“A
homage to possibly the most fun airsoft gun, I have ever used.”
or
“oh-so
macho, but rather impractical…”
So
where’s the review? Well
I’m starting on the m870 review, but I’ve been so preoccupied of
late that it’s been a little difficult to get things going. I’m
going to try and break out the digital camera sometime soon and
get some decent photos taken of it.
I’m
working on the review right now.. well kinda, I do have a life of
my own outside of airsoft. Yes! It is possible.
The
‘boom stick’ has had it’s first outing at Sopley (our local urban
site), so I can now finally write about what it was like to use
for a skirmish. While I get that written I’ve posted a few links
here, and some info about what I plan to do with my latest acquisition:
Options
additions and modifications.
I’m
currently looking into fitting a combined light/laser system to
the front of the shotgun, to compensate for the lack of sights,
I’ve found a few pages that list suitable parts and ideas.
Magazine
Shell-Tube Extension:
I’m
also looking to extending the magazine tube, to take up
to 7+1 shells, rather than the current 4+1. This is a fairly
simple process, as all you need is to extend the lower tube,
by threading on an extension, and fitting a new spring of
the correct length.
I
believe the the currently available kits for the real steel
will work for the airsoft version. I have seen kits (shown
in the embedded image) that include the pipe and the spring.
I’m also after the “barrel clamb” that holds the
upper barrel to the magazine tube, again this is shown on
the left..
Here
in the UK, it’s a little difficult to get these kits, as
pump-action shotguns are frowned upon, and I believe that
we are limited to the number of shells we can have in a
civilian model.
The
two images shown here are from Advanced
Technology who sell various kits for the real-steel
Remington shotguns, including pistol grip pumps, and light
mounts.
SureFire
Light/Laser Mounting:
Another
option I’m looking into is the the fixing of an aiming device
to the M870. As the rifle comes out the box, it has no sights
on it, so it’s simply a case of point (& hope) and shoot.
While this isn’t a great problem for a shotgun, I’d like
to see where I’m pointing the barrel.
I wish
to remedy this with a pressure activated laser sight. The
best kits for this have seen are the SureFire torches, that
have an option to replace the lamp unit with a laser bulb.
The
fixing can be done by either replacing the original pump
grip with a SureFire replacement (with I’m not keen on as
that’ll cost a lot to do), or the cheaper method, that simply
involves clamping the unit to the lower shell tube.
This
is achieved with the use of a piece of steel with a hole
through the centre, a notch at the top (for the upper barrel),
and a clamb attached to the bottom for fitting the SureFire
lamp to. You can see this fairly clearly in the image to
the left.
Update
30/01/03 “Oh bugger dropped it” – or – “Getting to
that gas tank….”: Well
I’ve been meaning to get the M870 review written for some time now,
and sadly haven’t had a free moment to do so. Well the sad news
is that upon clearing the toy cupboard, the M870 fell off the top
shelf onto the floor, cracking the rear stock near the pistol grip.
Now
although this doesn’t spell doom for the 870 it was a bit of a bugger.
The stock can easily be fixed with some Araldite and a small patch
on the inside, and you’d never know.
The
good news about the incident was that it gave me a chance to take
the 870 to bits. Now getting it to bits is the easy part, it’s getitng
it back together that is the real pain. For anyone that is interested
to get the grip/gas system out you need to push the two pins out
above the trigger guard in the side of the frame. I would not recommend
this though as I have no idea what to do from there – plus the mechanism
is rather well..complex. I’ll save doing that for when I need to
do some serious work on it.
Now
we all know the gas on the 870 is, well.. somewhat weak. So why
is this? well strip off the stock by removing the gas tank and unscrewing
the bolt that you find there and the stock will slide off. Don’t
pull it out yet, first you’ll find a large ‘jacket’ inside the stock
that the gas tank sat in, pull this forward and you’ll find a brass
gas nozzle at the end that pokes into the tank. This is secured
by a pin – remove that pin, then the nozzle, and now you can pull
the whole stock off – be careful to feed the gas hose out without
damaging it. Look after that pin.. it’s crucial and easy to loose.
