Airsoft MG34

Well i suppose you can see all the detail when the photos are this big.

There is going to be loads of battery space so i can fit a mother***er of a battery and get an insane rate of fire and scythe all those M4 posers at my local site its going to be great.Only joking

Just get some metal take it in your garden shed and hit it with a hammer until its the right shape,easy

Here i am beginning the manufacture of the a drum mag,although in real life its actually just a belt holder.
The 2 discs at the top are just billets of metal i have for shaping jobs,I cut out 2 discs of 0.9mm sheet,,10mm bigger than the billets ,the edges of the discs can then be hammered over ,while holding in a vice,to form a 90 deg lip,the tapered cone is trapped between the 2 discs.
Could have bought a real one for maybe £40 but i wanted it to have features to work with my airsoft design so i am making one.As usual there ARE LOTS OF COMPLICATED PRECISION PARTS,it is German so it wont be quick to makeThe parts a re brazed together and many of the smaller parts are riveted.I am old enough to have been taught to rivet at school,it used to be on the curriculum,all the processes i am doing here were,turning ,drilling, forging, planishing,polishing,thread cutting,blacking,woodwork.until it was considered not need any more,



Yes thats a short AK mag cut in half,connected by a tube,as used by Dadio on here also,i started this 8 months ago.the winder and bb's are in the drum,the top of the mag is in the normal AK mag well,The short ak mag internal lends it self to this mod,its the only one with circular feed tube that is easy to cut and extend.The flexible tube is called a bowden cable it is like a tightly coiled spring.I got it from RETRO Arms in Eastern Europe
i think it was £16 delivered for about a meter.

Fantastic work

Really like the idea of attaching the feed pipe to a piece of the Mag. I have a problem of attaching the feed pipe to the AK hop on my MG42 always coming off not feeding etc. Might have to have a go at that.

Keep us posted

Hi I dont actually think that a support Mg is actually that useful in most airsoft game scenario,due to the close intense action,its actually a disadvantage infact. You will have the same shooting performance of an mp5k and the weight and length make it unwieldy .
A real MG is only adjusting its arc of fire a few degrees at long range ,in an airsoft game you need to shoot 360deg within 2 seconds.
I am just doing it for the grin factor.
Originally it was to re-purpose my first gun i bought 7 years ago,it was going to cost nothing and just be a simple and not that an accurate copy.Since them my design has got more elaborate and so the work hours increase also..
My first feed idea was to use the drum as a hopper and have a shoot or tube dropping the ammo into a hole cut in the side of the short
AK mag.I decided i wanted a more accurate look and have the tube going in to the mag well,i can remove the tube and magazine top in the safe zone,making the tube quick release without it wearing out is harder than it sounds.I am using the normal AK mag catch.
I do have the option of shooting with an AK mag if the drum fails,i can do that with the drum removed and have a belt on my feed tray.
The winding mechanism has a flash mag winder from another broken mag adapted to it,the mainspring is under a lot of pressure when pushing the ammo down that long tube so you dont get as many shots per wind of the spring.

The ideal solution would be to have hop unit 45deg up and to the left,this would shorten the feed tube ,reducing friction,and utilise gravity to get the ammo into the hop chamber,Then it would be difficult to disconnect the feed tube in the safe zone and would have no back up it the drum mechanism failed,and take a bit more time.

A guy at my local site wanted an AGM mg42 he was advised about its disadvantages but he bought it any way from Europe,when he got it it was a lemon and the club armourer did not want to work on it so he was left with a £500 display piece and no product support from 400 mile away.

You are right they don`t fire any faster or further than a normal AEG. We played a Rifles only game last year where a section MG per side made a whole lot of difference being used as they were. Our group reduces the ammo limits to 200 for most games with MG 2000. It makes a whole lot of difference if used properly!
Keep up the good work.

The MGF42 I did a few years ago had a 90° hop feed and had no flexible tube , it connected directly as you fitted the drum like a normal mag so the drum had the top part of a mag grafted on its side and the gun had the hop tube slightly sticking out of the side , worked really well , I hate flexible tube feed systems , they never work well as they usually pop off the hop , your solution of using the top of an AK mag is good as long as you can secure the flexible section into it securely .

