Build Your Own Glock Part 1. The Embryo
Welcome to TFB’s series on building your own Glock. In this series, we will take an 80% frame and a pile of parts, and assemble a safe and consistent G19. Believe it or not, it is very easy, and perfectly legal. You will see that with a bit of patience and minimal equipment you CAN build your own Glock. If you go with the standard parts and look, you may not save too much. If you want to go the custom route or are interested in having a pistol you created, AKA a “ghost gun”, this is the way to go.
Legality
Is this even legal? According to the ATF, yes, though state and local laws may be different. After my research, I was able to find an ATF agent kind enough to sit down with me. A great guy who was willing to go over all points with me. As with everything, it seems, it comes down to intent. If you intend on building a Glock for yourself you are fine. If you intend on building a firearm to sell or trade you need a firearms manufacturer license. Build it, keep it and you are fine. Again, check your local laws.
The Build
Your Glock 80% receiver will ship all ready inside the jig. The jig is there to guide your cutting and drilling. Although it is counterintuitive, your building labor is actually removing material. The pin holes are not present, and there is extra material on the top of the receiver, as well the center. That material should be removed to bring the receiver to “100%”
I found a video that gives some great advice on how to do it. It is done on an older (or at least different) 80% frame then I received, but the same ideas apply. You can see it here.
My frame came with a link to a PDF of the instructions. Find it here.
REMOVING MATERIAL
Initially, the drill press was my plan to remove the excess material. I had some problems with the jig getting bucked, so I stopped and went to the Dremel. A Dremel is a great tool, just do not go angry beaver and remove too much and destroy your frame. If you go with the Dremel I strongly recommend you remove about 75% of what you want to remove, then remove material by hand. I finished the work up with files and then sandpaper. As with anything like this, TAKE YOUR TIME.
When you have removed the material, finish with some fine sandpaper. Sanding it with oil will help you get a finer finish.
I still used the drill press for drilling the holes. I was told it was easy to not make the holes even by using a hand drill. Once you remove material, there is no putting it back.
On the 80% frame, you need to drill from the outside in. So you drill each side of the jig to the center, not all the way through.
Conclusion
Bringing the 80% up to 100% was pretty easy. Just take your time. The more time you put into it, the better the completed product becomes. All it is removing 4 strips of material, and drilling 6 holes. Not too much, but plenty of opportunities to make a mistake. Spend more time with sandpaper then with the Dremel. I spent about 20 minutes on the Dremel and about 2 hours with sandpaper, and am very happy with the outcome.
A HUGE thanks to Lonewolf for coming thru with this, when others did not. Although they did not give me all this merchandise, they gave me a good discount. I ask that you consider them if you are going to build your own Glock.
A shout out to “Mr. J” who reached out to me and gave some great advice. He has built a number of these and gave some great insight. I very much appreciate it. His input has a lot of influence on the next article in the series.
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Mike spent his entire adult life riding an ambulance throughout the Southwest US. He found humor in long in-depth philosophical conversations with crack heads and other urban street survivalists. His highest point was being invited to instruct for some "special" medics in the military. He spent almost 10 years there. A 30 year gun enthusiast, he started down the path of reloading to keep up with his desperate need of more ammo. Reloading is like medicine, you never stop learning.He can generally be found at the local range picking the brains of the old timer, looking for brass, and banging away at gongs. He reloads everything from .32 to .45, .223 to 7 rem mag.
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I've found that a pair of end cutters does a really nice job on those bits where the rails are eventually going to go. You can get the cut almost perfectly flush in one snip, and then all you have to do is use a little sandpaper to clean it up and take down to totally flush. Also, there's less chance of screwing it up than there is with a Dremel
OK, I see how to build a Glock (or an AR) from an "80%" frame (or lower), but I still don't quite understand the why of it all.
To me a gun is just a tool. A few guns can be works of art, but those aren't the guns in my gun safe and I've never seen any gun completed from an 80% frame or lower that is anything but just another Glock or just another AR.
Building a gun from an 80% frame or lower is just paying more and doing more work without any benefit (there are plenty of other ways to get an "untraceable" firearm). For an AR, assembling one from parts (using a 100% lower) at least saves some money. But I can buy a 100% lower for less than the cost of an "80%" lower not even counting the cost of the jig and tools, much less adding in the value of labor. I haven't priced Glock frames but from what I have seen, you can buy a complete Glock for less than the cost of the parts.
I guess there can be some feeling of accomplishment in being able to say "I built that" but I don't see any sense of that in any of the ads for "80%" frames or any of the articles about it -- in everything I see the emphasis is always on 'this is easy" almost to the point of saying "even YOU won't screw this up"
At best, the process seems like one of those projects in the Instructables series -- where they show you how to do way too much work to achieve a result just because you can.