SHOT Show 2019 - Fun with customization.

in todays firearms world, everyone and their brother, sister, cousin, etc. builds an AR platform rifle.  If you buy from a reputable company you will get a good product. So how does a company differentiate themselves from everyone else?  Go custom configurations.  Something the big companies are not doing.  (But beware, doing custom work such as this is not cheap.  Fun, but not cheap)
Here are pictures from a couple of companies we came across.  Enjoy.


First up is Strike Industries.  This is my favorite of their rifles.

Next up is F1 Firearms.  These guys are more competition oriented as they offer skeletonized receivers.  Not the best for keeping dirt and stuff out of your firearm.  But it does make for a lightweight rifle.  

One of the options they offer is multi-color hard-coat, multi-color anodization.  Which makes for a beautiful, customized rifle.  

If you are tired of the plain old black, try a bit of color customization.


By:  Mez
Feb. 2019

Kitchen Counter Customizing

The urge to modify physical items from their stock configuration into something that stands out from the rest of the crowd seems to be endemic to the human condition. I mean, for crying out loud, we can’t even leave ROCKS (or the stray Kia Soul) alone without thinking they need to be jazzed up with a few dabs of paint and a name to make them “pets”. While I am not hopelessly addicted to customizing things to the point of absurdity, I am not immune to a desire to express individuality through tailoring objects to my particular taste and personality.

When it comes to firearms, not unlike cars, custom is just a question of how much money you want to spend. Who among us has not gazed upon a finely crafted piece of hardware and mumbled “If only I had the money…” while drooling like a Saint Bernard with a mouthful of Novocain? But, that’s not the point of this post.

I’m talking about customizing on the cheap. And not swapping out the grips panels on the 1911 cheap either. We’re talking loose change from the sofa cheap here.

Our project for the day: color filling the roll marks and stampings on an AR lower (this same process can be used on any firearm roll marks/stampings with the same results).

Total project cost: less than $10 (assuming you didn’t already have the necessary tools in your home)

First, we need some tools. With the exception of a couple of paper towels, everything you will need for this project is pictured right here.

Isopropyl Alcohol (preferably 91%)

Enamel Nail Polish (in the color[s] of your choice)

Non-Acetone Nail Polish Remover

Q-tips

Paper towels

Now, for some instructions. For you visual learners, there is a YouTube video out there which was the inspiration for this little project.

One small detour before moving on, this is what the lower looked like at the beginning of the project:

Step one, dip a Q-tip in the alcohol and swab the area to be filled. This removes any oil and residues that might interfere with polish adhesion later.

Step two, once the alcohol has evaporated, take the nail polish, shake it thoroughly, and dab it liberally over the roll mark/stamping to be filled. Don’t worry about coloring inside the lines. This ain’t kindergarten, and we’ll clean up our messes in the next steps.

Step three, before the polish has a chance to dry, blot/wipe excess nail polish from the surface with a clean paper towel.

Step four, using another clean paper towel with some nail polish remover soaked into it, wipe any remaining excess nail polish from the surface around the roll marks/stampings. It may take a couple of passes to get all excess off the surface. You can see in the photos below that there is a little bit of “clouding” left that I need to go back over. I blame bad eyesight and lighting.

Lather, rinse and repeat as necessary until you achieve the results you desire. The roll marks on my AR lower were fairly deep and only took one coat to get a crisp, white fill which I what I was looking for.

Here is the finished product:

It should be noted that Spike's Tactical offers customers the option to have the markings filled for $10 or $30 depending on if you just have one mark filled or all marks filled. But, their lowers are currently on backorder, and adding the color fill adds to the delivery time.

Or, you can do it yourself. Total time start to finish...less than five minutes. You decide.

Shotgun Modification

I am not a gunsmith nor do I claim to be one.  There's a whole heap about guns that I don't know and I've always taken mine to a gunsmith if anything ever needed to be done mechanically.  Cosmetically, though, I've been known to play around, mostly with easy-to-do additions that look impressive but are actually very easy.  I "built" a shotgun from the receiver up several years ago, but I left the important things, like trigger work to Boss Man.

I *loved* this shotgun, my 12 ga flashlight.
Sadly, I got broke and had to sell my baby.

I had so much fun, I built Deejo a shotgun. 

Deejo's baby AKA Red Dog's shotgun

Last Christmas, I modified my Remington 870

B.A.M.F.

And over New Year's helped RCC modify his Remington 870. 

