Ever see modification to a gun that was just a bad idea?

MosinT53Hunter said:

. . . One was to make your Colt Single Action revolvers more accurate, to bend the barrel in a press.

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Bending of a fixed-sights revolver barrel is the standard method to regulate them in if not satisfactory from the factory. Slightly harder and requiring a subtler touch is the use of a pair of babbit ingots to achieve the same effect.

FlSwampRat said:

Terry, I'd add a third thing. A slightly wider slide release. Too many Glocks I've had come through the store requre me to slightly roll the pistol to get good pressure on the OEM slide release. I have an issue with any pistol that I can't drop it into battery from a shooting grip. I know, the solution is to count your shot and pop a fresh mag in with one still in the chamber, but during a serious incident, that's not always possible.

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For me, the small unobtrusive slide stop on the glock is a big selling point for me, and why I carry one full time. My grip and large hands tend to hit the slide stop, either making it lock open prematurely or not lock open at all on the last shot. I know the solution is to modify my grip, but during a high stress situation, I don't want to be thinking about my thumb position when shooting.

beeenbag said:

My large hands....

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Sure, brag about your big hands and large feet....

FlSwampRat said:

Sure, brag about your big hands and large feet....

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Are you stalking me? I wear a 13 shoe

FlSwampRat said:

Terry, I'd add a third thing. A slightly wider slide release.

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I'm doing a sling shot more and more. No doubt about the slide release. Getting past my OEM bias is hard. I suppose those sold by the larger vendors of these things would be OK. The other thing that could happen is the for the slide ride over an empty magazine. That event could bring on some slow walking and sad music. Might need three hands of any size to clear that one.

Texas10mm said:

Gunsmiths have been doing such stuff for years. Hell, factories do it too. All it takes in the proper equipment.

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Yes. A Bud of mine had been at the S&W Armorer's school and he had been taught how to bend fixed sight S&W pistol barrels to get them to shoot to point of aim. Barrel "straightening" was commonly done, not only on 30 caliber rifles, but larger barrels, as can be seen in the attached pictures.




I got to play with the SA barrel bender, and I could clearly see the shadows in the barrel change as the barrel deflected. It did not take much force on the wheel either, but I doubt I could have bent the 03 barrel in my hands. I am not a fan of barrel bending. I have one M96 Swede that walks as the barrel heats up, I think it may be due to barrel stresses changing as the barrel heats up. I have bent my RWS M54 airgun barrel around my knee. The thing is easily bent as it is a barrel cocker, and when I run out of elevation on the scope, because the barrel has been bent down, I bend it back.


There have been so many firearms ideas introduced and then faded away because they were failures, it is hard to pick one as the worst idea. I will say, after spending time researching metallurgy and the history of metals, I found that the WW1 era Mausers were chambered for a cartridge that produced 43,000 psia, and by the time you get to WW2 the Germans are using a 46,000 psia cartridge. So anytime I see a gunsmithed version of a military action in a belted magnum which the normal operating pressures are above the proof pressures of the original action, and the case head is larger inparting a greater thrust over the 8mm case head, or even just rebarreled to a 270 Win or equivalent, that makes me cringe. Luckily no one actually shoots the things enough to develop excessive headspace, or even burn out the barrel. But there are pictures out there



not that it makes a difference to the fan boys who have a mystical love for these old relics.

Goosey said:

Trigger Point Technology sells a button for your trigger, so that by pressing on the trigger, you can activate a light or laser.


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A tracer round would be faster.

Slamfire said:

Luckily no one actually shoots the things enough to develop excessive headspace, or even burn out the barrel. But there are pictures out there

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The giant bolt knob on that Swedish Mauser is very similar to a project rifle here. The action is an Huskvarna FN 98 that is commercialy proofed. The action is finely finished. That is, not salvaged from a military rifle. Onto the bolt handle is welded a knob some smaller than a golf ball. Who knows what for. Not lovely.

