Small update

Moving on-

Non-update: Workshop

Just a pic of my 'workshop'...

Progress 2.1

Finished gluing the upper and lower receivers:



They're not meant to be glued together, they'll be held on by 2 locking pins which I'm going to add them soon.

My gluing skill suck:

Progress 2

Finally cut some holes on the receivers.


Even with the help of my friend (should I say who?), the holes aren't perfect enough. Using only a penknife to cut, it's not good enough but still looks decent.

Also I bought some stuff:


I bought a spring powered foam dart gun, some BBs, a 4x20 scope and scope mounts. Let's take a look at the scope.

What's under this wrapper?


A scope!


I tried to take a picture of is it like when looked thru the scope but I can hardly get the crosshairs on camera. You have to be totally parallel with the scope to get a clear view of the crosshairs.


The scope diameter is smaller than I expected. But how high can you expect from a $19.50 scope? The next best scope cost $71!

Progress 1.1

My father found this nifty 1 metre steel wire which I'm (hopefully) going to make a spring out of it. It will eventually be the magazine spring as it is strong and thick.


It is hard to bend it but that's what you get if you want strength. It's about this thick (I'm lazy to measure). This 'wire' is so rigid that it might just be a very thin rod and not a wire...

Progress 1

Because I haven't gather all the items I need, I can only do this far for now. Using plastic cardboard, I'm making the upper and lower receiver (body) of the gun.


The white dust/ash thingy is produced by the super glue during the curing process. Somehow super glue isn't really super for this. I found that the super glue is very brittle, a small amount of force can break it up. I wanted to use hot glue to reinforce it but with shaky hands + slow melting glue gun, I got this:

Version 1 of the upper receiver

As you can see, the ugly lines of hot glue is the reason why I have to redo this. I used a different method for this version 1 upper receiver, consists of 3 long strips glued together. Because of the flexibility of the plastic cardboard, it was a pain in the butt to keep it straight and glue it down. The thick glue can also affect the sliding of the bolt and might jam.

The rectangle holes at the front was supposed to be 4 rounded rectangle holes on each side. It is darn hard to cut the 4 holes without screwing it up so I intended to glue 6 dividers afterwards to form the 4 holes. Turned out I screwed up my calculations (maths fail) and this is abandoned.

Just for fun:


Made this in 10 minutes to simulate the bolt mechanisms. Trying out the extractor, ejector but no firing pin.

Think it's cheap? I don't think so

Yeah, it is more expensive then it seems. The following is a list of what I've bought/going to buy:

Stuff I've bought:

Plastic cardboard: $6.00 for 2 sheets
Utility knife (penknife): $2.50
50cm metal ruler: $5.00
Masking tape: $2.00
Duct tape: $2.00
Craft knife: $3.00
10mm dia. acrylic tube: $4.35
6mm dia. acrylic rod: $3.42
500 sheets A4 paper: $5.00
Hot glue gun w/ 5 glue sticks: $7.50
Super glue: $1.00

Sub-total: $41.77

Stuff I'm going to buy:
Nerf Maverick: $21.90
Airsoft BBs (1000): $12.00
Mini drill: $16.90
Air dry clay: $20.00 est.
Rifle scope: $19.50
Rifle scope mount: $10.00
Scope rails: $10.00
Spray paint: $10.00
15mm dia. PVC pipe: less than $10
Steel/copper wire for spring: $????
20mm and 10/8mm acrylic tube: $????
Sub-total: $120.30

GRAND TOTAL: $162.07 (add $30 more for misc. items).

I never expect I have to spend so much. It would certainly be a lot cheaper if it's just a model that can't shoot.

Some updates

I've figured out most of the technical problems, especially the bolt and how it shoots. Found this guy on YouTube (Tacome1942) who also built his own gun, but out of paper. Reinforced paper, made by layering lots of paper together, held by white glue. Its strength is quite like wood, but only a tad weaker. It can be a time consuming process but it can really be used to make small bits like the trigger, sear, firing pin, etc.

Also from him I've found out how to make my gun shoot stuff. Look at this video to know more:



From this video, you can see he is shooting airsoft BBs but not from an airsoft gun. He simply put a BB inside the cartridge and let the primer do the rest. Looks like a primer alone can already shoot that good, just couldn't imagine the power if he had gunpowder too inside. From another of his video I've learned how to make my own primer. I'm looking for this:


Yes, you might have seen this before. Used to have it with my toy grenade, which I load the round in and slap it on the ground to give out a loud bang. It's so hard to find this nowadays and if you know where to get it, please do tell me.

I also need some copper/brass tubing to make the cartridge but those are hard to find too. I've also thinking of using the strengthen paper instead but I'm not sure if it can withstand the combustion.

To wrap it up, these are the materials I'll be using:
Cardboard (for the body)
PVC Pipe (for the barrel, but if I can't find the size I want I'll just use-)
Paper (more flexibility)
Springs
Spray paint
Airsoft BBs
Cap gun rounds (the primer)

I think that will be all. Now its all up to my wallet to decide when I can start building this.

Step 1: Research, research, research...

Every piece of technology in this world always start off from this step: research. To study how stuff works, to plan your building, draw blueprints etc before you actually start with the real thing. I've spent like 3 days just to figure out how it all came about.

I'm still stuck on the idea of a perfect bolt mechanism that will extract and eject shells, cocked into the barrel and out respectively. I couldn't make the exact same mechanism as the real thing because many parts are just too small to be handmade.

I started off googling images of the M95. First I've found this nice CGI-looking image. It can certainly be my next wallpaper but it isn't going to help me much in my project from that angle.


After a few long minutes of googling without success, I told myself why not just go straight to the manufacturer's website? So immediately I went to www.barrett.net and when I went to the M95 page, I'm surprised to see so much useful information that I could use. A huge jump from initially googling to this. They have a user's manual that has many incredibly useful diagrams and stuff.

This picture is better than the last one because it is as straight as my Woody Woodpecker when I get excited. Good for scaling too.


The diagrams from the manual pretty much serve as my blueprint. Pretty much one of the simplest assembly I've ever seen (not so simple when it comes to building it yourself, huh?).






Because of the thickness of cardboard, I cannot use it for parts that need to be both thin and strong (like the magazine lips at the tip of the magazine). Some guy made a working Colt M1911 from just paper but has about the strength of wood. I heard he made paper strong by layering paper, hold together by white glue. I have to try it out to see for myself.

So 3 major materials needed for this project; cardboard, paper and PVC pipe. I'm also still stuck on how to make a working shooting mechanism. I think spring-loaded mechanism is good, so I will go and get myself a toy gun to study more about that.