#DIY

Filling in roll marks with fingernail polish on firearms can be a fun project to make your gun have a more custom look and make it stand out against factory stock. This can be done with paint pens, crayons, model paint, or fingernail polish. In this article, we’ll focus on fingernail polish, but the methods have similar steps. When it comes to the finished product, you can recalculate your weapon’s additional “stopping power” by multiplying your caliber by zero.

Over at my second digital family – AR15.com – one user has started making his own GLOCK magazines with a stock 3D Printer, some filament and CAD files released by a group called Deterrence Dispensed. The end result are functional 3D Printed GLOCK magazines that may not look as polished as a factory specimen, but feed rounds all the same. Of course, the metal spring will need to come from an outside source – for the time being.

Some of you may recall I wrote a Concealed Carry Corner piece about Trigger Guard Holsters.  In that article, I mentioned doing a how-to Kydex article in the future.  Well, the future is now.  Also known as “minimalist holsters,” they offer a zero-profile way to secure that your trigger won’t get snagged on something in your bag, purse or inside the waistband.  The title image is of my daily carry Glock 22/27, however for this DIY pictorial, I’ll use the pictures I took while making a trigger guard holster for my friend’s Ruger LCP.

Closely associated with ‘juvenile delinquency’ of the 1950s, ‘zip guns’ were often fabricated by youngsters who could not afford to purchase or were forbidden from owning the genuine article. A mechanically inclined youngster might upon obtaining ammunition, most often widely available .22 rimfire, find that such rounds will fit into a section of suitably sized steel tubing, often a section of the salvaged car radio antenna. From then on it is a simple matter of fabricating a means of striking the rear of the cartridge while ensuring the entire assembly is held firmly together.

A specialty of local illegal gunsmiths in Indonesia for the last few years has been building these all-encompassing portable solutions for all conceivable encounters. Carrying them has become somewhat a trend with street criminals, the availability of ammunition likely down to the willingness of army personnel to be very accommodating when given the chance to be persuaded. For the discerning customer who wants the best bang for his buck, why advise settling for anything of the lesser, non-bottlenecked variety?

While cleaning the garage of inherited property, various outlandish looking homemade firearms were discovered by a man from Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia. All appear to show the skill of a highly dedicated and imaginative individual.

It is widely accepted that night vision is expensive. PVS-14s with gen 3 image intensifier tubes cost on average $2,500-$4,000 depending on the tubes used inside. However, just like building a budget AR-15, you can save some money by building it yourself. Now if you lack the mechanical aptitude to build an AR-15 then this is not for you. Building a PC tower is more complicated than building a night vision device. Some people in the night vision industry will scare you and claim that building your own night vision is not for the light-hearted. “You need proper equipment and testing measures otherwise you will have headaches, eye strain and nausea”. This is the same scare tactics some gunsmiths use to scare you out of building your own AR-15. If you can turn a wrench you can dodge a ball. Wait . . . I meant I can show you how easy it is to build your own PVS-14.

Here is a Do It Yourself Challenge if you want to improve your Sako TRG bipod. The cost of this mod is basically zero.

The 1911 is renowned for winning two world wars. At least that is the mantra die hard 1911 fans recite. And the Fulton Industries MX991/U anglehead flashlight has been utlized for decades since the Vietnam War. Well someone had the great idea to combine these military cornerstones into one complete weapons package, a pseudo 1911 AOW.

Some shooters love to romanticize the idea of a truck gun aka trunk gun. They usually have an expendable firearm that they relegate to be stored in their trunk or truck in case of emergencies. Well my friend Cory Sementuh of CDS Arms takes it an extra step and made a DIY Technical using his company’s Chevy Avalanche.

About a year ago we published an article telling about a Belarusian PDW concept called Humble Bee. Victor Aster, the inventor and CAD designer of that weapon concept, has recently come up with a new project called Rocky Gun. The idea is to make sort of model kits that allow you to build cardboard replicas of firearms.

I came across the images of this AR-15 rifle with an AK-47 underfolder stock in one of the gun-related online communities. Normally, cool images like these are shared all over the Internet and often times it is virtually impossible to find the original source. However, there are always exceptions. I was lucky enough not only to find the man who made this gun but also get the details of the story along with a bunch of photos and his permission to publish them.

In this article, we are taking a look at another firearm made in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. A YouTube channel called WarGonzo has recently published a video telling about this rifle which is called Separatist. It is a 23mm anti-materiel rifle made from one of the autocannons of the ZU-23 twin barrelled anti-aircraft weapon system.

A local TV channel of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic has published a video telling about two domestically made firearms: an anti-materiel rifle and a twin-barreled machine gun. They adapted or used the parts of standard-issue guns to build weapon systems that could be used in different roles than the donor firearms. Let’s take a look at each of these guns.

One of the hardest things to do is color match a rifle build. One such color is Magpul’s discontinued Foliage Green. Sure you can seek the help of a competent Cerakoter or similar weapons refinishing professional. But one of the joys of firearm ownership is making it your own by adding some personalized touches. I recently discovered a way to DIY Foliage Green with an off the shelf can of spray paint. The can is not what you think it is.