^_^
Now
it’ll hit you, that is why the power is so shoddy, look at
how long that gas hose is! Seen in the photos you’ll see that the
hose is over a foot long, and as it’s been looped/folded up in the
stock it has constricting bends in it (where the sides touch). Now
if you are looking for a simple power upgrade you can cut the hose
to the length it needs to be and rebuild from here, but that wasn’t
good enough for me.
I’ve
been looking for something fun to build for a bit, and I have a
spare SG1 grip hanging around, so the word “keymaster”
has been ringing in my ears.
One
short runble in the magic cupboard again and I’ve got the 3PSA/SMK
CO2 powerlet adapter. Now I though I recognised that hose dimension!
The CO2 adapter really is a much underrated piece of gear, as with
a valve adapter it’ll fit just about anything, find something with
a BV style gas hose, and you’re laughing all the way to the next
skirmish.
If
you’ll remember I’ve mentioned a few times in forums around the
world that the Maruzen M870 really has issues with much more that
3×0.2g BBs in one shell. Well sling in a CO2 capulet into this design,
and you’ll be smiling. The new gas system kicks out at least 2 times
the power. It’s impossible to chrono the unit effectively, but it
puts out 5 0.2g BBs without a problem, and sticking one BB in the
pipe it goes clean through a folded Sunday paper.. sadly no beer
cans were available for testing as recently I’ve been purchasing
Asahi lager (in bottles) as it’s on offer at the local market. ^_^
Please note I am merely being conservative with my guesses here
at this time, if I had to lay out money on it, it’s doing around
3J. Some people may wince at this, but remember the CO2 adapter
can be unwound to provide lower PSIs, and this shotty has no hopup
and is designed to fire multiples of BBs, so should be safe even
cranked up to the max with this new setup… in short, don’t take
my recommendations and go and hook this system up to try to create
a pain stick – that’s not the point. I was merely disappointed with
the present gas-system so have been looking for something interesting
to do with it.
I
will be trying this setup shortly on the field to see how it fairs,
merely for ranging tests, not for skirmishing yet.
As
you’ll notice in the photos, I’ve hooked the adapter into the 870
by attaching it to the gas hose – this is very easy to do, but I
couldn’t get the original hose off the Maruzen brass gas nozzle,
as it’d been on for some time, so was sadly forced to chop off some
of the length to free the pipe. There’s no great loss here though,
as there’s soooo much pipe there anyway.
The
Maruzen gas pipe is rather poor, it can be crushed (look closely
at the photos and you can see the bends form it being in the stock),
and it’s not reinforced to maintain its ’roundness’, so I will be
replacing the hose with something more akin to SMK/3PSA’s gas hose
that comes with their rig, as it’s much more rugged and useable.
You’ll
also notice that I have the shell catcher in the shots, this is
merely as I’m looking for somewhere to hide the new gas tank – I
think I’ll hide it in a false hi-cap/readymag system, but that is
for me to decide later. All I know is that at the moment it won’t
fit in the SG1 grip…bugger.
Other
Interesting links: Remington
M870 Manual – The official manual for the real-steel
Remington Pump action SureFire
Tac Mount – A Page with details of kits to mount Surefire
lights and lasers onto the shotgun Magazine
Extension Kit @ ATI Gun Stocks – details of magasine
extension tubes for the M870/M1100 Operator’s
Manual – the official US Government’s operators guide
to the M870 Custom
Remington 870 laser mounting– a custom
method for fitting a laser unit to the end of the 870, not a method
I would recommend though. “The
Tactical Shotgun”
– an article about shotguns and their use in a tactical environment.
It’s a VERY good read
The original website is from this page here: http://www.angelfire.com/tx/ShotGun/ “The MultiPurpose Shotgun”
This
page last updated:
Thursday, January 30, 2003 9:52 PM
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