DIY P90 Sling Adapter

The biggest milsim event in Finland is coming up again, and just like last year, I'll be part of the HQ staff. If there was a lesson learned from last year, it's that you need very little gear when you're sitting in a tent most of the time. As a result, I thought I'd take my latest project, the P90, with me.

Alas, the gun has no sling point to speak of. After a bit of research, I found some examples of how you can sling the gun. As it happens, I had previously saved some webbing and plastic buckles from a pair of trousers I had to discard. A thought occurred.

These bits would be turned into a sling adapter in what was to become my first tactical gear sewing project. Luckily, we have a sewing machine handy.

The first bit was simple, just sew the female buckle onto the webbing.

Next, I sandwiched the D-ring between the buckle and the two layers of webbing. I would rather have used a plastic D-ring, but this was all I had available (and I was eager to get going).

It took a few tries to get right.

The flip side is not the prettiest, but it works.

The top side looks quite nice for a first ever project.

The next step was to thread the webbing through the hole on the underside of the gun and tighten it so that when the buckle is closed, the webbing is tight.

The loose end could be pushed into the same hole.

It's not exactly Tactical Tailor quality, but it's mine. I'm pretty happy with this little project. With a single point sling, the gun hangs under my arm at exactly the spot where my hand reaches the grip instinctively.

Do you have any sewing projects you've done? Please share in the comments below.

Pouch Painting

If you've ever bought gear from more than one manufacturer, you've most likely been there: Colours don't match. Olive drab especially seems to be a complete no man's land when it comes to colour coordination. They're all supposedly the same colour, but when you place them next to each other, you will certainly notice they're not.

You can always go out in your non-matched set, or grab a can of spray paint and go to work. Here's a quick primer (yes I went there) on how to get your garb to match.

The picture above shows quite clearly just how different the concept of olive drab can be. The RRV replica underneath is from Miltec, and the various pouches are from Pantac, TMC, Condor and from an unbranded Chinese manufacturer.

Painting nylon is fairly straightforward, just apply several thin layers as you would do with any other spray paint project. The de facto brand that people enjoy using is Krylon for its consistency but I went with a camo colour series from my local car parts etc. retailer, Motonet.

Here's a great example of "do as I say, not as I do". I went a bit overboard with the spraying on this TMC radio pouch, and you can see the otherwise matte paint is starting to glisten on the lip of the pouch. Otherwise the result is pretty good. You can clearly see the difference between the painted part and the so far unpainted fastener on the top right. Do note that the paint interferes with velcro to some extent, so try to avoid spraying large quantities over such surfaces if you want to retain the stickiness.

Some parts, such as the crease on the pouch above can be a bit problematic if you want an even coat. You can, however, always spray and then rub the paint in with your fingers, for example.

You can also use gloves while doing it. Assuming you're not too dumb and/or excited to remember such things, of course.

Really getting there after only a short while. I'm sure the father-in-law doesn't mind spray paint on his lawn.

The end result after three(ish) light coats. The AK pouches were left unpainted to be used as reference. I left the paint to cure overnight before using the pouches.

Do you have experiences in painting your gear (or guns)? Let me know in the comments!

Plates On The Cheap

New plate carrier vests often come with some sort of foam inserts to hold the vest in shape. They're usually not very tough or rigid though, so the illusion of a ceramic plate isn't really there. To fix this, you can always buy ready made dummy plates, but what if you are on a budget? Then this quick guide is just for you.

If you happen to have an IKEA nearby, you can source some plate materials very cheaply. The LEGITIM series cutting board just so happens to have measurements that closely match the Medium SAPI plate (24 x 32 cm for SAPI plate, 24 x 34 cm for the cutting board). The thickness of a single board is about half of a ceramic plate.

The tools you'll need are a saw, a straightedge and a file or some sand paper (possibly glue). If you want to get fancy, a hot air gun or some hot water may also be in order.

To begin, take a straightedge and mark the corners of the board for cutting (the angle is about 45 degrees), or follow the shape of the foam insert that came with your vest.

Next, simply saw off the corners, and finish by either filing or sanding down any rough edges so they don't scratch and tear the inside of your vest.

If you want to get fancy, you can use a hot air gun or some hot water and bend the board to get a curved plate. Use a form, such as a piece of pipe or similar to get a symmetrical shape (I'm doing simple straight ones here).

Glue two boards together for a thicker plate, or put the board in front and the foam insert on the back for a more comfortable wear.

You'll be ready to operate in no time.

Let me know in the comments how yours turned out!

Magpul Mishmash

My latest build is another M4. As much as I've grown to loathe the v2 gearbox, I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out in the end.

