I was aimlessly perusing e-sarco and saw the parts category for the M4 Survival Rifle and had to investigate further. Well, a few hours later I found the prints online for them and pulled the trigger on buying the parts. It looks like at a minimum I will have to machine a new receiver, turn and chamber a barrel, probably make a few other small pieces.

Has anyone else come across one of these or tried to build one?

I had one lone ago. I was told they where in bomber survival kits but do not know for sure. Someone extended the barrel on mine.



 

How tight did the mags seat into the gun? From what I can gather, the"magwell" and catch seem like they might be a little flimsy.

There was some slop but it functioned fine.

Thanks for the info.

The wire stock on the M4 looks a awful lot like the stock on a IJ M1 carbine stock.....Did you find one for it?

No I haven't, but I found the drawings for it, so I plan to just fabricate a replica. I'm out of town for work now, but when I get home I'll make some time to get this ball rolling.

Looking at it again I suspect it's just a grease gun wire stock.

Wow. I hope you'll keep us posted as this progresses.

I started unpacking, cleaning, inventorying, and inspecting the parts I bought so far. This is going to be a slow build, like all my gun builds.  I expect to have it completed around the end of the calendar year. The bolt had some ding marks, I just filed down the deformation in the ejector and extractor slots, but don't plan to weld and blend the profile back to original. The bolt should work fine. I think sarco sent me some random parts, because I don't recognize them in any of the drawings or any online pics of assembled M4's. Here's some pics of what I got so far.













First order of business is going to be ordering material to machine the receiver, fabricate the wire stock, and a barrel blank to start profiling. There's quite a few small parts that I will have to make since I can't find them online anywhere (barrel takedown screw, bolt stop screw, ejector, sear pin, front sight, rear sight assembly, and some others). I'll post updates as I make progress.

I have one... dad acquired it in the early 60's... it sports a FS to make it legal. Fun to shoot and surprisingly accurate. I lucked up and got a new/old stock complete bolt off GB a few years ago.

Nice, I'd like to compare mine side by side with an original eventually.

So far I've started profiling the barrel and threaded the chamber end where it will mate to the receiver. I plan to chamber it at a later date (not sure if I will buy the reamer and headspace gauges or just rent them, probably the latter).





Here's the material that will eventually become the receiver laying on top of the receiver drawing. I printed all the drawings and put them in a binder.



I'm almost finished fabricating the wire stock. I just need to weld the cross brace near the butt. Here's pics of the progress.







I hope to start on the receiver this week. Plan to first turn the OD, bore the ID, and thread the barrel mating end. I want to make sure the receiver is threaded true and concentric with the barrel before I waste time on the remaining operations only to scrap it because I poorly cut the receiver threads.

I'm enjoying the thread, OP - keep up the good work, and thanks for sharing it here!

Awesome OP, good to see those old parts are going to be made into something again.

Please continue to keep us abreast of your progress. Most interesting thread here.

Here's the latest progress on the receiver; turned the OD, bored the ID, threaded the barrel mating end (test fit with the barrel, have about 0.010" of runout from the receiver to the end of the barrel...not great, but good enough for a survival rifle), started drilling holes, milled the bottom flats, and milled out the magazine opening.











Next up is to finish shaping the magwell opening (needs to be rectangular), tap the drilled holes, drill and tap more holes, mill the ejection port, and mill the cocking handle slot.

Very cool thread! Looking forward to continued progress.

Here are some pics of mine... my dad acquired it in the early 1960's IIRC... for years we shot it as kids (I'm 54). Of course in its original configuration it was a SBR so later in time I had a FS attached... hated to do it but no way in hell I was going to destroy the rifle or get caught with it and get hammered. It has peep sights in the rear, but seeing as I did not care about collector value (if there is/was any) I had the receiver drilled and tapped for a scope mount. It's a really neat and fun rifle to shoot... quite accurate as well.

Doing some research years ago it seems very few were accidently sold to the civilian market but I do not have the source of that information to cite. I did see one on GunBroker some years back for an insane asking price of 5K, I don't recall if it sold or not.

