Space Force 6: The Build Part IV

At the end of the Build Part Part III, I thought my work on the MCX handguard, EGW Red Dot Mount and LPA Front Sight was done. I was wrong.

The problem was with the front sight. Although it fits between the two bolts on the rail when they're screwed in all the way, it doesn't allow them to be removed. My plan was to permanently fix the front sight post to the rail (aka JB Weld), but doing so would mean locking the bolts in place to. Not good since I'd like to be able to take the handguard on and off.

So, I began cutting more and more off of the front sight post. The amount I needed to remove to allow the bolts to be easily installed & removed left the front sight in pretty bad shape....

Front sight sitting a little high. Time to cut it down...

Trimmed the front all the way back to the adjustment screw.

Instead of trying to salvage this piece, I am going to try again. This time with a different front sight, one from Fusion that mounts a little lower, is adjustable, and has some screw holes that may be useful.

Even with the LPA front sight cut to shreds, I was able to test the fiber optic cable running from the Scout Light to the front sight bead. I'm pretty pleased with how much light it shines on the front sight post. Imagine how it'll look with a glowing piece of white jade!

You can see below how I'm adding a small piece of 20 gauge steel wire inside the heat shrink tubing that I'm wrapping the fiber optic in. This allows me to bend the fiber optic cable into a specific shape and it'll stay.

Let there be light.

While I waited for the new front sight to come in, I turned my attention to the grips.

As a reminder, the plan is to run fiber optic cables from the light on the front of the revolver through the ivory pearl grip panels to make them glow.

Below is a gallery of the various steps of plumbing the fiber optics into and through the grips. It was a pretty straight-forward process, it just took some time - especially to make sure I didn't over-do the channel in the back of the panels and break through the front.

The steps were:

1. Drill through the rubber grip so that the fiber optic cable can run from the handguard into the grip and underneath the grip panels.

2. Drill and hole in the bottom of the rubber grip so the fiber optic cable can reach the other grip panel.

3. Carve channels in the back of the grip panels so the cable has a path to follow when they're pushed into the rubber grip and so the light can better shine through the ivory pearl panels.