u/Outrageous-Till8252

Hopefully you guys will give me a little breadth to post a build I'm super proud of. It's a scratch build, so it's 0% not 80%. And while it's not a full AR15, the gun part of this gun is a custom receiver that uses an AR FCG, safety and grip. So while the brains (the upper) may be a Mac11, the heart is all AR. This design took me a year to make and has over a dozen custom parts that I milled in my garage.

I really am nostalgic for the heyday of fancy wood furniture and appointment on guns. So when I'm doing a build, I like to try and find ways to incorporate it more and more. For example, that Space Marine inspired Bolter I've been posting some about lately? Mahogany ribbed handguard! My AKM? Flamed koa wood stock. I also did a bandstop and pair of 3 MLok slot rail covers from the same material.

Either way, I wanted to show you all that making fine wood appointments for your build is actually pretty easy. The majority of the work here is hand tools. The use of power tools when making the tenon is definitely a convenience, but those steps too could be replaced with hand tool equivalents fairly easily.

What wood parts have you made for a build?

You've probably seen me post a lot about CNC. But it's usually on my Tormach 770. While that is technically a hobby machine, the biggest feedback I get is that it's still out of reach for most people. So I finally caved and I'm going to find the limits of what an Amazon tier desktop machine can do. This video talks bout my plans and also walks through setting it up way more precisely than the instructions, to maximize our potential for success.

In my quest to find its limits specifically in the gun making and modifying hobby space, I have the following ideas for future episodes. If you've got better ideas on how I can incrementally test this thing, or better parts ideas, let me know!

1. Thin aluminum- FCG retainer plates and DBAlloy side plates
2. Thicker aluminum with 2 ops- MLok rail cover
3. Thick aluminum with >2 ops- a magwell maybe?
4. Free machining / mild steel- compensator
5. Hardened steel- not sure yet
6. Stainless steel- red dot mount
7. Stainless steel- slide serrations, windows, and barrel porting
8. Final boss- some clamshell style receiver build

I posted a trunnion hole drilling and riveting video a while back for AKs. In it I drilled a hole in a wrong spot because I wasn't paying attention and my mind was on some other things going on in the real world. But I vowed to learn to weld, at least well enough, to fix it! And I was determined to do it with flux core since I already was buying a several hundred dollar welding setup to fix a hole in a relatively cheap flat. So I really didn't want to add MiG gas costs to that too!

It went ok. The result is not perfection. But it's pretty dang good. And if I hadn't have had to sandblast it (watch the second part, that comment will make more sense) for cerakote, I actually would have gotten perfection! But at the end I'm left with a much much much better result than I would have had just leaving the receiver as it was.

Since I was going to port this build I figured I'd do it incrementally, one port at a time, and use my Ransom Rest to analyze the impact against several different variables. I think we all know what impact to expect on recoil reduction. However. I wanted to test accuracy too. Posts disrupt the bore, can shave portions of the projectile, can create weird pressure systems. It has to affect accuracy, right?

Sadly, my results pointed to, maybe. I should have run a higher round count for the analysis. But it's hard to undo porting! So maybe next build? I discuss the results, but depending on which school of statistics you lean towards there is either a definitive connection between ports and accuracy, or there's a non-statistically significant result that points to there being merit in further exploration.

I also cover the CAM and CNC for the slide window and ports at the end for those that like that.

A few weeks ago I showed you guys my process for building an AK from an 80% flat. If that wasn't enough to get you interested in trying a new 80% platform, maybe this will. This is the other type of 80% in the AK world. The pre-bent 80%! Why do I think this might put you over the ledge? Because this is definitely the easier of the two. The faster of the two. The less tool intensive of the two. If you watch both videos, even the length of the video should be an indicator of just how much easier these are.

However, I will say, they're not as fun as a flat. You don't learn as many new skills. The skills here are less applicable to designing your own thing or making something custom. It's basically just drilling. But, depending on your goals in building, this may be the right path for you.

