Airforce Piccanty rail modification…
thought I would field this one past the fine folks here…
Hate the stock set up on the AF rifles. Building a sidecocker 9mm and plan on removing the carry handle nonsence and fitting it up with a full length 1913 Piccanty rail. Picked up a 32″ 1913 extrusion but would like to hear some ideas on permenently installing it.
leaning towards after cutting the handle off having the existing rail milled rectangular witha matching mortice cut on the underside of the 1913 rail.
At the front the new 1913 rail will be secured to the tube with a series of screws with two more screws at the rear then finally TIG welded along the seam and fiinish machined prior to bead blast and Ceramic coating.
Does this sound like a good route on this?
Have a Swan Sleeve with the pop up rear and a Troy Arms folding front sight that will be going on this rig which will also allow use of my throw lever ARMS optics bases. Site plane will be perfect as I am using one of Marmot Militias drooped ETACS with a 68ci JDS bottle
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Thanks – will check them out, I think brownells wanted about $120 for similar item.
RC…didnt know the Fishers personaly but knew of them. Was stuck on stupid when it came to fabricating custom projis for a long time. Mostly special purpose crap.
YN…the rail blank was from EGW, like fifty odd dollars shipped. Great quality IMHO
River,
How much did that rail set you back? Is it from Brownell’s?
Riverside,
I had the 22, the 6mm rimfire jacket maker and I had a 45 slug maker that I used 320 44 cast slugs for cores and made paper patch bullets, all Corbin stuff.
I talked with Dave long and hard in 81 about the hydro press and making H jackets and .375/ 300 grainers that would of course be replacements for the Partition that Nosler had quit making for a while.
Did you know Phil Fisher? The Mauser mechanic from Portland Or, theree were two fishers, Jerry and PHil, not related, but anyway Phil tried to talk me into that.
Nosler I think a few years later started making them again, so I doubt i wuld have even got the press paid for.
Yeah, not many of us old guys left that made those rimfire bullets.
Roachcreek
yeah thats the tenative plan
probably just build a new trigger housing out of aluminum that bolts at the rear to the tank ring and at the front to the existing location as I want to revise the trigger group a bit to use an AR safety selector and alter the rear end to eliminate the pinch I get across the web of my hand while still retaining my WOK bits
Not many of us that made the corbin .22RF jackets
even had the dies for the .25 projis using shotgun primers…LOL
Riverside,
I made Daves bullets for years, he is White city here in Oregon, I bought mine in 1981, and that is why I liked the 1 in 12 twist.
I even double annealed them and shot elk and such, I coujld get a 55 grain slug to retain 45 grains in big game. The single annealed slugs, I used on coyotes when I hunted Fields Or commercially in 81 and 82, they were great for staying in the animal or at the very least just having the core spit out the other side.
And it made a fine conversational peice having a 22 bullet with the rimfire headstamp on the base.
I had the press handle ejector system on all mine.
No AI did not use the 1 in 14 twist.
Roachcreek
Riverside,
Yes you are correct on the heat issue and the lack there of onthe AG suppersors. Most of the internals are just to slow that gas down until it cools anyway.
It would seem simple to copy the AF tube out of steel and just use the trigger frame and parts from a talon or condor would it not?
ROachcreek
Roach Creek: You ever run one of the original slow twist 1X14 pencil bbls?
Sum Bitches were nasty as hell.
under 100 yds they shot great and the damn proji was just unstable enough that it would yaw on entry into flesh usually breaking at the canulure with the M155 FMJ round.
Used to make custom slugs with a corbin rig that used spent 22RF cases for jackets with cast up cores. Would run heavier FMJ HP with a serious deep canilure then ramp up the load quite a bit. Hit just over 3800 FPS before the case separations became annoying. Backed every thing down to around 3700 and used ex mil brass which I got for free just once.
At that CUP I started losing bolt lugs after a couple hundred rounds but the bolts were free as well so just swapped out after around a 100 rounds of use.
These loads were for feral dog use. One shot on a Lab sized animal in the midriff usually resulted in a pink cloud down range with usually little more than a front end joined to the rear end by remnants of the spinal cord.
Problem is whats being issued to our boys is straight trash.
damn 63 grain SS109 ran thru a 14.5″ 1X7 bbl…total comedy of idiot errors that’s costing our boys & girls lives
need to go to a far slower twist, destabilize the proji and copy the 5.45X39mm proji which is designed to fragment at the canulure
I like shit dead, not wounded if I am so inclined to shoot at it…
YN: major plan revision…
going to build a whole new frame tube out of better material than the crappy AF frame. Thing is I dont need the power adjuster window and AF refuses to sell any Stealth parts in the USA.
