[jackknife09]

Good news, everyone, my Javelin Gun Works M24 finally got here. The rest of my gear is still being stalled, probably won't see it until the middle of June, unfortunately. But, I'm doing what I can with what I've got. Take a look at my new gal:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Thus far:
+ Replaced stock socket screws, weren't grabbing the barrel enough
+ Replaced stock swivel mounts
+ Added 3-9x40 scope
+ Attached paracord sling, woven by yours truly
+ Sanded off plastic flash, it was blocking proper bolt function
+ Added cheek pad, will adjust accordingly after target practice

I'm belaying actually going out and firing the thing, for a few reasons.
A). I have no silicone spray with which to clean and lubricate my rifle, and I'd like to have a worthy weapon before I start scoping it in.
B). My girl is naked right now, I'd like her wearing some camouflage evening wear before I show her off.
C). I'm guessing it's a bad idea to use the brandless bbs that come stock with the rifle, they look less-than-perfect...
D). Gotta buy some targets! Hoping a sporting goods place has some paper ones for me.

I'll throw in some updates as my gear arrives and my rifle evolves. Much love to the people whose advice has helped me out thus far.

 

[jackknife09]

I already tossed those suckers out, they look suspicious as hell. I have a bipod already purchased, it's just... I bought it in a bulk purchase, which is the one that's currently stuck in UPS limbo. T.T

Also, the sling mounts on this gun appear to be, for lack of a better term, fake. They don't fit any of 3 spare brands of sling mounts I had lying around. Luckily, the bipod I got comes with an adapter to just slip over the barrel.

Thanks for the tip, I'll be looking through the hardware store tomorrow. I don't suppose that stuff would work for propane adapter use, would it?

And yeah, picking up some spray paint and primer tomorrow. I'm gonna have to make a hella weird camo job for Colorado. We got everything from pine trees and aspens, to desert sage and sand... in the same 500ft square piece of land. >>;;;

*Also, still gotta tape off the scope, but I'm saving that for when I get some time to sight it in.

 

[jackknife09]

Er, wait, cautionary bump... isn't white lithium petroleum based? Wouldn't that, like, melt any plastic parts in my rifle? D:

I think the cylinder in this gun is entirely plastic, though I can't confirm that until I open it up.

 

[jackknife09]

I'm in the process of trying to re-braid my sling, the last attempt didn't look strong enough. But once I'm done there, it's on to cleaning and lubricating the internals.

I'm also coating the rifle body in primer, just to get a head start. I've picked a light green, desert tan and dark brown. I think as long as I break it up with some foliage patterns, it'll look appropriate. The pines don't hang low, but they do shed a lot. Looking around Colorado forests, you see a lot of dry soil, some wet, some dark and light grasses, ferns, shrubs, and in the summer, a lot of dried branches.

So, I'm thinking sand tan, a few stripes of green, and a lot of foliage patterning with the dark brown. In sun, it should displace the contours of the rifle, and in shade, it should darken and look like tree debris.

 

[jackknife09]

So like, tan, khaki and dark brown? All desert-y, plus rubber bands to attach vegetation? I suppose that could work too... I'll see how the thing looks when it has the tan on, before I decide on the green.

Right now I'm peeling my way through the awesome amount of internals in this som'bitch. The one o-ring I found is resting in some silicone looking healthy. The cylinder head on this gun - for anyone who might also buy this brand - has had a black plastic piece affixed with really nasty glue. It's chipping off like a mother and some of the flak was already contaminating the cylinder when I opened it.

Another cautionary mark; the sling on the very front, where a bipod should attach, is way too small to fit a harris-style. The barrel, unlike the ECHO M24, doesn't have notches for barrel-affixed bipods, either, and it's tapered, unlike the real M24.

So, the way its looking, the bipod is gonna have to be mounted waaay the hell down the barrel, closer to the muzzle, because the rest of the barrel is just too thick without those grooves.

 

[jackknife09]

And we're done. Total time to strip, clean, re-lubricate and paint, about 12 hours; lunch, dinner, and a viewing of Saving Private Ryan included.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Now, time to attach the cheek pad and make sure it doesn't sag, tape off the scope with some OD hundred-mile-an-hour tape I found, and throw on some rubber bands for veg. My bb's got here this morning, so I'll be taking her out to the woods to scope in and adjust my hop-up pretty soon.

Many thanks for everyone's assistance thus far. <3

 

[jackknife09]

Glad you like it! My only regret is that there's a few parts without branch breakup... I'll get those with a spray or two tomorrow, I suppose.

Also, I don't think I lubed the cylinder enough, 'cause the bolt pull is like 45% heavier now. D:

 

[jackknife09]

Another cautionary mark; the sling on the very front, where a bipod should attach, is way too small to fit a harris-style. The barrel, unlike the ECHO M24, doesn't have notches for barrel-affixed bipods, either, and it's tapered, unlike the real M24.

So, the way its looking, the bipod is gonna have to be mounted waaay the hell down the barrel, closer to the muzzle, because the rest of the barrel is just too thick without those grooves.

