The Top Secret Project

**OpusX** · 10-08-2026, 05:27 PM

Reduxtion

**DocsMachine** · 10-10-2026, 03:13 PM

What's the recommendation for relatively good .50 cal paint?

I have a bag of mixed colors I got off eBay several years ago, and while they've gotten a bit lumpy, there's enough good ones in there to at least test my Sniper build, which should hopefully be in a couple of weeks.

I see that JT, First Strike, Valken and Empire all carry .50, is any one any better than the others? (I had poor results with Valken when my local field used it, but that's been years.)

Doc.

**Daltech** · 10-11-2026, 10:21 AM

I’m going with the cub.

Like the airplane the piper cub, the Autococker cub.

**DocsMachine** · 10-12-2026, 12:23 AM

Haven't had time to work on the next video- I still have customer stuff on the table- but I still have photos of the original build for ya.

Not entirely in original order- which I admit was kind of slapdash- but I'll try to make a little sense of the mess.

With the body and back block mostly machined, I found a suitable chunk of what's probably 12L14, a free-machining steel, in the form of a rod stripped years ago out of an old copier. Turns great, but one of the drawbacks of some of these free-machining steels, is they rust if you so much as show them a picture of water. When this thing gets around to being finished, I'll need to probably nickel-plate it.

As already noted, the thread is a nonstandard 9/32"-32, which was easy enough to cut and match to the tapped body.

Like so:

Next up, before I got too deep in this whole plot, I wanted to see if I even could make one of the most important parts- the barrel. So I refitted the big W&S turret lathe with the soft-jawed 3-jaw, and rebored the jaws in place, to fit the smaller diameter bar stock. (It'd originally been bored for 1", the reduced stock is of course 3/4".)

Then, thanks to the long throw of the turret, I was able to deep-drill most of the way through, with a pilot, then a main bore, and finish it off with a .500" reamer.

That got me an acceptably-smooth bore, that I think should only need minimal honing, so I then brought the blank over to the Sheldon, and using it's soft-jaw setup, turned a reduced-scale WGP thread on the end, to match what I'd machined the body to.

Set up a turned-in-place center in the same chuck, and turned the OD down a couple thou just to clean up the surface.

Et Voilá! One scale replica of a "12 inch" WGP bull barrel.

Then, to go with the pump rod made above, I got out some 1" black Delrin and turned it down to .9375"...

And, with the help of an accessory "DRO" made from a digital caliper, I turned a series of grooves to match a scale spacing of an original factory pump grip.

Then, after trimming to length...

And boring to match the guide rod...

I milled a half-round groove 'bout thar...

Et Voilá, redux!

Finally, some 5/32" stainless rod got threaded- too small to single-point, so I had to use a die...

And the back block and pump both drilled and tapped to accept said rod...

And we have a complete assembly.

That and a few other soon-to-be-seen bits gets us this far:

Still a number of pieces to go- like, y'know, a feed neck

- but we're getting there. Should be a third video installment later this week.

Doc.

**DocsMachine** · 10-19-2026, 03:45 AM

Part Three!

Let me know what you think! Always looking to improve.

Doc.

**DocsMachine** · 10-20-2026, 09:39 PM

Shoulda done a Fastback

-Heh. The idea is to make the gun functional- if it can be functional- and THEN we can try variants on the theme.

Given how comparatively tiny the valve and hammer are, I think it'll work, but I don't know. After all, the hammer, thanks to inverse square, is roughly a third less the weight of a factory hammer. (Very roughly, 25% smaller, 33-35% lighter.)

I'm not (yet, anyway) going to try and make a scale regulator, which means it'll have to run straight CO2 or regged HPA pressures- meaning the force to open the valve won't be that much less than a regular Sniper/Cocker, but I'll be hitting it with a hammer a third lighter. And there'll be a limit to how much spring I can pile in there...

But, that said, IF it works, yeah, I've considered making a fancier version or two. Keeping in mind that whatever I make, I have to make everything- body, grip frame, valve, bolt, etc.- and at the moment, I'm doing this purely for the giggles. I've already spent over $1,600 on this thing (taps, reamers, materials) and there's no way anyone would pay half of what I have just in time in it.

Yeah, a couple of 3/4 scale customs would be cool, but I already have dozens of other- and often equally ludicrous- projects in the works, and by the time I[m done with this thing, I'm pretty sure everyone's going to be sick of .50 Snipers.

Doc.

**DocsMachine** · 10-21-2026, 01:26 PM

Doc, have you considered a heavier hammer material like tungsten to lessen the demands from the main spring?

-I have indeed. We had a fun chat about that over on the Guild a couple of weeks ago.

Problem is, Tungsten is hard to machine, and the "easy machining" versions machine poorly, often leaving a rough surface. Ideally, you'd have the OD of a hard quality material ground to size, and the threads EDM'ed- but that starts being expensive. Like, a $500 hammer, expensive.

Lead is too soft. Gold is a little harder, but not much, and a third again heavier. Accepting donations to try that one.

Osmium is one of the heaviest elements, but almost impossible to machine- it's harder than tungsten and brittle as glass- oh, and the dust is toxic.

The best idea I could com up with is to make the hammer a hollow "cup", with a thick nose (for the lug threads) and a center stub to screw the cocking rod into. Then fill the void with solder, or possibly tungsten powder glued in place.

Probably a lot of work to gain only a gram or two at best, but it may be a case of every little bit counts.

And 10¢? The prototype cup seal I made so far (but have not tried, of course) is 0.335" in diameter. I don't have a spring weight yet- I figure there's going to be quite a bit of trial-and-error to get a good combination. I also don't have very many springs in my stashes for suitably sized ones, so I'll probably have to order several sets and do what I can to dial it in.

