Words and pics: Arthur Dent

Autumn seems to be a good time to reconsider things 🙂

A year ago I was building my XM177 PTW but had to compromise with some of the parts I used.

Things could be done better:

The handguard was a C.A.R. style one, but it had 7 holes while the real thing had only 6
The outer barrel used was made of aluminium and was 1,9cm thick while the real XM barrels were steel and 0,625″ or ~1,58cm in diameter
The sliding stock was a GBB G&P Airsoft WA XM177 Stock…XM177, but Airsoft!
The moderator looked a bit too ugly
The stock tube used with the original E1 had only 2 positions; the one used in my original build had 5

Again I went on the search for more realistic items.

First thing to be done was the barrel.

I had some steel M4A1 barrels spare, so I asked a friend if he could cut one down to the 10″ length necessary for the E1.

The next thing to do was to reduce the outer diameter of the barrel to ~1,6cm. After this work was done I got a more realistic barrel, but after lathing the surplus metal the barrel was plain shiny metal that would soon start to rust.

So, I got myself some chemicals to phosphate the item, to get the greyish tone back. After some time in the chemicals the whole thing came out like this:

Top to bottom: M4A1 version, 10″ aluminium used in the original build, new 10″ barrel.

A better view of the lathe work…

Top to bottom: M4A1 standard steel, new 10″ barrel.

The next item to be changed was the handguard. Again, Brownells helped me by offering a 6 hole CAR15 skinny handguard.

The new real steel 2-position stock tube had to be modded to accept the electronics.

The closed end of the stock had to be opened and there had to be a cut in the front part to accept the wires to the motor and the ECU.

Looking for a more suitable moderator, I came across another airsoft part: the “Crusader Steel XM177 Flash-Hider” which had the correct dimensions and some nice looking Colt markings.