King Arms M1A1 Military

they also on special at uncompany in hong kong 4 of us imported one for about £215 each (was separate not together) this will be my second , should have never sold my first sweet gun

That's a cracking price. Still, best price I could find in the UK. Greek Airsoft are doing a box of five 110 round mid-caps for £38 including VAT and delivery. Cheapest I could find here was £45 plus postage. So, they're inbound from Athens...

Ehobbby asia are the cheapist I found, work out about £32 delivered. Also got my Thompson from UN and that worked out about £275 with import duties and the Parcel Farce charges.

I almost ordered them from ehobbyasia but I thought it'll be just my luck to get them caught in customs. Greece is in the EU (for the moment!) so their prices include VAT.

Yer it can be a risk with the VAT but I personally, haven't been hit with any on orders from them when I've kept it under £50, but I think I may have been lucky. As you say that was still a good price from Greece with what they are here.

Officially VAT is only is only requested for items over £40, but they rarely check with thousands of packages coming in every day, whether you get stung or not is luck of the draw!

Officially VAT is only is only requested for items over £40, but they rarely check with thousands of packages coming in every day, whether you get stung or not is luck of the draw!

VAT is actually payable on all commercial transactions of over £15 and import duty is technically payable on any goods value at over £135 but is waived if the duty is less than £9. The £40 limit is for gifts - gifts don't normally arrive with invoices. If it's checked and it's got an invoice, it isn't a gift.

As far as checking them goes I find that the chance of an Asian package being checked is low, UAE packages very low and US packages pretty high.

I would agree US imports are far more likely to attract charges.

Seems like HMRC once more treading the road of least (potential can of worms springs to mind with many asian imports) paperwork...

That's everything arrived and I have to say the Kerr sling from What Price Glory looks extremely good. The King arms plastic mags are great and fit very well, better than the metal high-cap.

I chrono'd the gun and it seemed give some erratic results so I took it to bits to have a look. Everything looked fine and the 9mm bearings are nice. The spring felt a bit meaty for the 325 or so fps, with occasional jumps to 360ish, that I was getting. I cleaned out the gearbox, fixed the AoE of the piston, taking off the last tooth on the piston and reduced the height of the next one in the process. The sector gear had a tappet delayer on it but having had so-so experience with these before I was going to bin it but decided to sand down the side that delays the return and keep it in. Next, I sanded down the front of the tapper plate by about half a millimetre, fitted a nytrile 'O' ring to the piston head and after polishing the gearbox piston rails put it back together. It now gets a very consistent 390-395fps. Thought that spring was a bit hefty

Overall, I'm more than happy with the gun but I'll have to change or modify the spring to skirmish with it. Probably end up putting a Guarder SP100 in it but in the mean time I think I'll do some calculations and just clip the existing one.

Well, I used my gun for the first time at Players of War in Bonnybridge on Sunday 20th Jan. The accuracy was quite outstanding and the fps is now down to a site friendly 320fps. Halfway through the day the motor had dropped slightly and wasn't engaging the bevel gear - two minutes had that fixed. Overall, I'm more than happy with it but on reflection the wood work looks a bit plasticky despite actually being wood. I did manage to scratch the stock up a bit and decided that this was a fine opportunity for some weathering.

So after reading some 'weathering guides' I decided to give it a go. Down to B&Q for some flexible foam sanding pads and some linseed oil. The suggestion was that the woodwork should be gently sanded to remove the protective layer over the stain. So, I gently put the sanding block to the stock to be immediately greeted by the sight of raw wood. F@ck!!! After some further experimental sanding it was pretty clear that the stain was not evenly applied - some areas had the toughness of tissue paper while others seemed to rival that of steel plate. I have now applied copious amounts of elbow greased and the furniture is, for the most part, back to the bare wood. Which kind of wood I have no idea. Pretty sure it's not walnut; kind of looks like hickory.

However, it will be walnut when the Birchwood Casey wood stain turns up. I'll get some pics up of the sanded bits soon.

Here's (hopefully) the picture of the sanded Thompson woodwork.

I'm loath to sand anymore. I'm sure it'll look fine when stained.

I think it will look just fine.

I think the USPS are more meticulous about per advising parcelforce about the details of parcels coming their way so they are more likely to get flagged for VAT etc. Also US firms seem less keen to understate the value of parcel. With the exception of course of one that ships from.... yes, UAE.

God bless the UAE.

Well, that's it done.

I stained the stock, linseed oiled it and I thought it looked so good I couldn't bring myself to knock lumps out of it. I did rub down the metalwork slightly and once put back together I think it looks great. Did notice slight shrinkage in the wood though (obviously good gun quality wood here ). My other mod was to get the bolt to reciprocate - bit of bent 6mm aluminium rod, some Kevlar thread and bob's your uncle. Made a bit of a metallic spring "twang" - I'm sure that's the technical term - so I tied the spring to the bolt with some of the thread to avoid metal to metal contact. Now it works pretty well - thump, no twang. Don't know how far back the real bolt handle comes but this makes it about half way and certainly looks the part. No photos yet but I'll get some up soon.