjoy having it in my collection.
Thanks for looking!

[The Mad Klingon]

Frickin' sweet.

[LastBattlestar]

Yeah, that's really cool! Hey, you couldn't work a real set of binoculars into the case?

Mike