Heard the sling was for you... Hope it is going to a good home!
Love paying it forward!

This is frickin funny!! I love it...

I kinda meant the retro forum as a whole and not just the pay it forward thread. I'm sorry to hear that things didn't work out for you and if I had anything left to offer you I would.

Yeah, I am still waiting on my paperwork to clear on my SBR Vector uzi so I can pick it up but now I kinda want to build a trench gun!

That's funny right there.

So true though....

1. I love "retro inspired" –– I think of them as retromod, like my 65 mustang with modern drivetrain and suspension parts and a slight 21st century cast to the bodywork (in progress). I also love the straight retro clones like John Thomas's incredibly clever builds.

2. I bought an M12 on GB and UPS broke it into little pieces. The dealer was absolutely awesome and held the Big Brown Box Busters to account. They actually came and picked up the M12 fragments and I got a check in the mail for my price and the shipping. Still looking for an M12, Ideally in the Northeast where I can go fetch it readily.

3. This forum is definitely different from the rest of the site. I get enormously weary of book-smart fanboys trying to tell me what I carried in Afghanistan. (If they want to go where the iron crosses grow, the recruiting office is still open). Here people document the things they say, but in a friendly, engaging way; and this forum has answered a lot of questions I'd had for decades, and steered me to resources that have made me vastly more knowledgable. Now, I can answer questions and not just ask them. That path too is open to all who would tread it.

4. Addictive? Let's see. I stumbled over this forum after seeing an ad for an M16A1 parts kit. I bought an A1 build from GB and it wasn't quite right. This forum and RBR helped me fins parts. I learned about NoDak Spud. I found an incomplete prototype build and finished it (and keep improving it). Then I had to start a gun blog. Then, I had to refresh some other areas of my collection.. So now my goals are:
a. Build or buy one of everything I carried or shot in combat or in the Army. (Not all retro)
b. Refresh some other areas of my collection. I.e. it was just wrong as two boys kissin' that I didn't have a Garand. (No personal offense to any retro heads who roll that way –– it takes all kinds to make a world. It's just an old Army expression. Cleaned up, actually).
c. So as a result I've committed to over $15k in guns and ancillary expenses (NFA trust, etc) this year. And we're just out of Q1.

Nah, it's not addictive. I can quit any time.

"Needed them"? I remember when I was growing up my mother having the talk with me about "need" Vs "want"


See, that's what I'm doing wrong. I buy things and then try and figure out where they are going to go or what I am going to do with them. It's also why I end up with parts for builds I'm not even doing.


Thanks for going the extra mile!


That's not helping!

I know I just posted this in that other thread, but it just seems like such an appropo place to repost...

We think of ourselves as a 12-step program.

Step1: You want a sort of 'Vietnam looking rifle or carbine' and find the forum.

Step2: Spend hours and hours reading through a zillion threads and still don't understand WTF an 'MVP' marked barrel is, but like the pics you see.

Step3: After a particularly long session online you follow our advice and go to the EE where you see an upper JUST LIKE IN THE PICTURES! You buy it immediately and congratulate yourself by opening another beer. You gloat until the next afternoon after work when:

Step4: You post pics of your new aquisition and 36 members post a list of things wrong with it, but, in the nicest possible way. You just feel like a dumbass.

Step5: Some long term member feels sorry for your predicament and contacts you, offers to help by supplying the part/gun/upper/bayonet you really wanted or gives advice, or both.

Step6: You read more, find ALL THE FUCKING GUIDES PINNED AT THE TOP OF THE PAGE and realize that everything you bought is worthless except for the absolfuckinglutely 601 charging handle and the early barrel, which although pinned with an ugly, POS 5.5" 'moderator' is just what a certain member wants for an E1 build. Someone mentions 'RBR'.

Step7: You buy $100 worth of tools to tear the upper down, sell the parts, and break even, but immediately spend 3x the money you recovered buying more parts off the EE.

Step8: You put your perfect, well, nearly perfect upper together, then realize you should have reanodized the receiver because it doesn't match and has a couple minor scratches that are driving you nuts. You tear the whole thing back down, having never put a round through it, and send it to Victor, along with the Spikes lower you already had 'to save money'.

Step 9: You get all the parts back, plus a REAL ALUMINUM CAR STOCK! Who gives a shit if it's Bushmaster - it's NOT PLASTIC! WAHOO! Your barrel comes back from being pinned, but you are now thinking E1 instead of E2, and WTH, a tax stamp is only $200 - well worth it. In the mean time, somehow you missed that the NDS lower reciever is the only way ONLY WAY to go. You realize this the day Victor returns your gorgeous Spikes lower in XM grey. You can't bear to look at it, but are too ashamed to sell the damn thing. You put in an order for an NDS lower, but of course they are out, so you spend 3 weeks staring at your other parts, which drives you nuts, so you spend your time perusing the EE and score a REAL 602 UPPER! I MEAN THE WHOLE DAMN THING! HOLY CRAP, HOW DID I FIND THIS?????!!!!! You don't tell anyone on the retro board because you are still missing parts and want to present the build as complete, plus those bastards will now want one like yours and be competing for the same parts.