Mowgli Terry said:

The giant bolt knob on that Swedish Mauser is very similar to a project rifle here. The action is an Huskvarna FN 98 that is commercialy proofed. The action is finely finished. That is, not salvaged from a military rifle. Onto the bolt handle is welded a knob some smaller than a golf ball. Who knows what for. Not lovely.

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Looks like a M96 action to me. Looks like one of those 308 Win conversions that were made on the M96 action. I have a very finely Rock Island M1903 that was built into a sporter



And that action, was military, in 1920. It is one of the RIA unfinished receivers that was finished by SA after the Great War. I have handled some military M98 Mausers that were beautifully polished. One just this year was a work of art, a WW1 action chambered for the 6.5-284. Totally inappropriate conversion.

Anyone is free to put a cheap drive shaft behind a 600 horse power engine. Stomp on the gas to see what happens.

How about a 1918 vintage GEW98 rebarreled to 300 WSM=pipe bomb.

Mowgli Terry said:

How about a 1918 vintage GEW98 rebarreled to 300 WSM=pipe bomb.

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Well, I did not post these pictures, this was not meant to be a gotcha moment. But what M98 had a gas vent hole in the bolt and lugs shaped like that?





Where is the safety lug, and this has a sear scallop. That bolt shroud does not look like a M98 shroud.



This is a FN deluxe bolt

Not really a mod but I was browsing in the aisles at the sporting goods section of runnings near the cleaning products and a guy and his friend stopped to look at the CLP. His friend counseled him in the most backwoods, country voice I'd ever heard.

"Brother, you know all dis right here is a scam dont you. I aint use nuthin but WD40 and steel wool on all my guns my whole laff, just git you some WD40 and forget this s***"

I felt sorry for his guns....

Slamfire said:

ut what M98 had a gas vent hole in the bolt and lugs shaped like that?

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You mean there is a difference!

Slamfire said:

Well, I did not post these pictures, this was not meant to be a gotcha moment. But what M98 had a gas vent hole in the bolt and lugs shaped like that?

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Where is the safety lug, and this has a sear scallop. That bolt shroud does not look like a M98 shroud.

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This is a FN deluxe bolt

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Did they reduce the diameter of the receiver ring as well?

Look at the brass no wonder the reciever failed.
That case flowed before the bolt came loose.

Flintshooter said:

This getting off the rails in a hurry.
What I’m talking about is one of a kind garage gunsmith jobs that made a gun unsafe to use.

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I've heard of SKS trigger groups that can be modified for mag dump full auto. Had a guy at work years ago who claimed he did this. Dumb.

Englishmn said:

Look at the brass no wonder the reciever failed.
That case flowed before the bolt came loose.

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You say that with a reloader's eye.

Elkins45 said:

Many, many things have been done to Glocks that qualify. Night sights are the only thing you need to add to a Glock.

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Both my Glock 19 and Glock 22 benefited greatly from 3lb Ghost connectors.

The 2nd Generation Glock 22 was nearly uncontrollable until I replaced the stock recoil spring and guide with a stainless guide and 22lb spring. It's an entirely different gun now.

Englishmn said:

Look at the brass no wonder the reciever failed.
That case flowed before the bolt came loose.

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If the lugs peened the receiver seats, then more and more of the case head would have been out of the chamber. At some level of unsupported case head, the walls would blow.

Chinn describes this issue for automatic weapons in his Machine Gun series





And what I see in the M96 receiver ring rupture is consistent with a case head blow.

lysanderxiii said:

Did they reduce the diameter of the receiver ring as well?

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Obviously I don't own nor never saw the M96 before the receiver ring disappeared from this planet. These are just pictures posted on the internet. But, I have seen lots of military surplus rifles, where the receiver ring markings were ground off. The Argentine's did a lot of that grinding of Argentine crests: the real, true story.

I have seen converted military arms by commercial outfits, like Golden State Arms, that ground the crests off to make their rifles appear new. You can and will see, if you search enough threads, of surplus military Mausers that had the crests ground off and then were polished and blued. The owner of the rifle wants to know how old his rifle is, and since all the identifying marks were removed, no one can give a date. And this was done by small gunsmithing outfits. I think it is and was bad practice to grind off structural material in the load path, but corporate product liability laws were different back then, and anyone can call themselves a gunsmith. And the companies that did it, they are long gone, deliberately so in my opinion. The owners made their profits and the companies which had the liability, well, you can't collect once they are gone.