That’s looking good! Lots of work! I made a mock up of one years ago, to hang on a 1941 bmw combo, I made the whole lot too, but nowhere near the detail you have there. Great work.
The AGM mg42 runs a flexi from the mag to a block, top feeding into the hop, that’s about the only thing on my one that’s never been a problem, but my mag is permanent fixture, so it doesn’t get moved about.( now I’ve said it!.....that will bugger up now!) I must admit I’m not a great fan of the flexi tube idea, have had to sort a few box mags out but mainly because of ham fisted owners. Direct fixed feed is less problematic.
Don’t like the idea of electric motor in the mag?
Andy

The pistol grip is sheet steel welded,the flats on the motor are touching the sheet metal,when i first ran the gearbox it was fine out of the gun,but ROF noticeably went down when when in the gun,i even was getting lock ups.I have used a similar set up before,no issues.
I tested the gearbox again out the gun OK i then put pieces of sheet metal on the flats of the motor the slowing down happened only when the metal was on the right side of the motor and towards the top.So i cut a window in the steel plate of the pistol grip to clear the problem.I don't know if its because it was a neo magnet motor as opposed to the ferrous magnet motor in previous builds that caused the problem to appear.
The steel must be affecting the magnetic field.
I was making aluminium grip covers screwed on to give the proper detail and a more rounded edge,i put the groves in with a small hacksaw below.The aluminium was from a skip at a engineering company i go to, they sell tools and materials,so it was very cheap i got several pieces different thickness for a few pounds,saves buying a whole sheet.

Here are some folding sights,they have a releasable plunger inside spring loaded with a Biro spring.
I have used the ak sight leaf,mounted vertically,the adjuster has a a block loctited to it with a leaf pointing to the right,i have the sights dialled in real good at 180 foot ,i put masking tape marker on the sight leaf,so when happy i can cut my v notch,with this long rear sight elevation adjustment is more than normal so you can realy get them set well.I hit a 40mm disc hanging from the wire of my garden fence at 60 foot.Groupings are excellent at 180 foot its just a metal ak47 chambre that came with a hop rubber for a few pounds,its a cyma brand part.The barrel came with a bundle of brass 6.04's i bought on ebay,i think they were about £3 each.I have lapped the bore with a few grades of diamond paste,checked the barrel window is well de-burred,and machined an extended crown at the muzzle.Properly stabilised the barrel and hop are more than adequate.With some guarder .28g added to the set up,i will be doing a bit of semi auto sniping with this as well as hosing hopefully.
The small eye shaped part is the sling mount,i machined the 6mm thread on the lathe,using dia14mm steel bar,and then cut the flats on with an angle grinder

The aluminium parts have been sprayed black not anodised at this stage,so i can test everything for a while,the black anodising will be a significant part of the budget,considering the budget was originally only £15 not including the donor gun.Obviously i am spending a bit more than that now.Below the parts are red oxide primed.

Hi i can see how a MG can give a realistic advantage in a mil-sim type game set up with bolt action guns predominant,this is not likely to be achieved with a group of strangers,you need a structured club.I do have a original k98 vsr conversion i have made,never used it yet though.
the front end of the gun is constructed entirely from aluminium.Muzzle booster and front sight and bi-pod mount turned from 50mm bar.The main 2 pieces of ali tube are from a skip also,a place that makes upvc windows in my town was the source,the 2 diameters telescope together,pieces of it were used on the AA sight mount and muzzle too.There is an adjustable position support inside the tube for the end of the airsoft barrel which is pushed down on it to give tight support.It is a 52cm brass barrel and stops about 10cm behind the front sight.
The AA sight mount in the centre of the barrel cover is band sawn from 10mm sheet and i used aluminium solder to attach it to a piece of tube.

I think i read somewhere that it took 10 Bren Gunners to take out one MG34 gunner in a fire fight.

I'm joking,actualy I think it was 20 bren gunners

In all seriousness The mg34 was designed as a universal MG using patents from several major manufacturers to get the best design and has very useful mounts for bi pod ,AA tripod and anti infantry tripod and was adaptable for use on top and firing from inside vehicles ,the latter role meant the barrel could still be changed .MG42 was not suitable for this last role.
The drum mags seem ungainly in a mobile infantry assault roll if you were changing position rapidly,difficult to carry the extra mags.mostly infantry used belts anyway i assume,the Bren gun beats it in this area i think,Bren was more than a match for any MG of the time,my Dad used one in National service, used to proudly say how quick he could strip and re-assemble one and even was taught to do it blindfold.Luckily he Just missed the Suez affair,and got called up just after and ended up In the Egyptian dessert for 2 years.

