cvasqu03
UZI Talk Supporter
Cheap Scope Mount project with pics
I just finished a project which I've been planning for the better part of a year. I'd had most of the parts already, I just had to get myself a drill press to finish everything off. I'd actually tried starting this several months ago, but gave up in frustration.
First off, I'd like to thank NFAnut, Firefighter, and Watchin for their excellent advice, without which, I would have once again given up on this.
I've been wanting to mount a red dot to my Norinco UZI ever since Amphibian let me use his full size full auto with Docter sights. I'd never used a red dot before, but I loved the way it worked. The problem was that it just seemed like overkill to put a $400 scope with a $200 custom topcover on a gun I'd originally paid $300 for. M60JOe makes a great topcover with mount, but It also was a little too expensive for a semi (in my opinion). If I had a full auto and wanted to put some type of Acog (?sp) scope on it, I'd probably buy one of his, but I was trying to put a cheap $25 red dot I got at a gun show on a Norinco 320, so I wanted to keep costs down. I want to point out right now that this WILL NOT work for a full auto gun for reasons I'll explain later.
I started off by buying a 2" rail from M&A parts. It cost me about $15 and came with the appropriate screws and two specialized nuts. The screws were threaded 10-32, which is why I was asking about this in a recent thread. The rail itself had the two screw holes only about an inch apart, so I started off with measuring the centerline on the center raised rail on the topcover. I then placed the rail on top of it and decided more of less where I wanted it, then, I measured the space specifically to drill the two holes for the screws to go in.
Here's where I ran into the problems that made me give up on this months ago. That topcover must be made of some of the most resilient metal I've ever dealt with. I've drilled into metal before, but that topcover went through at least three different drill bits before I finally gave up. Now that I have a drill press, I though I'd give it another try and was told by members here that I should use a #21 drill bit, preferably made of Cobalt. The closest I could find was a 5/32" which NFAnut told me would be good enough. He was right. Once I'd clamped the topcover in place, I put a drop of Breakfree CLP on the spot where I'd be drilling and applied slow firm pressure. This time, the drill went right through, so I drilled the second hole. After cleaning up the holes, I proceeded to tap the holes. Like I pointed out before, I'd never tapped a hole before, so I was kind of afraid I'd end up with a sloppy mess. As it turns out, it was pretty easy, but mostly because I went slowly. I made sure to hold the piece perfectly horizontal on a tabletop and drove the tap in slowly and with constant pressure. Both holes were successfully tapped in a matter of minutes. This whole plan was contingent on the toprail being thick enough to be threaded, which In my estimation, it was, but that was just a guess. After tapping it, I clearly saw at least three threads in each, which might not be much but I figured should be enough for my purposes.
This is what I had so far.
I hand screwed the two nuts into the newly tapped holes and saw that they went in well and held perfectly. I measured that about 4mm protruded down into the botom of the topcover, which would interfere with the bolt, so I got out my dremel tool and cut down the screws. I also got out my little tube of guntite, which I was planning to use to lock these in place once I screwed them in. Here's a picture after they were cut down:
At this point, it was a simple matter of applying the GunTite to the threads of the screws and assembling the unit. I made sure to screw the screws in nice and tight, but I knew it was important not to overtighten since the cover is still rather thin. I'm hoping the GunTite hardens well enough to keep it all nice and tight, but if someone else is trying this, they might want to consider silver soldering the screws in place once done. This is what it looks like once assembled:
I then mounted my cheap red dot sight onto the unit and slapped it on in place. It seems pretty good to me, but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. The rail is low enough that the scope is really low (though not low enough to cowitness the front-sight of course). The only problem I had was that it was so low, I had to use a screwdriver to push the topcover release button back to release the cover because my finger didn't fit in.
Now, here's a word of warning: doing this the way I did would be unsafe in a full auto gun. The rail is only 2" long, but it sticks out just a little too far forward, and unlike M60Joe's mount, it is not raised for the slotcover to slide under, meaning that with this topcover mounted, I loose the last half inch of rearward movement on the cocking knob. I tried it on my semi-auto chinese UZI, and I can still work the action and eject cases by hand. I'm sure a semi rifle will still work with this setup, but I'm still not too happy about this. On a full auto rifle, the knob is supposed to go back even farther than on a semi, and the last 4mm of rearward motion are required to activate the ratceting topcover. If I were to put this cover on a full auto gun (even if it had a ratcheting device built in) and tried to pull the bolt back, the minute I let go it would fly forward firing off a round.
It may be possible to get past this problem by cutting off one step in the rail up front, or better yet, by milling down the bottom of the rail up front to allow clearance for the slotcover. I know some people also cut the slotcover in these situations too, but I'd rather not do that. I still haven't decided what I'm going to do about this yet, but I'll post here if I come up with something.
So here's the breakdown including parts:
Rail with nuts & screws (the nuts don't get used).......$15.00
5/32" cobalt drill bit ...............................................$3.50
10-32 drill & tap kit (drill bit didn't work, tap did).........$5.00
I didn't include the price of the drill press since I was getting this for other projects as well. Overall, not bad for a little bit of work. I'll post pictures of the rifle with scope mounted tomorrow, my digital camera doesn't have a flash so all my attempts have been a little grainy.