As has been mentioned, modifying the safe action on a Glock. A guy at the local gun range told me about a guy they had banned from shooting there. A faux high-speed, low-drag type of "operator" with no actual military or LEO background. He carried a Glock with a 3.5lb trigger, trigger guard cut off, dingus removed because, "The only safety you need is between your ears".
He ended up having an ND in the mall parking lot.

Fiv3r said:

As has been mentioned, modifying the safe action on a Glock. A guy at the local gun range told me about a guy they had banned from shooting there.

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Look, it's a fact of life that Bubba is an authority on Glock handguns. Just check out some of the custom work exhibited in some forums. This is not as bad as when Bubba was working on S&W's. The Glock is easier to fix unless the fame has been filed away.

I had a dispute on a Mauser action with a pilgrim. He came in reported the was twisted. I bought that but the rest of the action had been botched up. He had filed away the primary extraction cam area on the bolt plus a bunch of other butcher work. Years later I ran into this idiot and gave him another action. My guess is his gunsmith explained to this guy that his first action was ruined.

I keep some of my early screw ups as a reminder to keep things simple and to leave stuff along. The people who designed these firearms generally knew that they were doing.

I remembered a couple of modifications I think are unsafe. I am not a fan of carrying a 1911 cocked and locked, nor am I a fan of extended safeties. This had an ambi safety and I took that off. But even with just one grip safety, I have found, given enough tries, you will find the safety bumped off when carrying condition 1. And the longer the safety, the easier it is, to bump the safety in the exact opposite direction you want it to be. A bud of mine is a Range Officer at a local indoor range. They see around 40-50 people per week day and 75-100 on Saturday. He commonly sees shooters struggling with their 1911's, not realizing they bumped the safety to "safe" while shooting the thing. You can find a lot of posts where owners who carry the things condition one found the the safety bumped to the "ready" position. It should be easy to understand that if the grip safety is pinned, and the thumb safety gets bumped to "ready", well the only thing keeping the gun from firing is the trigger.



Anyway, I consider the practice of pinning the grip safety to be highly risky. And yet, there are advocates for it.

Another modification that has proven itself dangerous is replacing the Rem M700 extractor with a SAKO extractor.




The Rem M700 extractor is relatively weak, it will wear in time, as do all push feed type extractors, and that will cause failures to eject. It will break if crud is allowed to accumulate underneath the thing, and it is surprising the number of people who never clean their guns. And would never think to get a pick underneath the extractor and clear out whatever is stuck under there. Mike Walker traded these things off to create a very strong action.



The bolt nose is shrouded by the barrel shank, and the receiver ring. The bolt nose will actually expand and fill the barrel shank in extreme over pressure conditions, blocking gas escape in the shooter's face. I have no idea when the idea of cutting the bolt face and adding a SAKO extractor started, but it has been decades, and it always was a bad idea. That SAKO extractor is directly in line with the receiver right lug recess, and if there is gas release, that extractor is blown out of the weapon. I have read of a number of shooters who lost an eyeball when that extractor blew out. And yet, the smartest guys in the room keep on touting SAKO extractors on the bolt face. And, to show their magical thinking, once they became aware of SAKO extractors blowing out, they decided that M16 extractors were better because of their faith that mil spec means something. There is this reverence for "mil spec" boarding on mystical. This is a M16 extractor on the bolt face of a M700





I am sure the M16 extractor is a fine extractor, on a M16. And because the extractor in a M16 is mostly inside the carrier, which is inside the upper, it tends to stay put, even in catastrophic blow ups. But, you take that mil spec extractor and put it on a M700, I have no doubt that a good gas release will shear the pin and blow that bigger, heavier, extractor right through the shooting glasses of the guy behind the trigger.

It looks like a poopy.

psyopspec said:

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