#DIY

Welcome everyone to the  TFB Armorer’s Bench! As mentioned in the little blurb below, this series will focus on a lot of home armorer and gunsmith activities. In this article, I decided to add to my pile of dummy rounds and show you folks one way to make them. There are multiple ways and they all have pros and cons. I would not call this gunsmithing by any means but it’s gunsmithing adjacent. Sometimes testing a firearm with live ammunition is not possible or necessary. I have always found it convenient to have a safe quick way to test feeding and chambering. I find myself wishing I had more cartridge types but I’m at the point where I don’t feel like overpaying for a few mass-produced ones. That being said, let’s dive into my solution and how I make dummy rounds!

Welcome everyone to the  TFB Armorer’s Bench! As mentioned in the little blurb below, this series will focus on a lot of home armorer and gunsmith activities. In this article, I am going to relay my experience working with silicon carbide and the process of applying it to a grip. This is something I have no experience in, have heard of, have seen it done, but never attempted until now. I did some stippling in gunsmithing school and honestly, it was not for me. I can do it but I am not a patient person so the time/steadiness aspect involved in actual stippling is unattractive to me. Silicon carbide-ing grips however presents itself as being not only user-friendly for a beginner but also forgiving. So how’d it go and how’s it feel? Let’s dive right in!

Thanks for joining us on TFB’s Photo Of The Day, where we’re not above showing you our mistakes, whether they will buff out or not. In today’s edition, you’re looking at a recent mishap where I was more focused on looking through my optic than I was making sure my muzzle was still far enough forward on my bag. In this particular case, I was running out of range time, making haste… and waste. The good news is that the zipper runners were both on the other side of the pouch, so I’ll be sewing up the zipper and patching the hole. This will hopefully mean that I’m only missing a couple inches of usable zipper space, this will buff out right?

Those of you who follow the 3D printing and DIY antics of Jonathan Wild (AKA Wild Arms Research and Development) will no doubt have heard of his recent efforts to produce a replica M202 FLASH recoilless launcher. While we have heavily covered the test launches and adventures with the launcher here on the blog as well as on TFB’s Behind The Gun Podcast, I’m actually most excited today to share the announcement that Johnny Wild’s book Flame Assault Shoulder Weapon: M202A1 “FLASH” has just hit the online market. The book covers the history and purpose of the original M202 FLASH, as well as Jonathan’s build diary as he went through the process of learning about and replicating the system.

When it comes to guns, sometimes, the factory and aftermarket options just don’t quite cut it, whether from an ergonomic or aesthetic standpoint. In the case of one Beretta M9 owner, Ben, the standard-sized grips that were supplied with his Beretta M9 were too large for his liking, and the aftermarket options were over his budget. Thus, he set out to make his own thin grips for his Beretta M9. Let’s take a look at his process and the final result.

In this spooky Halloween episode of TFBTV, James Reeves interviews Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed about the Ghost Gunner 3S. A more advanced version of the Ghost Gunner 3, this at-home milling machine allows shooters to perform DIY RMR cuts on their Glock slides (or, really, any pistol) as well as slide serrations, stippling, and even build AR lowers from ZERO PERCENT receivers – i.e., plain blocks of metal. The Ghost Gunner 3S is a hardware and software upgrade, but Cody goes into more detail about the differences between the GG3 and GG3S and the endless possibilities for at-home mods and builds.

Katanga Arms, a company from Ogden, Utah, makes a survival shotgun called Scout. The Katanga Arms Scout is a single barrel break action 28 gauge shotgun that has an extremely simple design. It comes as a DIY kit which must be finished and assembled by the customer requiring the use of a power drill and hand tools. Let’s take a closer look at the Katanga Arms Scout DIY survival shotgun.

Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Rimfire Report! This ongoing series is all about the rimfire firearm world and its many firearms, ammunition, shooting sports, and history! Last week we did a direct comparison of a dedicated integrally suppressed rimfire Integra 15-22 upper and a Form 1 oil filter suppressor. In that article, we discovered that although the integrally suppressed rifle works beautifully, it has a few drawbacks, and the same goes for the oil filter suppressor. Ultimately, my pick would be the Integra 15-22 for its straightforward design and sleek, low-profile suppressor that still allows you to use red dots without a ridiculously high riser. In any case, suppressors only serve to add to the fun when it comes to rimfire guns, at least in my opinion. This week we’re digging back a bit further into the Rimfire Report archives to bring back a perhaps infamous firearm from the series. That’s right, I’ve gone and dunked my Henry AR-7 into the water again. However, this time I didn’t manage to lose one of the most crucial parts to the build (the barrel), and as a result, it almost immediately became covered in rust, as did the magazines. Not happy with the low resistance to such corrosion, I set out last week to better “weatherproof” the Henry AR-7. Today I’ll be sharing this process with you and showing you where I succeeded, and where I could probably have done a bit better with the whole process.

Remember that .22LR X95 conversion that Dylan made? Well, that is not the extent of his DIY skills. He made his own Modernized Sten 2.0. If you recall, I posted about a modernized Sten over three years ago. Funny enough, Dylan says that build inspired him to make one with his own twist.

Ballistics gel or ballistic gelatin is a fairly common and familiar substance that is often used to test the efficacy and performance of various projectile or bladed weapons. Ballistics gel is quite often used by independent persons and professionals alike to either test ammunition or view the effects of said ammunition on what amounts to a close simulation of human and animal tissue. After the infamous Miami Dade shootout, the FBI established a set of testing protocols to determine the performance of ammunition. It’s generally understood that on a bare “10% Ordnance Gelatin” block a bullet should penetrate no less than 12 and no more than 18 inches into the target otherwise it begins to lose points in the FBI’s complex formula for determining whether or not the ammunition is suitable for law enforcement applications.

The DIY firearms world has seen plenty of cool creations over the years. We’ve seen steady advancements from the largely self-driven community of builders in terms of durability, functionality, convenience, and of course creativity. Many of you will know Stubbs from some of his previous creations we’ve covered like his Mosin Nagant featuring a folding stock, or his double-barreled, double-feed AR-15 rifle. This time Stubbs has brought a DIY 37mm launcher with him. Today we’ll look at what Stubbs has done in order to accomplish this feat and explore if it might be possible for you to do this yourself.

Welcome to TFB’s Wheelgun Wednesday, where all of wheelgundom is on the table for discussion. Today, we’ll take a look at Uncle Fudd’s latest Space Force 6 build, involving another science-fictiony build for when the Space Force starts packing heat in orbit. A few months ago, we covered another of Uncle Fudd’s revolver builds that received a lot of positive feedback, and a few fiery naysayers as well. This next-generation build still involves a railed shroud but has a few enlightened aspects to it.

Remote-controlled guns have been a controversial topic, and are outlawed in some places in the United States with some exceptions for disabled hunters. Redditor and YouTuber Jan Arkadiusz Kowalski aka Brzydki Burak from Poland wasn’t worried about getting reported to the ATF when he and one of his talented subscribers set out to make two remote-controlled guns out of discarded materials, some bits from a salvage yard, an AKM rifle and a Glock. After watching some of Burak’s videos, it’s clear that he likes to have fun, and watching his remote-controlled guns in action, I’d say he and others were pleasantly entertained. Burak lightheartedly likened his builds to the T-800 model soldier robots from the Terminator movies, however without the artificial intelligence aspect, these seem more reminiscent of the remote-controlled gun from The Jackal movie starring Bruce Willis.

I was recently bumming around on YouTube when I came across an interesting video from May 26th featuring a supposedly 100% original design of a semi-automatic .22LR pistol. Coming from the YouTube channel Humphrey Wittinsworth IV, the so-called “Mega Pistol” features a 40-round fixed rotary magazine that would only really be possible to the common man via 3D printing technology.

It is Friday night and you know what that means. Friday Night Lights is brought to you by ATN Corp, manufacturers of night vision and thermal optics like the THOR LT. As with all of our sponsored series, Friday Night Lights will continue to bring you unbiased news and reviews from a variety of companies. Today we boldly go where no one has gone before. We build our own quadtube ANVIS10.