The whole thing started out as an externals build. Ever since I got the G&G M4, I had been on the market for a metal M4 receiver. The plastic one simply didn't do it for me. Before I got it, though, I had been buying second hand externals over time to spice up the appearance of the G&G. Once I finally happened upon a fairly cheap used upper and lower receiver set that also came with a gearbox and motor, I had enough parts to build a whole new gun. So I stripped the G&G and began work on the new gun.

The Magpul handguard (though actually an ACM copy, I believe) was very nice to hold, but came with one or two problems. Namely that one, it was too thick to fit directly inside the delta ring of my current upper receiver and two, it was longer than where the front sight sat on the barrell I was using.

The first issue was rather quickly solved with a bit of filing. I used some vinyl tape to protect the parts I didn't want to scratch.

The second issue took a bit more work. The original front sight had to go.

I didn't want to get a whole new front sight, so I simply lopped of the top part with a saw and began to file down the rough edges to make it fit inside the handguard.

As usual, I got a bit carried away with the shiny metal surface and in the end I filed the whole gas block down to a shiny, smooth piece. I also removed the sling mount and bayonet lug as they would not be needed inside the handguard.

And in the end, like a carefully crafted scale model plane cockpit, it's hardly visible once done, only bringing joy to the original builder.

One further problem reared its head, and it was the fact that the handguard would not actually now stay in one piece as the retaining ring did not have the gas block in front of it.

I settled this in a simple manner and screwed on a nice looking suppressor that pressed the ring down and locked the handguard in place. This might not be the correct way to do it, but if it works, what the hell.

I also wanted to replace the trigger guard and pistol grip. My hand is not designed to work with the original AR series pistol grip. The finger shelf simply seems to sit in a completely wrong place. I opted for a nice looking Dytac HK416 style pistol grip. Obviously it would not fit directly onto the lower, so I had to file the upper edges of it down by approximately one millimetre all around, and also slim down the lip protruding onto the underside of the trigger guard.

The rotary tool slipped a couple of times, but always in the direction that does not show, so all was well.

The trigger guard I got was an FMA one in olive drab (it was the only colour on sale). Luckily the material was slightly porous, so a couple of layers of spray paint did the job splendidly.

Once dry, the trigger guard fit into place without any modifications, which seemed almost unusual at this point.

The last bit to add was a Magpul PTS (authentic this time) CTR stock. The stock locking spring on it is from another world when compared to cheap airsoft stocks and it took some effort to push down far enough for the stock to slide onto the buffer tube, but otherwise it was such an undramatic event I didn't even take pictures.

One final piece to fix was the missing cover on the right hand side of the lower receiver. I bought some Dytac cover plates only to discover they're made to a wildly different specification than my lower used.

As is obvious, the inner diameter of the hole is much bigger than the raised portion on the cover plate. I opted to take the quick and mostly painless road of cyanoacrylate.

At least the outer diameter and height of the cover was similar to the detent in the receiver, so once the glue dried, everything was breezy. Super glue on metal is easy enough to break so if I ever need to adjust the fire selector, the cover is still removable.

Once I topped everything off with a Swiss Arms C-More sight lookalike, the gun was in fielding condition. The sight is nice in that is has built in iron sights, which this gun would otherwise lack. Not that they're very important in airsoft, but it's that extra bit of realism that really works for me.

I played with the gun in a few weekend skirmishes, and while very nice to handle and fairly accurate, there was something missing. At times BBs would fly off course for no apparent reason, and I was hoping of a bit higher rate of fire.

So, back to the workshop. I know calling a bit of table and a jumble of tools a workshop is overkill, but it makes me feel warm and fluffy and cozy inside.

The first thing to go was the nozzle that I swapped for an o-ringed one for better airseal. The ferrite motor that came with the gun went out and an Aim Top high torque motor went in. I had previously used the same motor on an otherwise stock MP5 and got a nice 20 rps out of it on a 7.4V LiPo. I was expecting the same here, since I was using a similar battery and identical 18:1 gears.

In order to fix the angle of engagement for higher rps I used a piece of 70D Sorbothane. I know 20 rps is not that high, but better safe than sorry. I'd also like to have the gearbox last as long as possible. The box had strengthening cuts made by the previous owner, so that was already taken care of.

The sorbo installation was pretty standard. Remove the stock pad, cut a piece of sorbo, glue into place and cover with the stock pad.

Yes I cut this beautiful piece myself, thank you. It fit into place as it should so I don't mind, altough a proper sized punch might be in order one of these days.

One obvious thing to go along with the motor swap was to reshim the whole gearbox. I had a hard time believing how high I had to set the bevel gear for the pinion to properly mesh.