Step10: The bank repossesses your car and the gas company shuts off service for non-payment, but you've been eating nothing but Top Ramen and Tecate for 4 months, so who gives a rat's ass? The cold showers take some getting used to, but since your girlfriend left you for being a 'gun freak' you kind of need them, and they're really not so bad. You buy a real GI steelpot off ebay for only $289 and start wearing it in the shower with your poncho just to see what it was like. Your friggin' closets are full of so many small, medium and long cardboard boxes that you start sorting them and inventorying them periodically, and marking what is in them with a sharpie. You soon begin consolidating parts, making the markings into lists. You congratulate yourself on coming up with such an innovative system on your way to the food bank because you decided to buy a few extra parts as an investment.

Step 11: You quit your job for a job in a gun shop that pays 1/2 as much just because there's a raggedy-ass LH handguard in the display case that is painted green, with brown bakelite showing through. You cringe and sweat everytime your boss shows it to someone casually : 'Can you believe the AR15 began with crap like THIS?' When they laugh you consider where to hide the bodies. How could anyone be so blase about this? You move all your good shit into a storage unit because you can't afford your apartment anymore, but who cares? You shower at work using the rainspout, fantasizing about the green LH handguard in the case. You are almost there.

Step 12: Charlie Sheen stops in the gunshop one day and your boss of course, spends an inordinate amount of time bullshitting with him, even though he is on record that he thinks he's worthless. Bosses. Charlie has a thing for AR15's, so of course, after handling several, your boss shows him...the handguard. Charlie says, 'Yeah, that's cool. Whaddya want for it?' and your boss hems and haws until they settle on $150. You want to slit your boss's throat because you offered him $250 a week earlier, but maybe it was the smell of the dumpster you slept in that night that threw him off. Anyway, CS buys the HG...the very fucking HG that is an exact match for the RH one you have (The one you smuggled in to check while your boss was at his daughter's wedding, bar mitzvah, whatever.) You sneak out the back, then haul ass around the building just as Charlie is getting into his Ferrari with 'Precious' in his hand. You consider just jumping on him and mugging him, but you aren't that well armed, and Charlie's no pushover. So, you strike up a conversation, trying to keep your eyes off the HG he keeps waving around. Scarred as it is, you can't abide it being dinged or scarred further. It just wouldn't look right in the shrine you're building in the storage unit. Suddenly Charlie gets a scared look in his eyes, perhaps becuse of your references to Vietnam, ear necklaces, B-52's. tunnels, and Bouncing Bettys. He tosses the HG into the air and you dive for it before it hits the concrete, and he takes the moment to start the Ferrari and tear off into the smog.

The moral of this story is, YOU GOT THE HANDGUARD!!!! WAHOOOOO!!!!

Welcome to the forum.

Morg I hope that wasn't your biography. Fortunately for me we did enough XM177's in the 90's to cure me. Doubt if any were as nice as a real retroland Brick/ 45Bravo unit on a NDS but there was money to be made and we tried to talk buyers out of doing them. Probably ruined some rare by today's standard barrels. Ice cream comes in different flavors for a reason.

By your owm limit you have room for 5 more!
Better get cracking!

Y'all should be ashamed of yourselves!

Yep. Tex is what's known as an 'enabler'.

I was nearly done with a 649, a 607, an XM177E1 and a 635 build, plus had parts for another 603 and a 604 mostly together when the so-called 'recession' hit. The hardest to sell for me was the 635, because I had everything except a tac stamp, and they were mostly genuine Colt parts including the upper. Over the last 3 years I slowly sold off a ton of parts I had squirreled away, including several nice barrels, receivers, BCGs. I also had a 'NY ban carbine done except for the barrelling, I ended up parting it out - never did shoot it.

I've now been working steadily for 8 months or so, and have bought a few things, am planning a couple builds and two of them will be SBRs, but then I will be concentrating on buying ammo. I'm also more concerned with building viable weapons, scratches or not, than building pristine safe queens. By this time next year I expect to have 5 complete rifles/ carbines, plus at least 1000 rounds for each one. I have found that I am mostly cured, as long as I stay away from the EE or ebay. I have frizzled away too much good money on stuff that 'was too good a deal to pass up' like my recent aquisition a few months ago of a C7 Colt upper on 10.5" barrel.

The barrel will be swapped out with the 6933 upper I also recently picked up cheap, giving me a 733 with a spare Mk18 upper. Still need to cut a carry handle down. I have two other unusual builds started, one of which I am hoping to blow the minds of people here with, the other will require Jerrell's skills to complete. All in all though, I look at it as a hobby, and spend most of my time here just watching what others are doing. John Thomas has been doing some amazing stuff lately - blows my stuff out of the water, but I'm over the need to replicate. I've been able to stay away from the need to build a 601 for example. I really need to get back to Sedona in a couple weeks and pick up my lowers and get the one together for the A2/M4 upper so I can send out my XM16E1 lower for engraving then put it back on the rifle. Finding myself with only one viable lower has been disturbing. Not sure how I got here, but it used to bug me that I was so close on so many nice projects and had to sell them. Now I am just looking forwards to finishing what I have going now. Plan on rebarrelling the two uppers next time I'm home, and pulling apart another upper, but have to mount a vise first. So am I cured? Not quite, but I feel kind of like I'm in remission.