The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Tactical Rifle & Carbine => Topic started by: Big Frank on January 26, 2023, 11:35:13 PM
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After stripping down about as far as it goes and cleaning it really well, I left the parts and everything setting around. I finally worked up enough motivation to do something with it. A few days ago I started planing down the hand guard with a small block plane. The blade depth and angle adjustment is... just eyeball it as you slide the blade around with your hands, and tighten the wheel to hold it in place. Getting the depth adjusted between to shallow to shave any material off, and too deep to get started was nearly impossible, but I whittled down close to 1/3 of the thickness. It smells like epoxy and it's really hard to work compared to wood. Then I got smart and put an 80 grit wheel on the angle grinder. Much better! It didn't take long to take off another 1/3 of the thickness of the handguard and smooth it out. It's a hair thicker on one end but good enough for government work.
I had a tube of rubber cement and tried using it to glue an M203 grenade launcher hand guard over the remaining piece of the original, but it didn't work. I bought a tube of Amazing Goop and used that yesterday to glue it together. Then today I rubbed the excess off with my fingers and drilled the 8 holes where the barrel block screws to the housing. Tonight I'll use more Goop to glue the hand guard to the housing and have a one of a kind CCU. I had a hard time counter sinking the holes to get rid of the ragged edges because every hole is partly on at least one rib. I got carried away with a knife that was too big for the job when I tried to use that instead.
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Here's the last pic of my hand guard, one of the new style hand guards Mech-Tech makes, and a picture of a CCU with a cropped image of my handguard below theirs. Mine wraps around a lot farther. It goes all the way up to the rail. In a few days (?) when I get everything cleaned up again and put it together, I'll post some pics.
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I got just enough Goop in the housing to glue the barrel block in. Maybe 1/2 a drop, but it doesn't take much when the parts fit closely. Two whacks to the muzzle with a plastic mallet and I knocked the barrel assembly down into the housing. Then I clamped the barrel in my bench vise and twisted the housing back and forth a few times to make sure nothing else was sticking in there, and the housing slid right off. I wasn't worried about damaging the muzzle because the barrel has a recessed crown, and the stainless steel is a lot harder than the plastic mallet, which serves the same purpose as a rawhide mallet.
When I took a closer look at the muzzle I saw some carbon buildup, or something, at the muzzle and cleaned it up. When I put on my reading glasses it was easier to see that there was some damage to the muzzle. I don't have the proper tools to repair that kind of damage, but I do have a ceramic stick for honing knives. It has 4" of rod sticking out of a 2 1/4" wooden handle. So I poked it in on an angle and worked it in and out about an inch all the way around, being careful not to hit the bore on the opposite side. I kept going until it looked like a uniform chamfer, but I need to check it with a magnifying glass.
I'll be buying a .578"x28 die and die stock, and putting on an A2 flash hider I bought last year. Nothing will hit the muzzle after that, unless it's a cleaning rod. Other than the little speck of carbon, the barrel looked pretty clean when I swabbed the swarf out with a wet patch. I ran a brass or bronze brush though it anyway, then a wet patch came out really dirty. I don't know if I ever cleaned the brush, but I need to. Then I'll have to clean the bathroom sink. :( I think the brush was putting crap in the barrel instead of taking it out.
I noticed that half of the screws for the housing looked like the heads had been hammered on. Then I remembered I did that to try to tighten up the opening of the sockets. They're 9/64" hex screws but a 9/64" hex wrench is a sloppy fit. Nothing else I have, SAE, metric, or Torx, fits any better either. So I put all 8 screws in the barrel clamp and hammered the other 4 down until they matched, then filed them down flat, 4 at a time. I'm going to run each one through a die to clean up the threads, then degrease, and paint them. And make sure the holes in the housing are all bored out to the same diameter, 5/16" I think, with no Goop or plastic handguard over the edges of the holes, and the bit goes straight through both sides.
Trivia time! I had to open a new package of patches to clean the bore. They're made by Southern Bloomer Mfg. Co. of Bristol, TN. If anyone isn't already aware, they started out making cotton knit panties and night shirts for state/federal mental institutions and prisons. Five years later they found that the scrap from this business made excellent gun cleaning patches. Their cotton knit products leave no strings or threads and are virtually lint free.
From prisoners' panties to patches. https://southernbloomer.com/
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I painted the 8 housing screws Sunday morning. I was thinking to myself, how do I paint all the way around the heads of the screws? I need to stand them up! So I poked small holes in the piece of cardboard with an awl and screwed them halfway in. Two coats of paint with a little break in between and they looked good.