Needed to mill a 1911 slide for a red dot. Since it was a new footprint for me, the CAD for which is often wrong online, and it needed to be at a 0.8-1 degree down angle. I figured I'd share my process. This is a DPP footprint on a 1911 slide done at 1 degree so it doesn't require a shim. CAD, CAM, workholding, setup, and milling.

Let's keep this train rolling. I mentioned last week that riveting universally applies to 100%s, flats, and pre-bent 80%s and that's what I released it on it's own. But that I would come back and show you how to do the two 80% type. Flat and pre-bent. Well here is the first half of that promise kept. In more detail that you could ever have hoped for.

As always, go learn a new 80% platform! There are tons out there! They're fun!

The AK propaganda continues. This time riveting. Since this skill applies to both the flat and pre-bent 80% I'm doing up, I figured I would split this topic off on it's own, and release it first, so that I don't have to cover it multiple times later.

I continue to love how different this process and mindset is from the more western rifle build styles.

Last week I shared my CNC progress on a custom Space Marine inspired Bolter. In that update I CNCed the receiver. And while that's definitely the heart of the gun, it's not what makes it look like a Space Marine inspired Bolter. 3 of the over a dozen accessory parts are what do that. Reason being, in order to get the look right but still account for functionality I had to create a few optical illusions. This video covers the manufacturing of those 3 parts, how they work to create those illusions, as well as some interesting manufacturing aspects of each. Namely gratuitous use of undercutting bits, 3D printed bending forms, and deep reaching end mills.

I bought some elite series to experiment with. never shot it before. The claims of thinness as compared to other series are what have me most interested. But nowhere does anyone mention how or why it is thinner! Is it thinner due to you laying down less material but this formula still being able to hold up? Or do you lay it down similarly and it has more solvents that flash off and leave a thinner coating?

The guidance on elite leaves a little to be desired. I plan to do a bunch of tests bit figured I’d poke the room first.

First, yes. I have permission to share my videos.

Over the last couple receivers I have milled in my garage I’ve gotten a good feel for the limitations of a machine this size. So when this project, an original design drafted up from scratch, afforded me the luxury of designing around some of those limitations I jumped at the opportunity.

While the limitations we all battle with our various sized hobby machines are highly machine-specific. Hopefully this design, CAM, workholding, and milling exploration of how I worked around them helps you think through some of yours.

Its pretty long, but there is a chapter list of timestamps in the description if that helps.

I'm also going to continue to encourage you today to make 80% AKs! A few weeks ago I showed the first half of barrel population work. Namely the barrel and rear trunnion combination. But since that came to about an hour, I split the rest of the parts off into a separate video. This video covers all the other barrel parts like handguard, gas tube, gas block, front sight block, muzzle device.

Explore more 80% platforms guys! They're super fun! This AK building mindset and skillset is unlike nothing else in the 80% space.

I went to go do the parts fitting episode for my DS1911 series. Very very little in this kit required fitting! I had heard that if you get all your parts from the same brand it reduces that likelihood. But my lord! Almost nothing besides the grip (from a different brand) and the thumb safety (which you really want to fit for safety reasons) actually required work! If you were looking to get into an 80% build in the 1911 or double stack space and don't have lots of tooling or experience? This is the way to start! This is way easier than the 80% single stack 1911 I did a series on last year!

Several months ago I posted a how-to for folks that wanted to see if an AR lower was possible on a garage sized, nice-but-still-hobbyist CNC. I thought it important to come back and prove that it works.

Now, the build does have some issues as I discuss in the last 3rd. but I’m pretty damn sure after all the tests I’ve run that I’ve narrow that down to the BCA upper. lower functions great. Magazine feeds the 350 Legend very well. bent feed lips are holding up. All in all very proud!

Not going to lie, the barrel processed on an AK 80%, while super rewarding and cool, are probably one of the more daunting parts of a build for lots of folks.

Hopefully seeing it done multiple ways with different techniques encourages you to try one, or 4.