GunLab (KnownHost) » AR-70

Machine gun shoot 11-30

Chuck — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 08:00:38 +0000

With the SAR show coming up we have a group of people staying at the house. So the Wednesday prior to the show a couple of us put on a small machine gun shoot, just to have some fun. Some of these shoots have ended up being a couple of hundred people in attendance. This year we wanted to keep it a little smaller so only about 50 people were invited.

Everyone at the house was allowed to choose one weapon from the reference collection to take out. In the past it has actually required two vehicles to haul out all the guns people wanted to take. This year it was kept small due to the amount of work that had to be accomplished along with everything else.

The weapons that were taken was the SIG AMT, the early roller lock family of weapons ( Gerat 05, 06 and the STG 45) A Beretta AR-70, the MP-44 as well as a variety of handguns. There was a number of machine guns at the shoot as well.

Here is a quick video of the fun that was had.

Beretta AR-70 magazine modifications

Chuck — Tue, 31 May 2016 08:00:55 +0000

A couple of years ago I bought a Beretta AR-70 rifle for the reference collection. This was before the availability of replacement magazines for the rifle. Because of the total lack of spare magazines in this country people came up with ingenious ideas to modify existing magazines to allow them to shoot there rifles. I find it interesting to see how they did the modification. You never know about the future and what it holds for available magazines.

For those of you that may not know what an AR-70 rifle is, here are a couple of pictures of the weapon.

When I bought my rifle it came with a modified AR-15 magazine. So this is my first example of magazine modification.

What was done was to weld a piece of aluminum to the front and side of the magazine. Then they attached a locking notch on the rear of the magazine. The strip that was weld on the front allowed for positioning the magazine in the front of the magazine well for proper feeding. This was had fitted after it was welded on.

A couple of close up pictures of the conversion. You will notice that the side spacer was welded on one side one. Even doing this the magazine worked correctly.

You can also see that no magazine stops are present on the side of the magazine.

Later I was able to obtain original rifle magazines. This is what an original AR-70 magazine looks like.

This close up shows the magazine stops and what the magazine latch block looks like.

A close up review of this magazine shows four components for the magazine body. The right and left sides of the body, the wrap around upper support assembly with the feed lips incorporated into it as well as the stops that are pressed in. The final part that was added was the magazine latch block of the rear of the magazine.

Pete, a friend of Gun Lab, sent this AR-15 magazine modification. This is a very nicely done conversion. It allows the magazine, with a bit of work, to be converted back to its original design. What was done with this magazine was to make a sheet metal housing to fit around the original AR-15 magazine to allow it to fit and operate in an AR-70 magazine housing.

You can see in this picture that the housing was hand fitted to the rifle.

You will notice that with the fitted housing that the front of the sheet metal has been machined away to allow proper fit into the rifle as well as allowing for proper lock up in the front of the magazine well.

Here are a couple of pictures showing all the magazines together for a better overall understanding.

As with all magazines that had been modified for use there is a certain amount of hand fitting that goes with the project.

Answers to the post of 11-29

Chuck — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 14:14:35 +0000

The first question that would needed to be answered is what do all these parts have in common. That answer would be up coming projects at Gun Lab.

The Cetme, H&K, 05 , G-41 G-43 and 03 pictures is for the 05 project we are working on. The fire control group is changing to be a copy of the 03 rifle. The safety will be going back to a G-41/G-43/03 type. The magazine will be more in line with The G-43 /03 type. There is a great deal of design work that needs to go on to make the rifle.

The AR-10 bolt is for the AR-16 rifle that is next on the list of rifles that we will be building.

I like single shot rifles and with a friend on mine (Orin) we are working on making usable drawings of a number of them.

I have a Scottie rifle that someone sporterized the stock. Ian from forgotten weapons let me borrow his parts so I could make the correct ones for my rifle.

The destroyer and AR-70 parts are for my rifles and needed to be repaired and measured.

Last but not least is the EM-2 bolt which is being reversed engineered to try and correct a few problems with the rifle design.

On to the pictures.