I straightened out and used Goop to re-glue the aluminum and rubber parts of the buffer that were stuck together crooked. That one little number 10 screw is the only stock attachment. If it ever breaks off, I'm reaming out the holes and running a 1/4" bolt from the stock into the housing. I don't think I have enough Goop left for what I actually bought it for.
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I don't remember what the rivet in the right side of the M203 grenade launcher grip is for. My barrel was off an M2037 flare gun I bought a long time ago. The two rivets at the rear, one on each side, are the rivets that hold the shell holders on. They keep the grenade from falling on the ground before you pull the barrel back. Wouldn't that be embarrassing? I had to drill those rivets out and take the shell holders out before I could fit the grip over the remaining part of my original handguard. The semi-circular notch at the bottom rear is a clearance cut for the extractor that's located on the receiver of the grenade launcher. The M203 has a spring loaded plunger ejector at the top of the breech face, and with the extractor at the bottom, the ejected shells go straight down. If it doesn't eject you have to poke the empty out with a stick. Then visit your friendly neighborhood small arms repairman. ;)
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I have a bottle brush just the right diameter to clean inside the housing, but several inches too short. So I cut a steel rod/stiff wire that came off a yard sign to make an extended handle Monday. When I tried to make a loop in the middle it snapped in half because it was so brittle. I managed to make a different shape from the loop and can get 2 fingers partway in. I wrapped the brush handle around the stiff wire, and tied it in a half dozen places with rebar tie wire so it would quit slipping, then taped it all up. It works really well now.
The bolt is a sliver over 9 1/2" long but most of the weight is forward of the breech. I believe that's how it is on sub-machine guns like the Uzi. The barrel is just a hair over 16" if you don't count the barrel hood, but 16 1/4" including it. I spent the day cleaning all my parts. I had some soaking in a bucket of gun cleaner and stuck my dirty bore brush in overnight too.
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The stock only had 4 positions with a big space between 1 (closed) and 2. The length of pull jumped from 13" to 14 1/2". So I drilled a hole where there already should have been one. Since the drill bit is tapered on the end, not flat, I had to drill the hole almost twice as deep. It wouldn't have hurt anything if it broke through the "buffer tube", but I'm glad it didn't. I wrapped a piece of tape around the shank of the bit to use it as a depth gauge and finally got it just right. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. I used a gloss black paint pen to paint the hole one time. I would have used flat black, but when I bought a flat black paint pen it didn't have any paint in it at all. Now I can adjust the L.O.P. to 13 3/4" which is where it's at in the next post.
When I switched my bedroom gun with my CCU frame, I put the P10 slide on the 13+1 (P14) frame just to see how it looks. other than the dust cover being too long, it doesn't look too bad. A 14+1 or 15+1 .45 ACP with a 3" barrel would be something different. I can imagine people at the gun range asking what the heck it is.
P.S. The Slim Grips are Micarta. I don't remember if they're linen Micarta or not. I don't think they look like they're made of paper, so I'm guessing linen. Micarta is a composite material. Some people refer to polymers as composites when the items they're referring to aren't composites at all. They're just plain old plastic. I've seen it dozens of times in gun rags, I mean gun mags. Bakelite, pronounced bake-a-lite, is a good example of a composite. You can mix saw dust and resin to make a plastic material, and the wood fibers and resin remain 2 separate things.
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It took awhile but I finally got it all together. I had everything done Tuesday morning before I went to bed, except to mount the flashlight. My PROTAC RAIL MOUNT HL-X LONG GUN LIGHT wouldn't fit on the rail because the slots are narrow and the crossbar is made wide for Picatinny slots. I'm going to use this light on one of my ARs and plan on using the remote switch on that. I can just switch tail-caps when I swap out the light.
https://www.streamlight.com/products/detail/protac-rail-mount-hl-x
So instead of a 1.000 lumen light I have the Streanlight Scorpion off my shotgun, and it's not even the 160 lumen LED model. I think it was around 65 lumens. :( :-[ I need to find the online article where some guy bought a good LED bulb and driver module, reamed out the head of a Streamlight Scorpion and "turbocharged" it.
Why, yes! I do have a laser sight in front of my front sight. I'm not sure which gun its going to stay on so I'm not using the remote switch until I figure it out. It has a big tab sticking out the sides that you push back and forth lick a trigger guard mounted safety.
The "small" mags are all 15 rounds and the big ones are 20 rounds. I forgot that I already had a red-dot sight and bought a SIG Romeo last year. Them I saw this Vortex Sparc II on a Black Friday sale. It was too good of a deal to pass up. It's absolute co-witness mounted with the flip-up sights. I may end up taking it off and using the SIG Romeo instead. I think it has a sharper looking dot, but I need to look at them both side by side to find out. I may eventually get my shotgun drilled and tapped for a Picatinny rail and put one of of my extra red dot sights on it. EGW makes a rail for 30 bucks, but it's cheaper at Brownells and probably at Midway too.