You have a K98 and now a lovely Mg34 , well set up now for the German side !

I have fitted a typical airsoft spring loaded charging handle .Its a piece of 3mm steel plate internally with a slot cut in it,I procured a suitable extension spring from ebay. There is a 6mm steel stud at one end for the handle which is a piece of Ali bar drilled hollow ,threaded to fit the stud and knurled,The Ali keeps stuff light i am not into lugging a piece of obsidian around the battle field all day.Just above this is the fire and safety selector it pivots of the same position as the AK selector,due to its shortness it is hard to differentiate where it is set ,i wish now i had fitted it to one of the geared quadrants at the back of the gearbox,it could be left or right hand side,i have fitted them here on other builds using a v3 gearbox from the AK.

The only non standard part is the trigger which is a g36 one,which can be bought separately from Hong Kong ,it projects much lower down from the shell which is handy,i have then screwed on a shape piece of 10mm Ali plate to imitate the MG34 trigger,however the real one is in 2 triggers in one to get semi/full auto fire,mine is not though.
My trigger guard is removable other wise the AK receiver can not be taken in or out,i wont need to do this much as i can just unscrew the hop unit and slide it towards the muzzle end to allow the gearbox to come out.
The front half of the gun or barrel shroud does have to come off to get out the hop and air soft barrel,the shroud is only held on with one screw so it comes off quick,There is a v slot that locates on a peg so when you re-assemble the front sight will go back to zero always.
The wooden stock is made from sycamore ,it is an off-cut from a table i made 25 years ago so it is well seasoned luckily I could band saw it out,bore out a battery hole in it on the lathe and turn a shoulder for a metal sleeve .All my parts are a transition fit,which means they slide together with a bit of force, and no play.The sleeve is a piece of an old bunk bed frame.The sleeve slides on to the MG receiver and is located with pin on a small leaf spring,you just twist the stock to release it, comes on and off in seconds.
Hopefully my explanations will give people some ideas for their own builds,although more Guns for WW2 are becoming available,the need to make guns is not needed as much maybe,but i certanly would not spend £1300 on an RWA MG34,its a fairly good replica but i know mine will fit in with what i want from it at a game.
The feed tray cover has a spring loaded slide ,so you can lift it, change battery or lift the door to refill ammo into the drum in a moment,so it will be friendly to work with.

It desperately needs some bi pod legs just to make it easier to set it down and work on more easily,that is the last major part to do.

Nicely done ! Now don't b ashamed if it suffers from the WW2 support weapon curse nearly half the support weapons that start the day at a WW2 event are dead by lunch time .
Seriously though you've done a very good job on it ,well done .

To be honest are'nt all airsoft guns cursed ,found myself pulling my hair out many a time.
Airsoft guns demand a lot of precision to work reliably.Often even new guns dont run smooth out the box or soon go south.
A local shop near me ,has shelf's of guns people want fixing ,but he says that work does not pay his rent.
When you build a custom gun it is easy to build in some alignment error,or design floor you wont be able to shake off.I actually prefer working on and shooting the 3 custom guns I built over the years,can't say they never went down at a game,but its less times than the fingers i have on one hand.My custom guns seem better than some of the far Easts attempts at WW2 guns including the likes of G&G.
I actually believe that a lot of the TM designs are floored the way the hop gearbox ,and receiver all locate together ,especially when the whole gun splits at the line where the gearbox meets the hop unit.the M4 is notorious for this,and thats the most common gun.The TM guns have good rep for flawless feeding ,my TM G3 is great here but the externals are weak and cheesy.The TM guns work because of Japanese precision.
When all the other makers got in on the act and reverse Engineered all the parts ,that extra bit of precision was lost resulting in erratic feed,fps loss or zero function.When people convert from paint ball to airsoft they are shocked how un- reliable the guns are.
In the 30's the Japs co-operated with BMW for there aero engine development,the Germans went back over there they found that the Japs had got more power,for less cost and production time.It didn't look pretty when the couling came off like the German engine,but so what.
Thats why so many vehicles in the world have a jap engine in them.
However i have had excellent results with cyma gearboxes,hop units and hop rubbers,some Chinese did do a good job in some areas but a 1/4 mm slop does not cut the mustard ,you often need it much better.