Its the unfortunate price of an inaccurate airsoft model. I'll keep fiddling with it, maybe I can find a sling mount that fits both the bipod and the gun, but I'm stuck with the barrel mount for now. As for the orange tip, its not coming off anytime soon. Even with the biggest wrench I own I couldn't get it off, it's pretty much fused to the barrel.

I know I didn't paint any of the internals, and I taped off the bolt chamber, but some paint might have gotten in there. I'll take it apart tonight and see what the news is.

The paint job is kinda saturated in these pics. Its a lot flatter and more natural in person, I'm actually pretty proud of it. I'm buying a pack of heavy duty bands today, they'll be going on the edges I can't cover with just paint, for some veg.

 

[jackknife09]

Well, it feels plastic, where the barrel itself is metal, but there's so little space between the orange tip and the barrel that I'm afraid it holds part of the inner barrel... I'll upload a pic of the problem later today, see what you guys think.

 

[jackknife09]

It kind of looks like if I removed the orange tip, there'd be like 5mm of inner barrel sticking out beyond the outer one. But, like I said, I'll get some pics when I do my second round of work tonight. Gotta open it up to see if I can loosen the bolt pull, wrestle with the bipod some more, and then come back here for advice on the orange tip with picture in hand.

Oh, and I gotta name 'er. X3

 

[jackknife09]

Well, it took a little bit of jury rigging with a new sling mount, but I've managed to fix the bipod problem. My advice to anyone who buys a Javelin Gun Works M24, just spend the extra money, go down to the surplus and buy some inch-long metric sling mount screws.

I also located the problem with the chamber. Despite my best efforts, some paint seeped down and it's causing extra friction on the bolt, making the pull enough to make my shoulder ache.

Now, as for the orange tip, here's that pic I promised:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

See to me, it looks like this thing is supporting the inner barrel, so my fear is that if I remove it, the inner barrel will be exposed. The other possibility is that the tip is just glued onto the metal barrel, in which case a few cuts with a dremel tool and some careful work with a chisel might remove the thing. It looks like the internal metal would still support a suppressor attachment, if I got one in the future.

Problem is, there's no way to know until I make the cut, and by then I might have permanently damaged my gun. :c

I don't suppose I could remove the outer barrel from the gun, and dip the plastic tip into boiling water? It might loosen the glue and plastic, but it wouldn't damage the metal barrel. Maybe strip some paint, but I got plenty of that.

 

[jackknife09]

Another long day of work down, and I think I've gotten as far as I can with the externals and basic internals:

+ Taped off the scope, crystal clear while using proper eye relief, defeats most refracted light.
+ Used a stronger braid on the sling, added buckles for easy removal and attachment.
+ Added a longer, correctly sized metric swivel to the bipod mount, now fits properly in the stock.
+ Removed orange tip and associated glue / debris.
+ Cleaned out the chamber, bolt pull is back within reasonable draw weight.
+ Adjusted butt stock, keeps my eye pretty much exactly 3.3in from the ocular lens.
+ Polished the barrel, took about 10 paper towels' worth of cleaning strips to stop seeing black residue.
+ Touched up paint job.

Once again, thanks to everyone who offered advice. When I get a chance, it'll be time to head out and do some target practice. Hopefully, I won't have to modify the hop up chamber, but if the rumors of the M24's wobbly hop up arm are true, I'll have to open her up and solve that problem too. And once it's game time, I'll add the appropriate rubber bands to the scope and body to hold on veg.

And now, enjoy some fancy pictures:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

[jackknife09]

Thanks for the kind words, folks. :3

I'm heading to the state park tomorrow with some targets and a bag of 0.28 bios. I'm relatively certain its the safest place I can go; iirc, state parks are legal territory for real and replica firearms, as long as you're away from trails and roads. I'm planning to fire a 25rd magazine at a target at 100, 150 and 200ft. At the same time, I'll be scoping myself in at the 150ft mark.

As for the braided cord, I found instructions from an online page, but I'll make a short how-to in the future to show how I went about it. The instructions are a little confusing on their own. >>

 

[jackknife09]

Well, unfortunately, my first day of target practice was a complete disaster. Having trekked into the national forest, I set up a paper target at 100ft, and started firing. I tried to scope in, but after a little while I figured out my bbs were changing direction mid-flight, so the scoping attempt was useless.

I fiddled with the hop up, but no matter what direction or to what extent I changed it, my bbs started dropping at the 50 or 75ft mark, bouncing along the ground. After 50 rounds, they started curving left and right at random, as I'd feared.

Long story short, out of 100 rounds, I missed every shot even with a target well within the range of this rifle. I'm thoroughly crestfallen at the moment. =_=

To add insult to injury, one of the legs on my bipod is stuck in the sheath, and the paint has already chipped around certain parts of the rifle. So, I've got a lot of work on my hands.