P.S. The long rail is a Mono-Rail. The thing the sling is attached to is something I got when I put a long rail extension on the original short rail. the rail extension went on top and it provides rails on the left and right. It's exactly the same height as the original rail and the Mono-Rail, which allowed me to bridge the gap with one of the 1/2" risers and mount the front sight much farther out. I'll try to remember to take pics of the old short rail and the extension.
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I bought some black hot glue sticks from Shire Post Mint. Besides fantasy coins, decision maker coins, etc., they also make Wax Seals and Wax Seal Handles that use a strong neodymium magnet for quick and easy swapping of their steel stamp head coins. If you want to put wax seals on your envelopes, they've got you covered. Instead of waiting for your father who's still perfecting ways of making sealing wax, as in The Rolling Stones" song 19th Nervous Breakdown, you can buy hot glue sticks in 7 different colors in Baker's Dozen bags. I bought 2 bags of the black glue sticks and a $5 Surebonder Mini Size 10W High-Temperature Glue Gun. That way I have one gun for the black glue sticks, and still have my old one for clear glue. I greatly overfilled the holes in the sides of the forend with glue, and after letting it set overnight whittled it down with an X-acto knife, to somewhere around the size and shape it would be if it didn't have any holes in it. It actually turned out really well, but the flash on my camera made it look terrible. It shows every scratch that I can't even see anymore after I rubbed my bare hands on it a bunch of times then wiped it down with a dirty gun cleaning rag. A few drops of gun oil might hide the scratches, but as the Brits would say, I can't be arsed to do so. It feels 1000% better to hold onto than it did with those holes in the hard plastic M203 forend.
https://www.shirepost.com/collections/wax-seals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEseb6-hssc
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Since I took the tactical light and front sight riser off to make it easier to work at cutting the glue off, I remounted the light in the rearmost of the 3 available notches, instead of the middle slot. It sticks out an inch less now and I can't move it any further back because the mount is integral with the body of the flashlight. In the pics of the rear sight/optic riser, and the front sight riser, you can see how much I previously cut off the end of the rear riser. It's still long enough to flip up the lens caps on the optic at the very front of the riser, with the rear sight up. I don't know why it has a big square notch like a hammer notch, but it's on both ends of the UTG risers. I think I did an okay job of beveling all edges on it too. Now the end is farther from my eye while still being as far back as I can practically mount it on the Mech-Tech Monorail. There are slots missing from the Monorail where 2 nuts hold it onto 2 studs welded on the top of the receiver tube. I have the front crossbolt of the rear riser in the first notch behind the rear nut of the Monorail, and the front of the riser completely covers the screw and hides it. The last thing I did was peel the old Thyrm CLENS Protector off the light, clean the lens, and a couple minutes later when it was dry applied a new CLENS Protector to keep the lens from getting carboned up and dirty when I shoot.
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I took a couple more pictures of my M203 forend so you can see how well I followed the original contours of the ribs when I trimmed the hot glue off it. In case I didn't mention it before, the Vortex SPARC II (Speed Point Aiming for Rapid Combat) 100% co-witnesses with the flip-up sights. The sights lock in the up position, but not in the down position, so they're easy to flip up.
The SPARC II is in Limited Distribution, but the SPARC AR Red Dot is available for $20 more. They both have a 2 MOA red dot, but Battery Life is Up to 300 hours on highest setting. Up to 6,000 hours on lowest setting, and the VMX-3T Magnifier is not recommended for use with the SPARC II. You get 50,000 hour battery life and night-vision compatibility at the lowest two settings on the SPARC AR red dot. It's .2 inches shorter and 1.6 ounces lighter than mine, but both are 22mm Objective Lens Diameter, with 90 MOA of adjustments for windage and elevation. The SPARC II has 4.8 stars with 264 reviews, and the SPARC AR only has 4.5 stars with 27 reviews. It got a 1 star review from some guy who bought it and broke the glass, but he doesn't say how he did it. It got a 2 star review from a guy who switched ammo on his 7.62x39mm AR and lost zero. Now he can't sight it in at all. It got one 3 star review and the rest were 4 and 5 stars. More 5 star reviews than all the rest put together, so I expect the rating to go up when they get more reviews. The SPARC II got mostly 5 star reviews. There were only 2 one star reviews and they were from the same guy.
https://vortexoptics.com/vortex-sparc-2-red-dot.html?queryID=08caeb5c0c356a06e62179835e3e3a03&objectID=4810&indexName=magento2_default_products
https://vortexoptics.com/vortex-2019-sparc-ar-red-dot.html
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Wow. Just WOW. While its not for me this is something you're having fun doing and are passionate about. I chuckle every time I see the title because in my last career, CCU was Camera Control Unit and it does cause me to pine a little over the fully digital control room I built out. I'm guessing that was my passion (at that time) like this is with you.