I just finished a project which I've been planning for the better part of a year. I'd had most of the parts already, I just had to get myself a drill press to finish everything off. I'd actually tried starting this several months ago, but gave up in frustration.
First off, I'd like to thank NFAnut, Firefighter, and Watchin for their excellent advice, without which, I would have once again given up on this.
I've been wanting to mount a red dot to my Norinco UZI ever since Amphibian let me use his full size full auto with Docter sights. I'd never used a red dot before, but I loved the way it worked. The problem was that it just seemed like overkill to put a $400 scope with a $200 custom topcover on a gun I'd originally paid $300 for. M60JOe makes a great topcover with mount, but It also was a little too expensive for a semi (in my opinion). If I had a full auto and wanted to put some type of Acog (?sp) scope on it, I'd probably buy one of his, but I was trying to put a cheap $25 red dot I got at a gun show on a Norinco 320, so I wanted to keep costs down. I want to point out right now that this WILL NOT work for a full auto gun for reasons I'll explain later.
I started off by buying a 2" rail from M&A parts. It cost me about $15 and came with the appropriate screws and two specialized nuts. The screws were threaded 10-32, which is why I was asking about this in a recent thread. The rail itself had the two screw holes only about an inch apart, so I started off with measuring the centerline on the center raised rail on the topcover. I then placed the rail on top of it and decided more of less where I wanted it, then, I measured the space specifically to drill the two holes for the screws to go in.
Here's where I ran into the problems that made me give up on this months ago. That topcover must be made of some of the most resilient metal I've ever dealt with. I've drilled into metal before, but that topcover went through at least three different drill bits before I finally gave up. Now that I have a drill press, I though I'd give it another try and was told by members here that I should use a #21 drill bit, preferably made of Cobalt. The closest I could find was a 5/32" which NFAnut told me would be good enough. He was right. Once I'd clamped the topcover in place, I put a drop of Breakfree CLP on the spot where I'd be drilling and applied slow firm pressure. This time, the drill went right through, so I drilled the second hole. After cleaning up the holes, I proceeded to tap the holes. Like I pointed out before, I'd never tapped a hole before, so I was kind of afraid I'd end up with a sloppy mess. As it turns out, it was pretty easy, but mostly because I went slowly. I made sure to hold the piece perfectly horizontal on a tabletop and drove the tap in slowly and with constant pressure. Both holes were successfully tapped in a matter of minutes. This whole plan was contingent on the toprail being thick enough to be threaded, which In my estimation, it was, but that was just a guess. After tapping it, I clearly saw at least three threads in each, which might not be much but I figured should be enough for my purposes.
This is what I had so far.
I hand screwed the two nuts into the newly tapped holes and saw that they went in well and held perfectly. I measured that about 4mm protruded down into the botom of the topcover, which would interfere with the bolt, so I got out my dremel tool and cut down the screws. I also got out my little tube of guntite, which I was planning to use to lock these in place once I screwed them in. Here's a picture after they were cut down:
At this point, it was a simple matter of applying the GunTite to the threads of the screws and assembling the unit. I made sure to screw the screws in nice and tight, but I knew it was important not to overtighten since the cover is still rather thin. I'm hoping the GunTite hardens well enough to keep it all nice and tight, but if someone else is trying this, they might want to consider silver soldering the screws in place once done. This is what it looks like once assembled:
I then mounted my cheap red dot sight onto the unit and slapped it on in place. It seems pretty good to me, but I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. The rail is low enough that the scope is really low (though not low enough to cowitness the front-sight of course). The only problem I had was that it was so low, I had to use a screwdriver to push the topcover release button back to release the cover because my finger didn't fit in.
Now, here's a word of warning: doing this the way I did would be unsafe in a full auto gun. The rail is only 2" long, but it sticks out just a little too far forward, and unlike M60Joe's mount, it is not raised for the slotcover to slide under, meaning that with this topcover mounted, I loose the last half inch of rearward movement on the cocking knob. I tried it on my semi-auto chinese UZI, and I can still work the action and eject cases by hand. I'm sure a semi rifle will still work with this setup, but I'm still not too happy about this. On a full auto rifle, the knob is supposed to go back even farther than on a semi, and the last 4mm of rearward motion are required to activate the ratceting topcover. If I were to put this cover on a full auto gun (even if it had a ratcheting device built in) and tried to pull the bolt back, the minute I let go it would fly forward firing off a round.
It may be possible to get past this problem by cutting off one step in the rail up front, or better yet, by milling down the bottom of the rail up front to allow clearance for the slotcover. I know some people also cut the slotcover in these situations too, but I'd rather not do that. I still haven't decided what I'm going to do about this yet, but I'll post here if I come up with something.
So here's the breakdown including parts:
Rail with nuts & screws (the nuts don't get used).......$15.00
5/32" cobalt drill bit ...............................................$3.50
10-32 drill & tap kit (drill bit didn't work, tap did).........$5.00
I didn't include the price of the drill press since I was getting this for other projects as well. Overall, not bad for a little bit of work. I'll post pictures of the rifle with scope mounted tomorrow, my digital camera doesn't have a flash so all my attempts have been a little grainy.
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