Saturday 19 March 2016

ASG Low Cap Armalite Mags For Airsoft, Plastic and in a Box of Ten.


Having recently purchaced a cheap Airsoft AEG M16 with the idea of using it as a starter gun for some three gun type sport,  or even the two gun version where you throw heavy weights, drag tractor tyres, and then see if you can still hit a target whilst you hyperventilate.

It might be cheap but some double sided sticky tape, card, and paint and it's totally transformed.

Then later receiving a Condor copy combat vest with various pouches for gun mags, a radio, a compass, knife or knives, a pistol and things i've yet to discover, as a Christmas pressie. 

Just seeing that makes me want to go out and merc some fools.

I thought it would be a good idea to get some cheap low capacity mags for the M4 to bulk the vest out with, also low cap mags hold around 30 BB's which add a tad more realism as that is what the real steel versions hold.

I was limited as to what i could buy because i would be using an Amazon voucher, and i really didn't want to wait three weeks on the off chance of something turning up when ordered from China or Hongkong. So it was pretty lucky that i came across some ASG plastic low cap mags for M16 type rifles sold in a box of ten sold in the UK, 

And three days later this came in the post.

they were only 39 quid so i didn't mind that they were tan in colour and not black or grey like it states on the box.


Using the same packaging for 6 different products helps keep the cost down.

Being plastic mags made a very noticable difference in weight compered to the metal hi cap mag that came with the rifle, and they fitted into the magwell with less wobble than the hi cap mag produced. So the first thing i did was to spray a couple of the mags black,


A bit to heavy with the spray can on this side.

just to see how snug they would now fit and how the paint would wear.


Mmmmm, that seems to fit ok.

They were a nice firm fit and there was no immediate sign of wear after playing about ejecting the mag for a while, but some wear will show eventually. Though that shouldn't bother me as i do like a worn look too these things, it's called the distressed look but most just call it tatty.


Cleaning the mags with white spirits before painting really helps the paint stick.

Not having a speed loader i loaded the BB's by hand and found the mags held 33 BB's, as the mag filled the pressure built up and i found it easier and a whole lot less painful to use tip of my cartomizer on my E cigerette to push the last BB's in.
I can load a mag pretty quick with the help of my E cig.

Any make with a cartomizer like this will do the trick, though a speed loader would be quicker.

 
The follower on the mag is flush with the round feed lip, which leaves three BB's to fall out the mag well when the rifle has stopped firing rounds and the mag removed. So they are truely 30 round mags with just under 10% waste in BB's, unless you can be bothered to catch them to use again.


I try not to get any paint around the feed, when i do the rest i shall just tape it off.

I also noticed that the mags were a tad longer than the hi cap that came with the rifle,


Another bonus for the low cap is that there is no key hole or winding wheel like you find on the hi cap mags

however it's not a problem as i will most likely only use the hi cap when i'm testing stuff. The low cap mags were bought for me to use in timed metal plate shooting disiplines, along with a steel BB blowback P226 pistol and a Crosman 1077 that's a stand in for a semi auto shotgun.

The imitation Eotech red dot sight was only £20 as well, but i've yet to see how that performs.

At the moment the temperature in the UK has not risen above 8 degrees this year as yet, which sadly makes it too cold to use the CO2 pistol and 1077. However the AEG runs on batteries and is not noticably effected by the cold,so i can at least get some rifle practice in the meantime.

Anyway that's all for now.

TTFN

Best wishes, Wing Commander Sir Nigel Tetlington-Smythe.



















Wednesday 2 March 2016

How To: Sight Adjustment On The Swiss Arms/GSG P92

I find that my P92 tends to hit two inches down and one and a half inches to the left of where it's aiming when I fire it from five yards, every single bloody time without fail. This is infuriating as the open sights are molded on and therefore non-bloody-adjustable. 

 I like it but it's not a Beretta is it now?

So if I can't adjust the sights, what the buggery can I do? 

Stone the bloody crows - I can move the inner brass smoothbore barrel to line up with the sights, why didn't I think of this before?! Looking down the barrel you can see the inner barrel is off-centre in the recess of the outer barrel, and why it shoots off target.