So I have just had pizza for Tea and i set the polystyrene base left over up at the end of my garden.The sun has set just so i had enough light to shoot but not visibly see the line of shot.I drew a 5 inch circle in the centre.I set the gun to semi auto and just aimed at the centre of the target,i was resting the muzzle as no bipod is on the gun as it has not been made yet.I just aimed at the target centre and 8 out of 10 are in the 5 inch circle.
In my experience thats not bad for a bog standard Chinese hop set up.I have some of those SCS type nubs that are made by element.They are shaped like cotton reels,they go bet tween the hop arm and hop rubber.see if those make any difference.
I have used flat or bridge nubs made by maple leaf but begrudge paying £5 for a micro piece of rubber,they do give more range combined with the Monster rubber.
I have also cut my own bridge nubs from silicon tube,but they are a bit hit and miss.

I then repeated the test at 50 meter Out of 13 shots only 2 were in a 12 inch circle,thats the size of the white circle(12inch) in the target in the photo above.The rest of the shots were within 18 inch of the centre of target,This is just aimed shots at the target centre not walking them in by sight,its hard to see where they hit on a white target.
In the first test i did I had a dead calm,no wind, test conditions,the second test just as i was setting up my target a slight breeze started up.Obviously in adverse weather the shots may be 20ft to one side.
Initially i was disappointed with the groupings in the 2nd test,but actually its not bad.Accuracy drops off in airsoft as a massive amount of the FPS is lost in the 1st 20ft of the BB's flight.
I have fitted my SCS nub and did a few shots and it looked good,it was capable of making the ammo rise up at the end of its flight so when i back it off for a more level flight i know my hop set up is giving the max amount of back spin the BB can handle.When i get a chance i will do a more controlled test.

Hi Meet Bren ,thats right Sgt Bren Gunner,as you can clearly see he has been taken out by superior German weaponry,due to the fact that his magazine is sticking up 12 inches above his gun
and so giving away his position.

That sounds like fighting talk !

In all seriousness that piece of metal is just a target i have at the bottom of my garden i shoot at it if a get bored at work,or if i need to test a gun is working and is sighted in before i pack it away to take to a game.A metal target indictes a hit by sound.
I did read some where that interrogation of German Infantry revealed that the bren magazine could give away your position and it became part of standard training to try and set up some kind of camo to obstruct the magazine visability.Sounds feasible but i would have thought British infantry would have realised that themselves maybe,but who knows,a lot of facts quoted from the war bear no relation to the facts sometimes.
After fitting of the concave SCS nub i cant see any major improvement in groupings and not In range either in fact that may have reduced .It gives a a trajectory like r-hop where as you increase hop it just keeps going up at a steeper angle,throwing of the elevation setting of your sights then the BB at the end of its flight it just drops out of the air,suddenly,into the ground.
So it did'nt work for me but other people swear by it,reviews that appear like random reviews are often secret biased marketing in my opinion.
As the gun did'nt seem to have a problem there was not that much room for improvement, i shimmed out the last bit of side to side play in the hop arm,although that was already ok as well.

Here are some bipod parts under construction.The legs are made from square tubing that was part of a pop-up gazebo.
I also never made the gun with a mind to ww2 games,i did for the crack although the last week and half of finishing off has been less fun than sticking pins in my eyes.
Also i know support weapons are restricted at many games ,and not many people would want the job of loader any way.
However i have turned something old into something new using some free re-cycled material,some of the sheet steel is new and many billet ali parts are made from aircraft grade aluminium,that i get from a steam rally that goes of every year near me,You can buy small lengths of quality aluminium from ebay,its just quick to find and get ordered.