The picture doesn't properly show it, but the bevel is sitting almost a full millimetre off the bushing surface. The rest of the gears were still surprisingly easy to shim so they meshed nicely, although I was afraid I'd run out of space somewhere, get poor contact on the piston or jam the tappet plate between the sector surface and the gearbox shell. That didn't happen, luckily, but I did have to work on the tappet a bit.

After I had shimmed the gearbox and was turning it by hand with all parts except the spring and spring guide inside, I noticed that there was a clear spot where the gears would not turn without significant extra force. I found out the tappet plate was hanging on the sector gear nub at the end of its cycle. I cut and filed it down a bit to make the action smooth again. Definitely a problem I've not run into before.

Before I got to testing the gun though, I found myself doing a bit more grinding and fitting.

The first issue was with the cutoff lever, which had a bit of wobble to it. The axle on which it sat seemed a bit high for the screw to properly hold it down.

After grinding down the axle about a millimetre, the screw held the lever in place a lot better without hindering the lever's motion.

A second, quite a lot larger area I had to grind down was at the back of the gearbox. I have no knowledge of either the gearbox or the receiver manufacturer, but they simply would not mix properly.

With the back of the box ground down, it would finally sit straight inside the receiver instead of tilting forwards. Before the fix, with all the screws tightened properly, the gun would not accept a magazine because the gearbox was tilting the hop up unit so far out of place.

Since I was on a roll and the gun had exhibited some inconsistency issues with the hop-up, I went all out and built my first ever R-hop out of silicone tubing which, admittedly, I had previously purchased for just this purpose.

The R-hop patch seemed to sit in the window rather nicely, but I have not yet had the time to test it properly for long range.

A final touch was to add a fuse and fuse holder as well as a deans battery connector next to the DIY MOSFET built by the previous owner.

With all the parts now done, it was finally time to wrap it all up for final testing. The gun would chrono around 1,4J, which was below what I was expecting. In the end the reason for this was that I had used the original ported cylinder, and the sorbo pad had diminished the cylinder volume enough for it to lower the output. Swapping in a full cylinder fixed this issue quickly.

The bigger problem was that I was only getting around 17 rps from the setup, which should have been putting out a steady 20. I disassembled the gun twice to get to the root of the matter. Was it the shimming? Was the motor angle somehow off? Was the battery dying?

In the end I discovered the problem to be the wire connectors used for the front wiring harness. They heated up like crazy when shooting more than single shots every now and then, so obviously they were hindering the flow of current quite a bit.

What I opted to do was to cut the old connectors off and attach new, more heavy duty ones on the other side of the hole beneath the barrel. What this meant was that the front wiring harness was now a fixed part of the barrel since the larger connectors would not fit through, but since I wasn't planning on using a second upper anytime soon, it didn't really matter.

The new connectors still allow for the upper to be removed and now there's no need to thread the wires through the hole every single time.

The larger connectors have just enough space to sit nicely next to the hop up unit and not interfere anything.

With the larger connectors, the rate of fire finally climbed to the expected 20 rps, and the wires would not heat up anymore. Even the trigger response felt crisper since the motor was getting all the current it required.

In short: You CAN get a cool looking, well working M4 on the cheap (all parts and materials total less than 100 EUR on this build), but you might need to mess around with it before its all it's cut out to be.

G36C M4 Magazine Well Conversion

As mentioned in an earlier post, I recently got some magazines to go along with the M4 magwell conversion for the JG G36C (G608). In this post I'll go over the installation and some quick testing.

The idea behind the conversion kit is to enable the G36 series rifles to use M16/M4 magazines instead of the proprietary H&K ones. The magazines' smaller bulk, higher availability and proliferation are the reasons I opted for the conversion. Of course it also changes the look of the gun somewhat.

Several companies make these airsoft conversion kits. Mine is by BattleAxe, and I chose it because of the many praises I read about it.

The kit is a simple, one piece item that's intended to replace the original magwell of the G36. I hear the latest generation JG G36s have a different hop-up mechanism compared to the old ones and thus require a different kit or some modifications to install and/or feed properly. If you're getting one, make sure to compare it to the original magwell before purchase.

Installing the kit itself is a very simple process, but mine did require some extra work.

Installation

To start off, you need to remove the old magwell. Start by pulling out the pin next to the trigger guard.

After removing the pin, push the magazine release lever as if you were removing a magazine and simultaneously pull the magwell downwards from the end closest to the trigger. It will tilt downward, out of the gun, and you can then remove it.