Medusa

Essentially, everything I've done to an 870 has been plug-n-play.  When Junior, my other brother, asked me to build his shotgun a few years ago, I said sure.  For some reason, though, he had to buck the trend and buy a Mossberg 500 instead of a Remington 870.  I bought the buttstock he wanted and then his build stalled out, meaning we were both too broke to buy the shotgun.  For going on five years, he's held on to the buttstock I bought him hoping for 'someday' to come along.  M, my future SIL, gave him 'someday' for his birthday this year and bought him his Mossberg.  He has spend the last month finding and ordering the accessories he wanted.  Finally, last week they all came in, which meant that I was on the hook for putting together his gun.

No problem, I thought.  I'd always been told that the Mossbergs were as easy to customize as the Remingtons - how difficult could it be?  He only wanted a couple of things added: a heat shield, a tac rail, a side saddle,and his buttstock.  I insisted on the mercury recoil system and he willingly agreed.

I guessed it would take about forty-five minutes to do the whole thing.  Two screws to take off the butt plate, one screw holding the stock to the receiver, a couple of screws for the tac rail and the side saddle, pull the barrel off to slide the heat shield on.  Seriously, forty-five minutes to put it together.  The mercury recoil system wouldn't take long to install, but it would take eight hours for the acrylic to cure.

Holy Mother of God was I wrong!  My projected forty-five minutes (and I thought I was way overestimating my time) turned into five hours. 

Five. 

Hours. 

So not kidding.  I wish I was.

About the only thing that went right was taking the two screws out of the butt plate.  Yep, that went well.  And then the entire thing went to shit.  The bolt, screw, whatevertheeffitis, that holds the buttstock to the receiver cross-threaded and we spent an hour trying to back it out.

An hour.
Doing this.

The screw was destroyed and the threads were stripped out.  Junior made a run to the hardware store and got some new screws.  We managed to find one that worked only to realize that the adapter that came with the stock was too short.  Luckily, the stock also came with adapters for a Remington.  The Remington adapter was too long and the Mossberg one was too short.  No problem.  Junior cut the Remington one down to the correct length and after a very long afternoon we were able to attach the stock to the receiver.  Hallelujah!

The side saddle went on without a hitch.  A miracle!

The tac rail went on without a hitch.  Two for two!

The heat shield.  Mother Effer.  I knew it was too good to be true.

I got it on, but couldn't get the front end to clamp down enough to thread the screws, so I handed it over to Junior.  He couldn't get it to work either.  Thank God RCC was available, because after about forty-five minutes of creative swearing and doing everything I could think of, I was ready to throw the whole gun out the window.  RCC managed to work some magic with a C clamp, a pair of pliers and an allen wrench.  Whew!  Heat shield - done.

I had Junior secure the shotgun vertically so I could pour acrylic into the stock to suspend the mercury recoil system.  At the shop we had these wonderful bench vices that we could adjust to make sure that everything was level - I tell you, I really missed those vices a lot while putting this gun together.  I mixed the acrylic and Junior figured out a way to support the shotgun that would keep it secure over night while the acrylic cured.

Worked like a charm.

In order to suspend the recoil system in the acrylic, Junior found an old metal plate that he could put a screw through and attached the recoil system.  We let it sit over night to cure.  In the morning, all he had to do was remove the screw and re-attach the butt plate.

I have to admit, it is a pretty gun...

Only took five years to build,
but at least it's done.

Too bad the damn thing doesn't go bang.

Okay, okay.  It goes bang.  Once.  If you directly load the chamber.

I panicked a little bit, thinking I'd done something to completely screw up my brother's gun.  But we didn't do a darn thing that would have impacted its ability to cycle.  Come to find out, he'd been having trouble with it cycling ever since he bought it.  Boss Man is now in Indiana, I can't just run it by the shop and have him look at it.  However, one of "my boys", Stein, apprenticed under Boss Man for several years so I called him.  Thankfully, Stein speaks GunDiva so when I was explaining about the thingy on the inside of the receiver that releases the round from the magazine so the other thingy can pick it up and load it into the chamber, he knew what I was talking about.  And better yet, he can fix it.

You know what I learned from this experience?

I hate Mossberg 500s.  I'll stick with my 870s, thankyouverymuch.

Shotgun Customization

Since RCC gave me all of the parts to customize my shotgun, of course we had to stay up on Christmas Eve and put it together.

What I love about the Remington 870 (and though I don't own one, the Mossberg 500) is that is so easily customizable.  Here's the thing - it doesn't take a gunsmith to do most of the modifications.  The exception, for me, is the trigger.  Could I buy a new trigger, read the instructions, and put it in?  Probably.  Would I? Hell no, that's why I have a gunsmith (who is moving away, but we're not talking about that right now).

Here's a picture of the base 870 I started with and the parts that RCC got me.

With all of these add-ons, I can pretty much configure my shotgun any way I want to.