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I do believe I have a one of a kind carbine conversion now. If not, maybe it will be after I put an A2 style flash hider on it. I have 2 of them I got cheap, but haven't bought the .578x28 (37/64" - 28) die and Threading Alignment Tool yet. I need a Threading Alignment Tool to make sure everything is lined up straight, the die, and a 1-1/2" Die Stock to put the die in. But I have so many other things to do, it probably won't happen this year. I'm on the list to be notified if NTC Trading gets the Muzzle Threading kits n stock. If not, I can get the Threading Alignment Tool from them, and the die and die stock any ole place.
https://www.ntctrading.net/shop/p/muzzle-threading-kits-die-handle-alignment-tool
https://www.ntctrading.net/shop/p/jzvwr5w41j5ouspbc3cc8rmderelvb
https://www.ntctrading.net/shop/p/aluminum-threading-alignment-tools
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I took the Magpul RSA QD - Rail Sling Attachment QD off my shotgun and put it on the CCU. Instead of buying another one of these for 30 bucks for the CCU and keeping this one on the shotgun, I'm going to get a 40 buck Strike Industries Strike Shotgun Barrel Clamp for 12-Gauge and put that on the shotgun. It has a Picatinny rail on one side, and a QD socket on the other, and will eliminate 2 Picatinny rails and the Magpul RSA QD I was using on my current mag clamp. One part instead of four.
The Magpul Rail Sling Attachment QD mounts really low, and uses 3 consecutive slots on the rail. But my non-Picatinny standard rail didn't have 3 consecutive slots to attach it to. So I got a flat file and used the edge of it to make a slot between 2 of the 3 existing slots for the fat crossbolt. When I had it where it would work, I decided to use my rat-tail file to widen it out about 3 times as wide as the screw. I accidentally filed my front sight before I was through, but a black Sharpie fixed that up good as new. It's what I used to color the raw aluminum of the slot too. You can see that the Rail Sling Attachment doesn't take up the full width of the 2nd and 4th slots, but it's enough to hold onto the rail between them. Other than the flash hider, I think I'm done screwing around with this thing.
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I got an AT3Tactical 4xRDM 4x Red Dot Magnifier with Flip-to-Side Mount today, but there's nowhere to put it. I already have the rear sight and Vortex SPARC II red dot on a 5 1/4" long 1/2" riser and the front sight on a matching riser. Now I have to buy a 3rd 1/2" riser, so I can put the rear sight, magnifier and red dot all in a row on 2 risers. I looked at UTG because that's who made the old risers, but they have a new style now that looks a lot better. They don't have 2 big knobs you turn with your fingers anymore. So instead of just getting 1 riser, I might buy 3 so they all match. I could put a new one on the front and both old ones on the back, but the new ones looks so much better it might be worth it just to improve the looks, and not have knobs sticking out that can snag on stuff.
https://www.at3tactical.com/products/at3-4xrdm-4x-red-dot-magnifier-with-flip-to-side-mount
https://www.leapers.com/products-utg-mt-rsx5l.html
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This morning as I lie awake in bed it occurred to me that didn't need to buy any more risers for my CCU. I didn't need any risers on it at all. The sights were kind of high and I'm better off without them. I only put the risers on so the front one would properly position the tri-rail for the front sight and keep it from moving. But as long as it stays put, I don't need a riser to bridge the gap. But I still had a problem. The eye relief on the 4x magnifier is only 2.5" and it was twice that far away. So I took the CCU Monorail off and turned it around backward. Then instead of not coming all the way back to the end of the receiver, it stuck out an inch and a half too far. So I took it off and chopped the end off with a hacksaw, filed it down, sanded it, and dabbed some Birchwood-Casey Aluminum Black on it. I didn't follow the directions, I just swabbed it on, waited a minute, repeated twice, rinsed it with cold water, wiped it dry, oiled it and wiped it off. I cut the rail at the back of the 4th slot from the rear and filed almost to the front of the slot, then filed it down at a 45 degree angle. I forgot to file the burr off the bottom, so I took that off with the file my multi-tool and blackened the raw edge with a Sharpie.