I did manage to pick up a complete NOS bolt off GunBroker a few years ago... the guy did not reveal too much information as to where it came from other than he had a few and they were from an Estate sale.

Of all the guns my dad had, this one brings back fond memories... R.I.P. Moe... we miss you every day.

Thanks for sharing. I hope to one day pass this rifle down to one of my deserving kids.

After getting back from work travel, I'm just picking up where I left off on the receiver. Hope to have some updates in the next week or so.

This week's progress; drilling holes on the left side of the receiver (to be tapped later), milling out the ejection port, and milling out the cocking handle slot. One surface of the cocking handle slot is the load bearing surface which retains the bolt in battery. Kind of a critical feature on this receiver. I will probably put some layout fluid on it later and hone it more precise to match the cocking handle locking lug. I'd hate for the headspace to change to much after that surface wears in.

Ejection port in progress.



Ejection port finished.



Test assembly with bolt and cocking handle.



Holes drilled on left side of receiver for various features.



Bolt forward and locked in battery.



So far no major issues with machining. It really is a simple design. However, I believe the receiver's load bearing feature for locking the cocking handle and therefore keeping the bolt in battery is definitely a weak link. I wouldn't use this design for any larger cartridges.

Yes, it was quite the gov't surplus mistake.  Apparently quite a few were sold - obviously, not all were recalled.  Good legal fix.

Slowly but surely, progress is being made. I made the ejector insert for the receiver, hardened it, and welded it in place. I used the bolt as a welding fixture to make sure the ejector stayed square and didn't distort too much. Next I had to fabricate the trigger and sear housing piece, which then had to get welded to bottom of the receiver. The drawing dimensions for the trigger and sear axis pin holes didn't work so well. The sear had lots of over travel, which allowed the firing pin to drift further forward than the ideal cocked point. I ended up scrapping the first housing, making note of the sloppy engagement between the sear-firing pin and the trigger-sear. Made some dimensional adjustments for the sear and trigger axis pin locations and fabricated the new housing. The trigger and sear function much better now. Here's pics of the progress:

Ejector fabricated


Ejector welded into the receiver while using the bolt as a fixture


Bending die I made for for forming the trigger housing


Bending die loaded with a blank piece of 0.062" thick mild steel


Bending operation complete


Trigger housing piece formed to shape


Trigger housing dressed down to final size and prepped for welding to receiver


Trigger housing welding complete, but still needs trigger and sear axis pin holes drilled


Trigger, sear, and safety components installed for operation test (no bueno, had to repeat all of the above in order to correct the axis pin hole locations)


Another view of the trigger and sear catch gap. This gap was fixed with the new axis hole locations


After redoing the trigger housing fabrication, I mock assembled what I've got so far (almost there!)


Next up is sourcing some small screws, machining the special bolt and barrel retention screws, sourcing shim material for the bolt-to-barrel headspacing adjustment, then of course finishing the barrel chambering, barrel extractor relief cut, barrel retention screw relief cut, profiling the barrel taper, and machining the front sight. I still need to find some Lyman peep sights to fit up to the receiver as well. The Lyman 55H peep sights are long gone it seems.

That's frickin cool as hell that an Arfcommer as one of the real thing!  Bad ass.  Looks like at some point the trigger guard got squished when compared to other pics of those guns.

Yep... sure does. Funny I never really noticed it...

There is one on GB right now:  http://www.gunbroker.com/item/567590655

and a barrel: http://www.gunbroker.com/item/568394394

Thanks for the heads up.  I bid on it, but they apparently want more than I'm willing to pay.  I bid just a bit over $1000 and didn't meet the reserve.  I asked what the reserve price was and got no answer.  

Here's one complete, less barrel for $1150.


Thought about buying it, but don't need another project.

http://arizona.backpage.com/SportsEquipForSale/1150-military-m4-survival-rifle/31421939

Weird.  Looks like that one has wood grips.

It also appears the owner removed the barrel so they wouldn't run a foul of the NFA.  Smart.  So you could buy it and the original barrel, the file a form 1 and reattach it.  Boom.  Registered NFA SBR.

Very cool project! Thanks for sharing