Willie Sutton
Member
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2013
- Messages
- 2,025
Well... "build" is not the right word, should be "assembly" but anyway....
I took the plunge and bought two of the surplus M16A1 parts sets offered by Sportsmans Guide. Figured what the heck, they are cheap enough and are complete save for barrel and lower. These are cut up original Colt M16's from ?? Dunno.
Inspection shows them to be in very good mechanical condition, upper was worn to shiny aluminum and then re-blacked with paint and then that's worn off as well. Looks nice and vintage. Stock has rack numbers on it, all of the parts are well woprn cosmetically but seem OK mechanically.
In any case I want to build up a pair of vintage-look rifles out of these. Figure that getting lowers marked more or less correctly would make them stand out. Do some accellerated-wear on them to bring out the shine and have them as old-school rifles.
One challenge is to get the markings on the lower more or less correct. Figure that starting with a good 80% lower is a start, then having it engraved with reproduction M16 markings and US Govt Property markings. Leave off the "Colt" marks and that would be that. No legal reason to not do so. So the only question is "who" for the engraving. Any ideas?
Willie
.
I took the plunge and bought two of the surplus M16A1 parts sets offered by Sportsmans Guide. Figured what the heck, they are cheap enough and are complete save for barrel and lower. These are cut up original Colt M16's from ?? Dunno.
Inspection shows them to be in very good mechanical condition, upper was worn to shiny aluminum and then re-blacked with paint and then that's worn off as well. Looks nice and vintage. Stock has rack numbers on it, all of the parts are well woprn cosmetically but seem OK mechanically.
In any case I want to build up a pair of vintage-look rifles out of these. Figure that getting lowers marked more or less correctly would make them stand out. Do some accellerated-wear on them to bring out the shine and have them as old-school rifles.
One challenge is to get the markings on the lower more or less correct. Figure that starting with a good 80% lower is a start, then having it engraved with reproduction M16 markings and US Govt Property markings. Leave off the "Colt" marks and that would be that. No legal reason to not do so. So the only question is "who" for the engraving. Any ideas?
Willie
.