#Homemade

The war in Syria and Iraq has seen the development of a whole range of scratchbuilt and improvised weapons that are as ingenious as they are destructive. Recently, a kind of serially-produced rocket launcher has come to light as part of Da’ish (ISIS) propaganda, which appears to demonstrate a capability to serially produce clandestine weapons of a fairly high degree of sophistication. The weapon, a multipurpose missile launcher with a high explosive warhead, is unassuming and appears roughly equivalent to the US AT4, though cruder. It is a simple tube with almost no fittings or sights, a carrying/support handle, and a safety pin securing a fold-out firing grip.

The small arms markets of Darra Adam Khel have made themselves known throughout the world for the immaculate ability of talented Pashtuns to handcraft a large number of small arms and produce almost identical copies of numerous Western designs for over a century. In this episode, we look at a few rifles that were produced in Darra, along with their original Martini-Henry or SMLE originals. In addition, we take a look at a local monstrosity that is an 8mm magazine fed, M1917 Enfield action married with a Kalashnikov outline of a receiver and actual folding AKMS buttstock.

AK Custom took a paintball grip and built a 9mm carbine pistol around it using supplies from a local hardware store.

Here is a classic traditional style break barrel 12 gauge shotgun built entirely from scratch using scrap steel plate and tubing which can be found at any decent hardware store. Using the the drawings here as a basis, the builder managed to produce something which functions well and is aesthetically close to a factory made piece. The building process is documented below.

One cannot suppress a certain sense of nostalgia at the thought of being forced to hand over one’s Air Jordan’s by a gallant gentleman of the favela wielding one of these contraptions, many of the examples below being whittled from wood and held together with hose ties.

The host of YouTube channel called ECCO Machine has designed a bolt action magazine fed rifle chambered in .22LR, which weighs only 18.9 oz (unloaded). There are a couple of such lightweight survival .22LR rifles on the market, namely the Pack-Rifle and a Cricket rifle conversion by a company called Ruta Locura. These two weigh even less (around 15 oz), but they are single shot rifles. ECCO’s rifle is a magazine fed one.

Pictured are two dirt simple improvised ‘zip guns’ seized by police which were the subject of an officer safety notice. The weapons have been constructed by screwing together standard pipe fittings which can be obtained for a total of around $5 at any local hardware store. Each gun consists of a length of copper pipe threaded on both ends, a brass hose nipple (which functions as a barrel), a length of wire rope attached to a makeshift firing pin, a compression spring, an end cap drilled in the center and a ring which serves as a charging handle for the striker assembly.

Iraq may not have the best manufacturing resources among countries that produce small arms, but that hasn’t kept one Iraqi designer from trying his best to bring locally made firearms for the fight against Daesh, now coming to a climax in the ongoing battle of Mosul.

What is the simplest gun you can possibly make? When you hear this question, the kind of gun that comes to mind is probably a simple zip gun, like the one below, which has a forward-moving mass, a trigger, a barrel, and not much else:

Fresh off of the heels of  Part 1 of the ‘Build Your Own Silencer’ series last week, my Dad sent me this clip from the movie The American starring George Clooney. I haven’t seen the movie, but I did get a kick out of this montage – someone must have had to do at least a little research into how homemade silencers are made. The end result is pretty spiffy looking.

This ordinary looking axe wouldn’t look out of place carried in any rural setting. Sliding down the metal collar below the head however reveals a .22 caliber break barrel single shot mechanism cleverly concealed inside the bored out wooden handle.

The guys over at Fire Mountain Outdoors have put together a Steam Punk themed AR15! The idea was for a gift to the wife of one of the owners, she is apparently a big time welder and thus would appreciate the steam punk themed rifle. It certainly is an interesting project build, with such features as a watch on the buttstock, a copper pole for the handguard, with copper rods wrapped around it, to various other smaller fixtures such as a sort of gears inside the now ventilated lower receiver. Their commentary in the video is absolutely great, with “On the left I’ve included a green laser, why? Because it’s Steam Punk!”. The gears inside the lower receiver are from a fellow in Russia that sells parts of clocks. The grip panels are actually 1911 grip panels, to add some wood to go along with a Steam Punk feel. The buttstock has both a compass and a watch on either side of it, with a clear material that allows you to see the mini gears working inside the watch from the other side of the stock. The maker choose a Centerpoint scope from Walmart that wouldn’t have been a good fit for any of his other firearms as well.

The technology of 3D printing has begun to proliferate in the firearms world, and designs that were once essentially novelty project guns have evolved and been further refined into actual working, shooting firearms of reasonable effectiveness. 3D printed guns have come a very long way from the first 3D printed handgun released by Cody Wilson in May of 2013. 3D-printed AR-15 lower receiver designs have been perfected through new materials selection, dimensions better suited to those materials, and more creative use of 3D printing and other manufacturing techniques. 3D printing has proven suitable for making some basic components of firearms, such as housings, receivers, and furniture, but not others, like fire control groups and, of course, barrels. For those parts, makers turn to existing firearms components, most popularly the AR-15 fire control group, and, in the case of the Shuty MP-1, Glock barrels:

Chuck of GunLab, exacerbated with the complexity of German “last ditch” guns, challenged our friend Troubleshooter Berlin to see if he could build the simplest “VolksPistole” possible. According to Troubleshooter in an email sent to TFB:

Recently I stumbled upon this gem of creativity, a fellow somewhere in the US who designed and put together a bullpup configuration of an AR15 by re-configuring the trigger group into a stock, putting a pistol grip and trigger guard along the rail system, raising the EoTech by about 2 inches with a rail riser and then adding a tube above the buffer tube to form a cheek weld while still keeping the charging handle in the original location. We’ve blogged about various AR bullpup experiments before on TFB, one that only had a trigger bar mounted to a grip on the forward rail, and another one even more extensively modified than this one, in completely redesigning the lower receiver to accommodate the upper receiver. However this design seems to be much more compatible with drop in parts to the parts that this guy came up with. He has also done the exact same thing to an ARAK upper receiver, which of course can work with an AR lower as it is. So far it seems that this fellow has just done it the one time in 2014, and hasn’t shown any subsequent modifications since that time. It would be interesting to see if this idea ever takes off in the future, sort of how similar ideas are applied to AK and M14 bullpup drop ins.