Doc.

**Cunha** · 10-21-2026, 08:30 PM

The hammer might be fine, because the ball is easier to accelerate. Just need to open it a little bit

**Glovebox Operator** · 10-22-2026, 01:52 PM

Tiny little freak inserts are gonna be tough to make.

**DocsMachine** · 10-22-2026, 02:27 PM

Tiny little freak inserts are gonna be tough to make.

-Heh.

I was actually looking at that. I have no idea what a typical .50 barrel mics as. My Roscoe seems to be about .495", and an Opus barrel looks like .505". Pics of the Eclipse barrels that came with those Ego/Etek kits are marked ".504". But so far I just have one years-old small sampler bag of no-name paint and have no idea what the regular stuff might be. I'm presuming the Opus' .505" is a similarly lose bore like a standard Spyder barrel.

I reamed the prototype barrel for this build to .500", as an easy balance between the Roscoe and the Opus, but if I wanted to- and, of course, had oodles of disposable income I could theoretically make a scale Freak set. They'd be tricky to turn, but easy to bore- I'd just have to buy several sizes of $60-each reamers.

But that kind of seems a bit overkill, for what will basically be a wall-hanger.

Doc.

**DocsMachine** · 10-25-2026, 03:34 PM

Haven't had the time to work on the next video- I still have customer stuff on the table- but here's a few pix from the original (and still not yet completed

) build. Today, the grip frame!

Regular readers may recall I posted about working up a line drawing of a basic WGP grip frame back at the beginning of the year. That was, in fact, partially for this very build- I simply took that drawing, reduced it 25%, printed it on some sticker stock, roughly cut it out and stuck it to some 1/2" 'Lunimum plate:

That section got bandsawed out, and plunked into the mill...

And then some of the major features located, drilled and bored out with an endmill.

A couple of clearance holes for the bandsaw....

And I got them separated and trimmed down a little.

Yeah, this is the kind of thing I should be doing in the CNC mill- and that's coming. For now, this is just a for-fun project.

Lining up the top edge, using the line on the drawing, gives me a reference edge...

And similarly, some of the other edges can be brought down to size and the excess milled off.

And, after a few minutes in the belt sander, we have a couple of cute little WGP grip frame blanks!

The grip screw hole- also located by the drawing- is drilled and tapped...

And then I made a cardpaper template emulating the profile of the original style WGP grip slabs, and found a piece of some thin black Delrin sheet I'd been saving for just such an occasion.

A little blue tape and a pencil...

Zapped out on the bandsaw...

The screw hole located, drilled and countersunk...

And a little grinding and filing to refine the profile.

And finally, a little judicious filing to round and smooth the edges.

After that, to better match a factory grip frame, the trigger guard was relieved a little...

Finally, the bottom of the frame gets drilled and tapped to accept bottomline accessories.

Not done, and by a long shot, but we're getting there. Keep watchin!

Doc.

**DocsMachine** · 2026-10-28T02:38:45+00:00

[cracks knuckles]

-Okay, still haven't had any time to record more video- that pesky conscience of mine

- but I still have a pile of stills from the original build. For those of you either just joining in, or already confused by the various videos and posts, the story so far is that that I started building this marker on a whim, a month and a half or so ago. It was pure "just for fun", but before it was completed, I decided to do it up as a short series of videos.

That meant REmaking it- there's currently two bodies- though we're still short a number of parts to make either one a complete gun. The next video will cover four to six of the smaller parts, as will several of the subsequent installments.

These photos are of the original prototype.

And, for those completely lost, the overall project is to make a reduced scale (75%) pump paintball gun called a Sniper. Normal paintball guns shoot .68 caliber paintballs, this one will shoot .50 caliber. .50 is about 73.5% of .68, ergo, reduce everything a nice even 25% and we have a scale marker shooting scale paint.

BUT... that also means I can use no off-the-shelf parts, save for springs, screws and O-rings. I have to make every other part, from the grip panels to the barrel, which on this marker means about 27 pieces.

Here's several of the bits you haven't seen yet, and more or less catches us up the still photos to the point I swapped over to the videos.

First up, the bolt pull-pin, turned from 303 stainless:

Then we need a vertical ASA, which starts with some 1" round...

Lightly drilled...

Tapped...

Profiled to match a stock VASA...

Notched and recessed for an O-ring...

And test-fitted!

Next up, we needed a beavertail, trying my best to emulate the factory WGP piece. I had to go with sheet that is technically too thick for scale, but the right stuff would have been kinda floppy, and I didn't have any, anyway.

Bandsaw off a short strip (I have dimensioned drawings for all of this, by the way)...

The edges milled square and flat...

The grip frame notch was sliced on the bandsaw, and then very gingerly smoothed up with an endmill...

And now we needed a little dogleg in the... er, leg, as clearance so the back block doesn't rub on it as the marker cycles.

A couple bits of scrap material stacked about like so...

Covered with a nice smooth anvil plate...

And then lightly squished.

Et Voilá! (Which, I'm reliably told, roughly translates to "Hey, check this sh*t out!"

)

That then gets slotted, and the slot profiled to more or less match the factory piece...

And then the end profiled at the belt sander...

And then given a nice sharp bend in the vise.

After this, we start getting into some of the internals, and I'd like to save those- and a few other things- for the videos. But just as a teaser, here's a 75% scale stainless rear velocity adjuster.

Hoping to have a chance to shoot the next video this coming weekend, but time and shcedules are stacked a bit against me. Wish me luck!

Doc.

The Top Secret Project

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