Should have taken the picture when it was still in the pistol, but the inner brass barrel is definitely pointing down and to the right.

So by removing the inner barrel and packing it out with electrical tape till it pushes it away from the inner wall of the outer barrel, I could get it more central.

I've covered field stripping the P92 before, it's pretty simple really. First drop the magazine,

The mag is dropped as the feed lips on top get in the way of the slide's blowback unit and feed nozzle.

press the button on the right hand side of the frame above the trigger guard,

That's the button.

push the takedown lever 90 degrees downwards on the left side, 

And that's the takedown lever, the whole process can be done very quickly with one hand with a bit of practice (you know, like in the movies when the good guy disarms the bad guy by just pulling the slide off his gun, then cracking him in the nuts with his knee cap).

then the slide simply pulls off forwards.

There it goes, smooth as butter or some vegan alternative.

 Then for easier results you can turn the recoil spring guide 180 degrees (upside down), then push the recoil spring and guide as far forward as you can toward the front of the slide

It does come out easy, just be sure the feed nozzle is out of the way as it can slip forward.

Now you can pull the breech and barrel down and out from the rear.

In bits and all ready to rock and roll.

It's a pretty good idea around this time to check that the blowback unit isn't loose, as they are usually held in with one or two small screws.

The threads on this little screw that holds the blowback unit and bits in place could be finer, but as they're not it can work loose a little after a bit of use. Just check it now and again if the pistol gets a lot of use, or even use a bit of loctite thread glue.

The inner barrel is connected to the outer barrel body with two pins that run though the bottom of the breech, 

The two pins thet hold the inner barrel, they're metal coloured as i've removed them before.

 tap these out from the right with a punch easily enough, 

This one came out by pushing a pin on it

In fact i could pull it out with my fingers at this piont.

and the inner barrel slides out with it's housing. You might find the rear pin a bit stiff to remove but it does go eventually, and the inner and outer barrel bodies are a pretty snug fit so might need a gentle tap as well.

This pin however was a little tighter and needed a little tapping with the head of some pliers.

I had to tap the inner barrel block out , but after one gentle tap with the pliers it came freely by hand.

Also the pins are knurled at one end to hold them in place, so remember to tap them back the right way round when reassembling the pistol.

The shorter rear pin is wider and also tighter, notice the knurling that helps lock them in place at the right side.

The inside of the outer barrel is tapered toward the front, so when it comes to wrapping tape around the inner barrel take this into account - I chose to tape the middle of the barrel so half was left free floating. I might try different places in future to see if accuracy is affected with having more or less of the inner barrel free floating, but for now I want it shooting where it's sighted.

Once there was enough tape around the inner barrel to make a snug fit in the outer barrel, I removed three layers. I added six small layers to the bottom  to push the barrel up, one to the left side and five to the right to centralise it to where I reckon the sights where set to. 

Inner barrel now fitted and sat central on the hole at the end of the outer barrel.

I then reassembled the gun to see if it was shooting straight. I only put the looser fitting pin in the breech just in case I had to do some more adjustment. 

just used the looser pin to test the gun on reassembly.

I decided to remove a layer of tape from the top and add one to the bottom.

Out again and a moved tape about a bit to my satisfaction.

When I reassembled the pistol this time I fitted both pins as I was very happy with the results. Now I can get a nice 'inch at a pinch' grouping using the open sights from seven yards

Inner barrel now sits high and central vertically, shame I got the lens cover off the camera in the picture. Shit happens.

This is the only blowback pistol that this method can be used on to my knowledge, as the Sig X5 and the 1911 both need the inner barrel to move a little when the slide moves back. But then again this is the only pistol (to my knowledge) that is so fucking inaccurate out of the box, however my experience is limited with this type of pistol so it's all a learning curve!

Just a little picture of one of two toy guns I use for speed drawing practice to save wear on the BB pistol's paint job.

Thats it for now.

Best wishes, Wing Commander Sir Nigel Tetlington-Smythe.

P.S. I'm pretty certain this will work with the airsoft version as it's just a bigger caliber, In fact I can't see why KWC don't do a conversion kit to get it shooting 6mm BB's(and visa versa).