The .50-Caliber Rifle Construction Manual written by Bill Holmes was published in 2002. The Amazon customer reviews have criticized the book for its poor drawings and complex construction techniques.

A guy names “mxwelch” on YouTube has build a working .50 BMG rifle based on Bill’s book. To simplify construction he used an M2 maching gun barrel which he cut it down and re-chambered, instead of building his own, and made the rifle single shot instead of a magazine fed repeater.

The total monetary cost was $400 which includes the M2 barrel and chamber reamer rental. It took over 25 hours of shop time to build!

It weights 34 lbs and can shoot 1.5 MOA.