Well, I blew the bank on a trip to the plumbing section at the local hardware store to try and solve the problem of assembling the underslung sight cylinders securely. I ended up dropping about $14 in plumbing odds and ends, to no avail. I think I could still return it all, at least. I'm afraid that the robustness I'm looking for can only come from a turned wood part. So I'll be lathing wood for the first time ever in a couple days….
Speaking of plumbing parts,
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After mounting the front sight/bayonet mount/gas return line/whatever the part on top of the barrel in the pic is, I could move onto the handgrips around the front of the barrel. My barrel is 1 1/2" PVC pipe. I had some 2" PVC pipe laying around. Unfortunately, it is a little loose when you put the smaller pipe into the bigger pipe. I needed to cut out 5/8" in a strip along the length of the barrel to make room for the wood parts at the top of the barrel anyways, so I cut out the strip using a dado blade on a table saw. I then cut in the grooves into the barrel with a table saw blade that was almost fully recesses into the table. This cut out a shallow trench into the plastic that's only as wide as the saw blade itself.
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Here's the handgrip mounted and secured to the barrel. I needed to widen the 5/8" cut a little to get the barrel to curve tightly around the 1 1/2" barrel. The handgrip was secured to the barrel with a couple deck screws recessed into the bottom of the handgrip.
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The screenshots of these angled strips around the triangular rifle magazine look to me to be some sort of bipod for the rifle. I used some thin steel strip from the welding area's scraps bin, drilled a couple holes, and fixed them in place with a couple bolts and washers. It is definitely supposed to have the crooked, offset look.
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Here's a beauty shot. Almost all of the major parts are now blocked in. Once I finish the barrel tip and the underslung sight, I can move onto skinning all the wood pieces with some thin plastic sheet for a consistent finish, and adding all the buttons and small detail parts.
