POP Contest - RuleOfSines's Entry

[RuleOfSines]

Don't quite know where I'm going yet, but somewhere...



I have ideas in my head of some sort of bullpup-pump, but also like the idea of cutting it up and making it pretty.

[Memornix]

Don't quite know where I'm going yet, but somewhere...



I have ideas in my head of some sort of bullpup-pump, but also like the idea of cutting it up and making it pretty.

I have an almost identical rental VM I was going to do. Now I am glad I went Trracer. Good luck to you sir.

[RuleOfSines]

I have an almost identical rental VM I was going to do. Now I am glad I went Trracer. Good luck to you sir.

Thanks! I was thinking that I didn't have anything on hand that I was willing to hack on for this project, then remembered I had a crate of VMs just sitting there waiting!

Day 1 Results:

So right now I'm still heading towards a bullpup pump-action. I don't want to copy the usual VM bullpup, I don't really like the way it looks. I get why it looks that way, since the kit didn't force you to destroy your VM68, but we aren't here not to destroy one so lets see what happens!


All torn apart, wrenched that front ASA off there, I definitely don't want that:





Air channel behind the ASA, I'll probably tap and plug this, but will wait until later until deciding how to deal with it:




Milled down the front, ASA ain't coming back now!








Cleaned up a bit:




Now, I can use a piece of steel or aluminum channel the same size as the trigger rail that will extend out the front of the marker:




Gonna have to rework this assembly a bit so it is operated 'remotely'




Here's my on-hand barrel supply, leaning towards the longest one at the moment:




One more thing for today, get this dang brass plug out of the side:






Okay! End of Day 1! I need to buy a piece of aluminum channel, since I don't think I have any, but that shouldn't cost too much...

[CrowsFeast]

Looking forward to this one.

[russc]

You have a way with the weird...subscribing!

[RuleOfSines]

So I went to home Depot, and the had one size larger, and one size smaller than I needed for the aluminum channel! Looking to see what I can mess with while I wait and order one....

[RuleOfSines]

Okay, so I don't have quick access to metal for projects yet, so I'm using some wood as cheap practice fodder!

This kind of shows where I'm going at least, and lets me experiment for about $3










Swiped the shoulder bracket off my WarMachine Revolver Loader

[RuleOfSines]

More mockups, grabbed a collapsing stock from my bin:

[RuleOfSines]

Okay, I gotta go pore over the rules again, but so far this is still all out of my parts bins. I did order a piece of aluminum U-channel so I can make a complete trigger rail assembly. I have a pretty neat idea for making this mag-fed too...

[Meleager7]

I’m seeing a Stormtrooper blaster in there

[RuleOfSines]

I hadn't even been thinking that, but you're right! Might be cool to embrace that theme...

[Rainmaker]

That is looking real slick! I like the handguard and foregrip. You kinda need to go drag it through a pile of rock though, so the finish matches the rest of the gun, haha.

[RuleOfSines]

Yeah a bit of 'aging' is probably called for here. I think it might actually look cooler as a battered rifle vs cleaning up the body.

[RuleOfSines]

Okay, $15 of aluminum arrived today for making the new rail!





Lining up for cutting it down, going to leave extra and trim it down after I decide where exactly the trigger will go:




Ugly hacksaw job, I really want a bandsaw....



Pretty up the cut on the mill:






Zero'd out to my starting point:




Measuring and punching in locations for all the holes, no idea if I'm using this right, just pushing buttons!




Looks pretty legit:




Hey hey it works! Now I have a complete lower rail. Maybe tomorrow I will have time to drill the holes for the sear assembly in the stock location, and then figure out how I want to do linkage from the forward trigger.

[RuleOfSines]

Girlfriend wanted to play tennis today, so not much progress but some little bits to show.

Grip is now moved forward, making the whole thing a bit more compact. From the grip to the rear of the marker now is somewhat similar to an AR-15 with a collapsed stock, I will be adding some sort of extending stock to the rear:





Now I'm looking at how I want to move this trigger mess around:




First idea is to make a stubby replica of the trigger that fits entirely inside the rail, and is driven by some linkage down the side...




Cut and drilled a bit of scrap:




Smoothed out on the mill:




How it fits in the stock rail, this would fit entirely into my new solid rail:



Getting late and calling it quits, but tomorrow I expect to be drilling out the holes to actually install the sear assembly into my rail, and looking closer at how to connect the trigger back to that assembly.

[RuleOfSines]

Onwards!

Next task was to get my new rail drilled for the sear, so first thing I did was clamp down the original rail and zero out:




Nice and zero...




Then used this wiggly boi to center myself on each hole...




Nice and center...




Record all the points in the DRO and save the group:




Clamp down the new rail and zero out again:





Looking good!





Holes drilled, now lets see how I did...





Pretty good! Sear assembly installs cleanly:




Side-by-each shot:




While I was at it, drilled and tapped one of my rear plugs to install the shoulder stock from my Revolver stock:




Cut down the extra front of the rail, and installed the trigger guard:




So now I really gotta make progress on the trigger linkage. I actually may take the time to model it rather than winging it....

[RuleOfSines]

I noticed this page was getting to be something like 9mb in size, so I turned down the default image size, and if your browser supports it I'll return webp image formats. I also seem to run into a concurrent request limit on my host, so not all images may load the first time in.

Edit: Yep! Limit of 25 connections, gonna see if I can get that bumped up.

Edit: My host responded within about 20 minutes and bumped me up to 100!

[RuleOfSines]

Okay I need to get moving on the trigger linkage, here is what we're working with:





I'm going to try with an external linkage, so I'm lining up where I should make a slot:




Centering up:




Plotting the holes:




EHHHHHHHHH, I'm not happy with this result. I need to get a rotary table maybe....




Fallback, brute force:




Disengaged:



Engaged:



So I think I'm going to do the same thing on the other side, so I can use two actuating rods and hopefully smooth the action out a bit. If I get really motivated I'll make another rail, but that's probably not necessary, the sides will get covered anyway and no one will know how much of a mess I made on that cut!