This post is an update to my old Foliage Green Krytac, last featured here in a form that quite closely mimicked the real WarSport SBR:
As cool as the stock handguard did undeniably look, it was particularly thick-walled, more so than any other forend I have ever encountered on a rifle. When that excess of material is combined with the fact that airsoft guns are almost exclusively made from a cheap alloy of aluminium and zinc with lead and goodness knows what else thrown in to the melt, the front end of the gun was made ridiculously heavy for a short rifle even with no accessories. And with a terrible proprietary accessory setup to boot.
Because I have long had an early BCM KMR handguard on another build, which featured their short-lived magnesium alloy construction, I have built up a great affinity for similar product offerings. So as much as absurdly unnecessary as it is to use a premium handguard on an airsoft AEG, I opted for the V Seven Hyper-Light M-LOK rail for this build:
https://www.vsevenweaponsystems.com/upper-parts/magnesium-hyper-light-m-lok-handguard-ar15
This 11″ rail weighs in at a mere 5.4oz including the barrel nut, and while I don’t have numbers for the original LVOA style handguard, I would confidently say that it weighed over a pound by itself, maybe pushing 1.5lbs. This single part change (which took a fair bit of tool and machine work to accomplish given the platform) completely transformed the entire build. I couldn’t find any M-LOK covers that I liked, but I think the FG rail bungees fit well with the mid-10s theme here.
At a similar time to the handguard swap I also changed from the Black/FG mix B5 SOPMOD over to the SOPMOD Bravo, again buying 2 in different colours, mixing parts then selling off the mutt. I had no need for battery storage or the extra wide cheek weld, so again shaving some weight just made sense.
I have only made quite minor changes to small parts in the past 5 years since taking these pictures, just to really squeeze out the best ergonomics and aesthetics, as overall the build was pretty much spot-on once it reached this point. Not really a clone of a commonplace US civilian AR build that I would generally like to emulate, but extremely handy and serves well for both indoor and outdoor gameplay.
Leave a Reply