So.. for the past few years I haven't done much painting (other than helping my kids paint exotic cakes). But I've kept busy turning minor hobbies into major efforts. I tried a couple laser pistols to have for in-house practice that doesn't require safety goggles and concern for airsoft pellets damaging things. I tried the Laserlyte LT-TTL and the SIRT PP.
A bit of review. Granted my airsoft VP9 is obnoxious how it cryo's and locks up if you fire it too fast but it has a pretty good trigger. Turns out laser guns.. may not have very good triggers despite costing as much if not twice as much as an Umarex GBB pistol. That was disappointing.
SIRT PP. while this has an adjustable trigger it appears cranking it all the way down i can only get it down to 6lbs, and its a wee bit squishy. Seriously an airsoft trigger is better than this expensive laser gun? oh well. I painted it orange and sanded down the sides of the grip because.. some moron decided that sharp plastic edges saying SIRT is a good idea. Unless your wearing gloves, take the grip to a belt sander, then wrap it with tape to make something a bit more comfortable. Overall for a "benchmark laser gun" I'm a little disappointed.
Laserlyte LT-TTL. This seemed to be one of the more common laser guns behind the SIRT and the profile of this was as close to the VP9 as I could find based on web images. Once I got it I was happy to see I can simply bandsaw the backstrap off and epoxy a spare backstrap from a VP9 since all my GBB's came with extra (slightly bigger) backstraps. I set the Laserlyte over the VP9 and marked then cut. with a bit of belt sanding of the grip sides now it matches the VP9 almost perfectly. Wonderful!... except the trigger SUUUUUCKS. Its soo long and so squishy. SO I take it apart to investigate.
The mechanism is fairly interesting and easy to modify. a couple pieces of 1mm thick polystyrene sheeting cut, sanded, and polished with sand paper 300 through 2000 grit and the take-up/squish is reduced to almost nothing and the trigger is nice and crisp on the break at about 4lbs. The break if anything is a little abrupt so this is great practice to swap between it and the SIRT because if your trigger pull isn't perfect you'll see it as you switch between the two laser guns as your shots pull this way or that.
Since i wanted the LaserLyte to mimic my VP9 GBB it also needed a red dot. so, like the VP9 I put it on a mill, cut a slot for a cheap red dot, in this case a little flip up, and we have a nice laser sim gun with a fairly crisp trigger.
One problem.. I can see the laser. It is actually good to see the laser when your starting to get a good idea of where your laser is hitting, but if you try to use it with any laser sim software like Point blank simulator, Smokeless, or the various phone based aps I found I prefer to not see the laser so i have to trust my sight picture. Therefore i wanted to retrofit the laser guns to use NIR 940nm lasers. But... I put a fair bit of work into them and they work so well, it seemed a shame to risk damaging them. Thus I decided to convert two very cheap spring powered airsoft pistols to NIR laser pistols, and bonus, they have ejectable mags for slightly better simulation.
First I took a "nice for a spring gun" 1911. I bought a 3 dollar amazon 940nm 5mw laser diode and shoved it up the brass barrel liner then glued it in place with liquid electrical tape. Pressed some small coin batteries into a slot leftover once i ripped out the compression cylinder, and wired up a very cheap SMT switch onto the back of the trigger such that it presses against an inserted mag to activate the laser. It works pretty well, though trigger pull is only about 1lb 2oz. Still Now i can get my kids to play laser guns with me and they stop whining about the 4-6lb trigger pull when we are doing sessions requiring over 50 shots. If you look closely in the plastic frame you can see the SMT MON button epoxied to the back of the trigger.
Then since this experiment worked i tried it again on a spring VP9 umarex pistol. See, hoarding is its own reward and always pays off. I epoxied a slightly larger MON SMT button this time with a spring crammed between the button to add a bit of trigger weight, then epoxied the button cap on so the spring doesn't just pop it off. 3d printed a battery holder to fit into the body where i ripped out the compression cylinder this baby, and again shoved a 940nm laser into the barrel liner and liquid electrical taped it in place. a bit of shimming was needed to aim the laser in both as these are super crappy lasers but they both work beautifully. Since it worked I then bought a cheap chineesium reflex sight milled a slot onto the top of the frame and epoxied the baseplate of the reflex onto the frame. I now have a near perfect analog of my Umarex GBBP. I also decided at this point to paint them all orange so i can easily identify sim guns that are completely incapable of firing a bb so i don't risk putting anyone's eye out. I also used blue painters tape to help make them stand out so i never doubt that what is sitting around is ONLY a laser gun and not a potentially dangerous airsoft.
Later Ill give more adventures in setting up my in-house laser simulators that helped me stay sane during quarantine these past few years. When playing these laser sim games you'd be surprised how exhasted your whiny finger will get about a 4-6 lb trigger. Its nice to take a break and shift to a 1-2lb trigger and be able to practice reloads and malfunction drills without having paid 4-600usd for a yet more expensive laser gun that still probably has an irritatingly squishy trigger. These are also good for teaching your kids gun safety without having to risk a real weapon or even an airsoft. General house rule, you don't point anything remotely resembling a weapon at anyone who isn't participating in a manner in which they expressly agreed to participate. Thus even when we are just shooting computer targets we always exercise muzzle discipline.
Stay safe and always treat an airsoft like it WILL put someone's eye out.
Also just because you can barely see 940nm doesnt mean you should shine the laser in your eye to see if its working, use a phone with IR sensitivity.
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