Bi-pod is now in place wish i had done that earlier,that thing is a hand full when you want to rest it down.
The bipod is just blued with a flame,let it cool a bit and then apply oil.
If you want all your proportions exact then an ak47 re-skin is not the way to go,doing it the way I did saved time and had more guarantee of a working air soft gun,I do know a guy who has 2 mg34 but he lives a long way away so getting dimensions would have been a full day trip.
The drum magazine has needed development,although my conversion of the short Ak mag into a flash mag does work now,,originally it had parts from a broken flash mag,but they were giving some problems,I may have over wound it, does'nt seem to give any warning of over winding.
Luckily I had already sourced a new flash mag ,for less than £5 and transferred most of the internals to my build.
Generally knock off flash mags are listed as one of the top 10 things to avoid in air soft,even the lonex originals wear out,you can get spare internals from the WGC Shop for them.
Also I was going to use an old cyma v3 gearbox,but I already had a new G&G v3 knocking about,it was only £40,normally a new one is $180.
It does look better finished than the cyma,but I don't consider G&G that special to be honest,The full auto stopped working,I have seen that before on a G&G v3 gearbox.Its due to the trigger sear being too short,the part that goes between the trigger the switch trolley,luckily I had about 5 v3 Sears in my spares kit,one of them had a longer sear by 0.75 mm and this cleared the problem.Internaly I have not done anything,just added more shims to the gears,it already had a metal spring guide with bearing.
You don't need a expensive gearbox to get good shooting ,it's more about durability,,accuracy mostly comes from barrel and hop ,and having it securely mounted and well lined up.I am running sub 350 fps and only 12 maybe 15 rpm for safety,and durability.The German guns were known for their high rate of fire ,so at 15rpm on my gun it will give it a bit of zip sound rather than a thud thud thud like on a Bren or on a Yank support weapon.
To be honest a high rate of fire can mean you have blown your load before you have got the the job done,that goes for air soft and real combat,so it's not always a good thing.
Also I have soldered on a Deans electrical plug I gave up on the Tamiya connectors,(real name for those is Kyosho connector)they can have intermittent connection when worn,
To be honest I think there is a lot of hype around some airside teching mods,and after market parts,it's about marketing,sometimes they don't do anything if make it worse,and you can spend a lot of money ,some parts and mods can be essential also though.

That's looking really good , the bipod came out very nice indeed . A two person MG team is not just to make it more real life ,it also serves another purpose , MG's tend to be heavy and the crew are at the beck and call of the rest of the squad so your always on the run , switching rolls between gunner and loader every 10 min saves you getting too tired , we all want to enjoy ourselves and being cream crackered after the first hour can spoil your day .
Absolute accuracy of design is very hard to achieve for the hobby builder , you can't just design a custom shaped gearbox to fit the gun , the really important thing is to look at the desired real gun and decide what features are iconic and need to be closely copied and where you can exercise a bit of artistic licence , I think you did both these things very well and you should be very pleased with what you achieved

Yes thanls for that I am by my no means claiming this to be a perfect 1:1 replica,as I have alreadystated earlier,it satisfies my own enjoyment..
The tooling to make gun parts is mega expensive ,making one off copies is a time consuming challenge.obviously CAD design and rapid prototyping aleviate this burden making an old fossil like me who shapes with hand and eye.with the stroke of a marker or scriber redundant,3d printing makes things affordable and profitable,there are many 3d printed nerf gun body kits coming out of china.
One of my custom guns i made after evening tea and on sat/sun mornings i worked out i would get £5500 in my day job for doing that work.

My gun is only 4.2 kg and the drum mag adds another 1kg, well under half the real steel guns weight.
In the photo above i had a selection of batteries from hobby king.
Bottom left is a twin leg nanotech battery .,the nanotechs are disliked by the rc car world for not lasting,some of mine have failed but they are dirt cheap.
Top left is a small 7.4v lipo that is square in cross section and so fits ak 47's ,most lipo,s are too flat and wide,i keep one in my pocket as a fit any gun spare,they fit in m4 stock tubes too
Bottom right is 7.4v,2200 mah 20c rc car battery ,i got 4 of those for £20 ,they seem more recoverable from over discharge than other lipos
The yellow battery is a 11.1 v lipo from a drone and gives my gun 18rps,which is a bit fast for me,with a lonex a1 motor and mosfet it gives 26 rps ,my cyma motor in the mg34 is set for torque and not speed ,and the G&G wiring is thin and may restrict current flow and so ROF .too