As such looking at running a full length 32″ tube which leaves about 6″ open space in front of the threaded Career muzzle for a moderator core. Yeah already waiting to hear how a 1″ ID is not capable of decent suppression but thats nonsence. Dealing with dead cold air at basically .380 ACP velocities and there are a number of rather effective 9mm parabellum cans out there of similar internal volume. Truth is all but the best AG moderators there are about the same deal as the crap panned by Palidins reprint of Improvised Weapons of the American Underground…then again as AGs these half assed internals do work perfectly fine as the gas movement from even a Big Bore AG is a fraction of that of a firearm & never forget the greatest enemy of effective suppression is heat. Won’t be dead silent but will be pleanty soft in signature.
Dont require a lower rail…just a sling stud to mount a Harris bipod forward of the AF forend which I intend on retaining
river – looks like there will be enough left over after doing the top to do the little bit on the bottom infront of the hand guard. Any plans on that ?
Riverside,
To me the single most dramatic accuracy robbing “improvement” was putting the pushpin on the front of the AR15.
With the male/female screw takedown point, all you had to do was shorten the female screw a few thousands and that tightened up those recievers dramatically.
Roachcreek
Riverside,
Yes your right on all counts about the AR, I was cutting the handles off and tubing them in 81, I always thought the 1 in 12 was the best barrel, but I always treated it as a varmit cartridge, which is what it is, so that should show you were I am coming from.
No battle rifle should require double taps. Alvin York would be unheard of if he had to double tap with his 06. My son got back from Iraq with a M1A fever, doesn’t care much for the AR now, he grew up with them and had three waiting for him when he got home.
Not to kiss your ass, but I really like that rail on top of that condor.
Roachcreek
Here are a couple shots of the 1913 rail laid on a Condor for perspective.
with a radius cut on the belly to match the new frame tube it will be just about perfact for use with 1913 rail iron sights of a lever locked QD optics base.
Lot of potential in something like this as an aftermarket replacement for the stocker AF frame me thinks
longer frame tube with internal core moderator and side cocker
whats not to like…LOL
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Stoner never envisioned as a target rifle
nor was it designed to be easily manufactured by unskilled labor
The whole idea was to shrink down his marginally successful AR10 battle rifle to accept the new small bore .22 round being promoted by DC desk riders.
The rifle from the start was designed to use a specific powder & projectile in a specific rate of twist to produce a rifle that would survive minimum maintenance in the field and launch a 55 grain projectile that was really only semi stable due to the 1X14 twist. This is where the stories of the devastating black rifle stem from.
In short it was designed as a very short range weapon for our RVN allies and in its original configuration it was a resounding success.
Problem was DC and McNamara wanted to save $$ so the shitcanned the IMR in favor of high fouling WWII/Korean war surplus ball powder used in .30 rifles and with the direct gas impingement system it shot soot & shit right back into the guts of the rifle. Add to this the early rifles were not even issued with a damn Cleaning Kit! I can still remember locals back home buying up every Hoppes kit they could find to ship to Indo China…no shit
This led to the 1st revision the M16A1 which had a forward assist to hammer the carrier closed when it fouled up so you could take the piece of shit apart as well as increase of twist to 1X12 as the Army wanted more range but it also decreased short range lethality due to a far more stable projectile..
The A2 was created for the USMC as a riflemans rifle…LOL Its changes were a wonderfully revised sighting system but to increase range even further they adopted a 1×7 twist and get this, they increased the bbl dia. forward of the sight tower so the bbls wouldn’t bend during stupid bayonet training!
The current M4 is so far from its roots its crazy with some of the severely gadgeted up examples weighing well over 15 pounds yet with rather poor ballistic performance. Heard some horror stories from the sandbox. Think I would rather ruck a WWI BAR than that junker.
As far as accuracy…there are loads of tricks to tightening the interface between the upper & lower and install of a free float handguard…the carry handle stiffens nothing to overcome the sensitivity. Sub MOA is easily doable but that’s with serious mods and knowing technique…the best prepped AR will never be a match for a top prepped NM M14 and that is coming from a recovering long term AR addict
Have to sit down and figure just what kind of DOM tubing I will go with on the frame tube
it wont be Aluminum 😀
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I had a couple of Phil and Marlyns guns, waited half my fucking life for them, one was that drilling, they did the stock work on it, at the time they were also making the very first Kimber America 22’s.
Then I traded him a 3 wheeler I was constantly trying to kill myself on for a 6mm on an Argentine Mauser, waited three years for it….and it would not shooot for shit, I mean it shot horrible, beautiful gun, but what a let down.
I had it rebarreled to 22.250 improved, now that was a hot rod!
Riverside, Phil did work and expermentation on the early 556 for the army. They shot mules and other farm animals he told me. His son collected cartridges and he had a box of them that said I think 22 Rocket, and not the Rocket that Weatherby made, but I could be wrong on the name, I get paid well for a bad memory.
Roachcreek