Even though it has been probably five years since I built my last shotgun, I was confident that I could build this one without too much trouble.  It took RCC and me about an hour to do the whole thing.  I only had to glare at him once, for taking away my toys and wanting to build it himself.  He got the hint and let me have the fun - and satisfaction - of doing it myself.

With the exception of the tac rail that mounts to the receiver, there were no special "gunsmithing" tools that were needed.  My Gerber multi-tool and RCC's flathead screwdriver were the only tools we had to provide - all other tools were provided with the parts.

We started with the buttstock - two screws held on the recoil pad and one screw attached the stock to the receiver.  It was off in a matter of a minute or two.  The new stock took just a couple of minutes to screw on. It was really that easy.

Knoxx Blackhawk Special Ops Shotgun Stock

I've never used this kind of stock; it's supposed to reduce felt recoil by 90%.  The diagram didn't explain to me how it was supposed to reduce the recoil, but Boss Man (my gunsmith) did.  Apparently, when fired, the whole receiver moves back, compressing the spring, which absorbs the recoil.  He doesn't seem to like this kind of set-up, but I'm excited to try it.  I want to get video and super slo-mo it to see if I can see the compression happening.

The shot shell and battery carrier were the two most pain-in-the-ass pieces to assemble - not because it was difficult, but because it involved installing several screws in very tight spaces.  If you have big fingers, this would be almost impossible.  RCC did have the bright idea of starting the screws before attaching the shell carrier and battery carrier - that suggestion saved us a lot of aggravation.  This portion of the project took us the longest to complete.

Blackhawk PowerPak modular cheek piece with shell carrier and battery holder.

To install the cheek piece, I had to remove the back portion of the stock.  In theory, it should have been easy.  In reality, it took both of us - one to pull down on the adjuster lever-thingy and the other to stabilize the gun while the back portion was pulled off.  After that, it was as easy as slipping the cheek piece over the back portion of the stock, making sure it clicked into place, and sliding the butt back onto the stock.

Unfortunately, once I had it put back together, and shouldered the shotgun, I realized that I needed to install the high rest cheek piece, so we took it all apart and did it again.  It went much faster the second time.

Taking off the fore-end was a breeze - remove the sling swivel, unscrew the magazine tube (watch out for the BOING! factor), pull off the barrel, release the action bars and slide the fore-end off.  It sounds like a lot of steps if you've never done it before, but it's actually very simple.  Well, it's simple if you remember to push the magic action bar release button inside the receiver.  Otherwise, you'll just yank on the fore-end and curse - a lot - until you remember to push the magic button.

At this point, I had my new fore-end in one hand, and the old one, still attached to the action bars, etc., in the other hand and I drew a blank.  I *know* I've installed new fore-ends before, but couldn't remember the next step.  However, I keep all of the boxes and instructions for pretty much everything, so when the new part didn't have instructions, I pulled out my SureFire box and lo and behold, had not only instructions, but the very important super special fore-end nut removal tool.  After that, it was a matter of removing the nut, taking off the old fore-end, and putting on the new one.  Thirty - forty-five seconds, tops.

Mako Handguard with 3 rails and a Mako Quick Release Ergonomic Vertical Foregrip



To re-install the fore-end with the new handguard, it's simply a matter of reversing the steps.  Unless you're me, in which case you must forget about the super secret action bar releases (there are two for re-assembly; one on the right, which must be pushed first, and one on the left), which will cause more cursing and aggravation.  Oh, and almost breaking your toes several times when the slide block assembly jumps off the action bars and falls to the ground repeatedly.  Eventually, though, if you're me, you'll look at the re-assembly instructions, smack yourself in the forehead for forgetting about the super secret action bar releases, and it will go back together easy-peasy.

The vertical foregrip slips right on the rail.  I'm not completely sold on it, but RCC loves it and I did promise to give it an honest try.  It does look pretty bad-ass in an over-the-top-even-for-a-tacticooled-gun kind of way.

The only thing we couldn't install was the receiver tac rail, because it required a punch to remove the trigger plate pins.  I did put the red dot sight on the tac rail, so that when we went into the gun shop today, all I had to do was punch out the trigger plate pins, slip the rail over the top of the receiver and screw it on.

UTG M87 tactical mount and NcSTAR red dot sight with four different reticles.

There is a problem, though.  Damn it.

Even with the higher cheek piece, the red dot rides too high on the receiver for me to actually use it.  I'm either going to have to build up the cheek piece even more, or lose the tac rail and mount the red dot directly to the receiver.

Meet BAMF, completely assembled and ready to rock 'n roll

Friday is the day we've got planned for taking BAMF to the range to try her out.  RCC is buying the shotgun I built for my brother, so I'll try to do a side-by-side comparison of how they shoot early next week.