Now I can get a good cheek weld without having any metal jabbing me in the face, as long as I flip the rear sight up. Otherwise I can rest my nose on top of the folded sight, but there's no rail hanging over the stock to gouge my cheek. The large aperture peep sight doesn't seem to be any hindrance to aiming, so I'll probably shoot with it up at all times. Pulling the stock back one click gives me a nice LOP of 13 3/4". The next hole, the one I drilled in the stock tube, is 14 1/2". Fully closed it's 13" with the butt pad on, so a fixed stock is a viable option for most people, but it adjusts in 3/4" increments all the way out to 16", for any literal knuckle-draggers with gorilla-like arms. I have to flip the magnifier to the side to pop open the rear lens cover on my red dot, then I can flip it right back in place.
I put both of the 1/2" risers on my can cannon. The knobs on the side are so big you can't place them directly above one another, but I previously cut part off the end off one riser. When I matched the new end with the other one, it staggered the screw heads just enough to clear one another. Otherwise I would have had to put one riser on with the screws facing left and the other one facing the right side of the gun. The screw on the Firefield mount just cleared the screw on the top riser where I mounted it, too. It will be interesting direct firing the can cannon with the circle-dot reticle. Green looks better than red to me, but there may be places in the woods where red shows up better among the greenery. I use 2 Strike Industries Mini Bang Bands to to give my pistol finger grooves, and put one on my LDA 12-45.
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MechTech Mini Quad Rails are on sale for 30% off and I bought 2 of them. One to try to replace the front of the Monorail I lost when I turned it around backward, and another Mini Quad in front of it to mount my front sight on. I didn't need all these rails and ended up covering most of them with ERGO low profile Picatinny rail covers. But they're there if I want to move things around. I had to cut off the back end of the left, right, and bottom rear rails, to get the top rear rail as far back as possible. The front rails are butted up against the rear rails. The rail sections are all screwed on and I may remove some later if I'm still not using them. I have my tac-light straddling both mini quads to give me more room on the forend without running he light out to the muzzle. I'll have to move it ahead one space if I want to remove the rear rail on that side. The QD swivel mount is between the screws on the front mini quad, in what I think should be the sturdiest place.
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That premium, free-range, organic sticker is from One Hundred Concepts. The last bit of kit I have for my CCU is a Weapon Light Improvement Package. It consists of a LightCap and ShockCollar, that are also sold separately. The ShockCollar can also be used on their ScopeCaps. A couple of their products I like the looks of are the HexCap anti-reflection device, and ScopeCap Pro. The ScopeCap Pro is a combination of a HexCap and ScopeCap. A ShockCollar would be a good accessory to use with those. I bought 2 rolls of Multicam Camo Form Gear Wrap from them too. It works like Coban bandage that sticks to itself, if you're familiar with that stuff. I have a couple rolls of Realtree Edge Duck Tape that I may use on one or both of my ARs. But once it's on, it's glued in place, and this is easily removable. There was a video I watched where this guy said a bunch of them were hog hunting at night with night vision scopes, and he accidentally turned on his weapon mounted light while everyone was sitting there in the dark. Oopsie. So he bought a light cap. Some guys in the military have been using lids off pill bottles for this. Skip to 4:00 in the video for info on the LightCap.
https://onehundredconcepts.com/
P.S. The budget build rifle has the same light as my CCU.
P.P.S. There's enough of the muzzle exposed for my A2 flash hider to go on, but it will be awhile before I buy a die to thread the barrel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IybFMA62ldo&t=242s
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I occurred to me some time this week that now that I have bottom rails on the CCU, I could put my light on the bottom where it should be, instead of sticking way out on the side. And now I have the sling back on the left side where it was for a long time, before I got QD sling swivels. I took the LghtCap off and remounted it facing a different way too. Now I can swipe the tab on the cap with my left hand, and it flips over on the right side, out of the way. I moved the light forward 1 or 2 slots when I moved it to the bottom too, to gain just a bit more hand room. The front of the LightCap doesn't stick out past the muzzle, but only sets back about 1/8". I won't have to worry about the lens getting carboned up when I'm shooting without the light on. And when It does get dirty, I can peel the THYRM CLENS Protector off and stick another one on. 8) The situation will be better whenever I thread the barrel and put one of the A2 flash hiders on. I was thinking about taking one of the rail sections I'm not using off one of the Mini Quad Rails, and putting it on top of the receiver, between the Monorail and Mini Quad. But I would have to drill new holes off-center, and drill and tap the barrel clamp which has a slot in the middle with a hook that attaches the recoils spring to it. I'd have to drill holes close to the sides of the rail at the back, and between the front and middle. The front would be unsupported. And it would mostly be to make it look better, not to serve any purpose other than covering the empty space.