User friendly mods I made to my latest VSR project

Just for those that are interested in doing something similar.

I did this as my other VSR resides in a CA M24 stock, and as I like the grip and the check riser I made for that I thought I'd try and replicate it in my newly acquired secondhand VSR, I also wanted to use the space inside the stock to be more useful and carry 1 maybe 2 spare mags that are easily accessible than ripping the rubber end cap off everytime I need to get in there and fill the holes left by the previous owners cheek riser.



All I used were a standard VSR stock, a spare TM M16 solid stock end cap I had floating around in my spares, a tube of bondo/bodyfiller, some screws and a dremel with a large sanding drum, I also used some 120 grit sand paper to do the finish sanding.

I started by grinding the previous owners paint off back to the plastic in the areas I was about to apply the filler, whilst I was doing this I also ground in some gouges to act as a key for the filler.

Once this was done I screwed in 2 screws into the grip and 3 along the cheek riser to give the basic profile I wanted, they also provide excellent support for the filler.

I then used super glue to glue the M16 stock end into place.

I then mixed 3 or 4 batches of filler and applied it trying to follow the profile provided by the screws. Try to work fast and also try to keep as close to the desired shape as much as possible, it'll save on the amount of sanding later

Once hard I then went to work with the sanding drum and sand paper and ended up with what you see here.... Hope you like

Close ups......





Next to do is add some internal strengthening bracing, as I've noticed the stock twists quite badly around the mag well area during use.

I also need to take pictures of the new coat of paint its now wearing, just as a teaser the paint scheme is hand painted and largely inspired by the schemes used by WW2 British Firefly/Achilles tank crews and the German 'Ambush' scheme that was fairly common on their vehicles from about '44 onwards. whether it actually works or not remains to be seen :-/

Pics soon....

Took advantage of the fact its not arsing down with rain and did the pics asap.....

Here you go......





Room for just the 1 mag in here.....



I thought I'd explain why I chose the scheme, the idea is that the shadowy underside of the gun is painted a lighter shade so as to lift the dark areas out of the shadow, this helps to fool the eye into thinking there isn't any shadow when infact there actually is and into thinking the area seen is actually smaller than it is...... The crews of 17 pounder equipped Firefly and Achilles tanks used to do this to the underside of the front of there barrels upto the point that where a standard Shermans gun barrel would start, this would help fool the eye of your average German grunt into thinking what they were up against was a bog stock Sherman and not a heavy hitter like the 17 pounder.

The 'Ambush' pattern is not a direct copy of the 1 used by the Germans, more a rendition of it as the German yellow/brown I feel is much to 'yellow' to be of any camouflage value, and really only done because I like the look of it and am interested to see if it actually would work