For the life of me I can't figure out what's wrong with the hop up. Since the rifle came with no manual, I'm not even sure which direction raises or lowers the nub. So it appears the next step is to take the som'bitch apart yet again, and this time disassemble the hop up chamber as well. I'm not even sure the lever arm is engaging the hop up at all, considering how little affect it had on the bbs' flight paths. If it turns out the hop up chamber is beyond a teflon tape fix, I'm not even sure I can get a replacement APS2 one. The problem could just as easily be the bushing, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Well, at least she looks pretty in the sunlight:



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

[jackknife09]

Proud to hear my first sniper's camo job is up to the standards of the vets.

I'm willing to bet practically anything here. The hop up could have been installed upside-down, the plastic might be really low quality and already damaged, the whole chamber could be messed up... or, maybe I'm lucky, and it just needs a good cleaning with some white lithium grease and a bit of teflon tape on the bucking and hop up arm. We'll see what happens.

Worse come to worse, my load-bearing gear won't be getting here until the week of June 12th. So if I have to order a new part or something, it ain't like I'd be playing if this hadn't happened. I could use that time hiking around the park, too. It seems like the area ASCO plays in is made up of two pretty steep ravines and thick brush - which means lots of overwatch. >

 

[jackknife09]

Eh, I expected there to be a lot of work involved. I'm happy to have something to tinker with.

As a last resort, my local airsoft supplier carries these:

http://www.airsofttitan.com/p040m.html

Looks like just the thing, if I need to replace the whole chamber. This is luckily one of the upgrades I can make without having to drop $200 on a Zero Trigger.

 

[jackknife09]

Well, this is the hop up chamber internals. They don't look like anything else I've seen, so I'm starting to wonder just who made this thing in the first place...



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I can't find any inherent problems, except for the fact that these plastic parts wiggle quite a bit even while they're installed. The arm in the lower right part of the picture jumps left and right with the slightest pressure. The metal arm on the chamber isn't thick enough to fully hold the sliding piece, either, which I'm guessing is what makes the external lever so squirrely.

The bucking doesn't seem to be fractured or ripped or anything, but it doesn't feel very solid. Maybe a teflon tape mod would do th trick, or just a new bucking, since the air seal might be nonexistent...

I think I'm gonna be at this for a while. If anyone has some advice, or the veterans need some extra pictures or info before they make a verdict, please let me know! Thanks again for your continued assistance, people. :3

** Tiny update, I removed the barrel from the bolt cuff and went at it with white lithium again. Turns out there was a 2 inch section way at the back that I hadn't been able to reach with my first polishing attempt. Took another 20min to clean it all out. Might have been contributing to the accuracy problem.

 

[jackknife09]

It looks similar, but the M324 looks closer to the Echo. The key difference is that the Echo type, UTG type, and pretty much every other sniper type hop up lets you open the metal case. The Javelin's is one solid piece, and only the slide can detach.

What's confusing the balls off of me is that the plastic arm sticking out of the metal chamber has a pair of flanges on it, but the bucking has a groove where some kind of arm is supposed to come down and press on it. So I'm not even 100% solid on how the bucking is supposed to be engaged by that arm...

I'm also pretty sure a teflon tape mod is impossible. With the bolt cuff tightened down, there's practically no room to wrap tape around the bucking/barrel.

What I THINK I could do, is shim the plastic arm, put some tape around the metal slide peg, clean out any remaining gunk, and then see if I can tape off the bucking any. Some fresh lithium grease and I'll put the thing back together, head out to the woods and see if the accuracy has improved any.

If that doesn't work, well... SOL I guess.

 

[jackknife09]

Ooo, fancy, I got moved up to the VIP section!

Well, I opened the old girl up again after a few more tests. It seems the lever on the hop up arm sometimes doesn't engage the bucking. I was able to open the actual barrel and adjust the hop up manually, with a lot more control than with the external lever. This of course will present some difficulty, considering pre-game protocol (at least for ASCO) entails undergoing a chronograph test with the hop up entirely disengaged.

Suffice to say, its AN option, but not THE option I'd prefer.

However, I visited my local airsoft supplier, and one of their gun techs informed me that he'd run across similar problems in the ECHO and UTG bolt actions. I'll be handing this rifle off to him tomorrow, and I'll have a diagnosis in a few days. Best scenario, it's the bucking and I shell out a handful of dollars to have it replaced. Worst case scenario, they'll comparability test the hop up chamber, and I'll be able to buy and install the new one.

While I'm down there I'm gonna browse around their upgrades again. They have a tightbore barrel for $30 and a metal piston, metal spring guide and 150sp spring set for $45. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

 

[jackknife09]

The more I look at it, the more it seems like there's room enough in the barrel to accept an APS2 hop up chamber, so I might just get that PDI one in the near future. There's a lot to balance with the internals here; I have to adhere to FPS/Joule limits for my state's regulations, make sure I don't put too much strain on the trigger assembly, and don't break the bank.

A PDI chamber, TBB (a 6.03 from the local store, or a 6.01 if I can afford it from the intertubes), a new rubber, and some barrel spacers - or DIY ones if I have to - seems like the best combination for a rookie sniper. If it turns out I don't suck in the field, I'll consider buying an upgraded cylinder and piston assembly, too.

And heck yes I've seen Jarhead. War movies are my favies.