In a perfect world, you would simply reverse this process to install the conversion kit. This is not one, sadly. Some adjustment work was required first. To begin with, the reverse side pinhole on the kit was noticeably smaller than the pin, so I had to widen the hole a bit.

I started off with a rotary tool and finished with a small round hand file, testing the fit until the hole was just large enough. I didn't want to make it too large or the magwell might wobble when installed.

A couple of spots also required some extra work as there were some burrs left over from moulding. This was especially true regarding the tube that mates with the magazine.

I wanted to make the edge as clean as possible in order to avoid any problems with feeding and to eliminate the risk of material breaking off and entering the gun (Paranoid? Possibly. At least it doesn't hurt too much). I used a file and a crafting knife here. The plastic is apparently fibre reinforced, judging by the scraping sound it made when cut. That should add some longevity.

Once the pinhole and the feed tube were filed and wiped down to remove any residue, it was time to install the kit. To do so, you simply place the notches on the front of the kit in the tabs on the receiver, just like the original magwell, and snap into place. The kit was ever so slightly wider than the receiver, so it did not slide in without a little bit of force. The upside is that it will sit in place very snugly.

Once the kit is in, replace the pin, making sure to mate the small ridges on the pinhead with the grooves in the pinhole.

As can be seen here, under intense light the conversion is of a different colour to the receiver, but under normal lighting conditions the difference is usually not even noticeable.

That is the installation, finished. The original magazine release lever becomes non-functional, and you can only use the button on the left-hand side. Not ideal for lefty shooters, but still workable (I guess, from my own awkward attempts. I had no real lefties in store).

Since this conversion requires no modification of the gun, it is completely reversible. Even in field conditions it can be done literally in seconds. If you have the original and the conversion with you, you can alternate between them depending on which magazines you want to use, whenever necessary.

Magazines

As I was shopping around for magazines to use with the conversion, I became rather overwhelmed with the multitudes of choices available. I've never owned an AR, so this was all new to me. You have your standard ones modelled after the real steel 30 round magazines, the short types that mimic the 20 round variant, and both are available in plastic as well as metal. Then you also have both short and long ones in the PMAG configuration, for example. And would sir like his magazines in black or perhaps tan? The choices obviously don't end anywhere near here.

The magazines I ordered were made by King Arms. I had heard that MAG magazines feed nicely with the conversion but alas, all other choices despite their existence, were out of stock at the time.

I have previous experience with KA mags on my AUG, and I'm not totally happy with them. They needed some work to make them feed better, but I hope the M4 magazines are good to go as is.

The magazines in the store were sold without any kind of packaging, and thus each came with its own price tag.

Who doesn't love pulling stickers off stuff? Me.

As always, no matter how carefully I tried to peel them off, the price tags left behind a sticky residue that will ruin any perfectionist's day.

Brilliant.

On the upside, here's a chance for me to share a cool trick I picked up from my SO. To get rid of the glue, you don't need strong chemicals or abrasives, nor would you want to use either here anyway. What you do need is some oil. Simply rub some of it, preferably plant based, on the glue with a paper towel or a rag.

Some olive oil (extra virgin freshly stolen from the kitchen in my case) rubbed on the glue residue

Wait for a bit and proceed to rub the residue gently with said paper or rag. In a process I can only imagine is fuelled by magic, the oil dissolves the glue, letting you simply wipe it away.

Glue-B-Gone!

The last step, in case you don't enjoy oily magazines, is to wipe them down using some soap water, and presto!

Better than new, literally.

Now that my mags were all good looking, shiny, and lightly lemon scented, it was time to move on to some quick shooting testing.

Testing

I loaded up two magazines and shot one in single shots and the other in short(ish) full auto bursts. During those 240 or so BBs, I got no feed problems whatsoever. At least this short initial test would seem to indicate that the King Arms magazines work nicely with the conversion kit as well. They also fit the new magwell very nicely, so there's very little wobble in any direction. The inside of the magwell has some ridges that hold the magazine in place, and I found that the easiest way to insert a mag is a sort of "reverse AK" method, where you slide the rear edge of the mag first and then twist it forward. Regardless of how you put them in, the magazines will stay firmly in place once they lock. When you want to release them, they slide out effortlessly, so at least in that regard there is nothing to complain about. Mag flipping optional.

As a final note, the conversion kit has an s-shaped bend inside it to facilitate the different placement of the feed chutes between the two magazine types. On the G36 magazines the chute sits about a centimetre further back from the front edge of the magazine, so the M4 mags would not meet up with the hop-up without the bend. This will leave you with some extra BBs that fall out when changing mags, but that is a rather small price to pay for the convenience. 

That's all for now. If I run into problems with the conversion in the field, you will be sure to hear about it here. Until next time!