StrangerDanger

Rasyad is a good guy to deal with. Someone is getting a hell of a deal here even if you are only after specific components like the Modlite light. Then flip the rest.

I finally got my hands on one of these Agency Arms rails to take a look at in person. One of the benefits of bringing in a lot of peoples builds is I get to check out all the new accessories without having to pay the price of admission. I've used a lot of Agency Arms components in other firearms, so I was hopeful for this rail to be one that was actually a win for a change. The rail itself is well made, it does have some significant set backs that aren't entirely Agency's fault, but more along the lines of working around the Benelli M4's ARGO system without making the rail too big. I'm not a huge fan of the need to disassemble the rail in order to access the ARGO system. This renders the gas system inaccessible in the field unless they happen to have brought a torx bit with them. Basically if something needs screws, this is an armorer level job now and not meant to be messed with in the field. Most of the MLOK sockets are unusable. Many of the sockets ride so close to the ARGO system that mounted items do not have the clearance to cam lock. I fixed this with a few railscales panels by profiling the cam lock and screw with a concave grinder shape. Thinning the cam permitted the cam to rotate and not make contact with the ARGO system. Still a pain in the ass. The rail was not removable with several of the railscales in place. The rail would hang up on the cam locks. So the end user would have to remove several of these panels or other devices mounted in order to remove the rail to service the ARGO system. Ergonomics are better than the Strike Industries or the Surefire M80 rails. Ergonomics sucks compared to the OEM handguard however. Even with premium rail covers like G10 railscales, the OEM wins hands down. With any rail, you're paying a weight penalty by equipping one. One must consider what benefits you're receiving by adding the part. With the step back in ergonomics and weight penalty you're facing, personally I would recommend using an IWC weapon light mount for your sling and weapon light needs. Placing sling mounts on your handguard is a step back in ergonomics since they tend to interfere with your hand placement. On this build we will be adding an IWC front sling/light mount as well to use the sling mount. If you have Trypophobia, you probably hate this. Reprofiled cam lock. Look at all that clearance to the ARGO plug!

Contact Briley about the forcing cone work on the Benelli M4. I spoke to them a few years ago about it. They didn't recommend it. They stated that it could lead to some function problems with certain ammunition.

Nice knurling.

He also threw it onto the hood of the Jeep. The M4 is a pretty tough platform that can be abused. Maybe he it’s his version of throwing it down the driveway for wear and tear. Someone shared the secret of slinging a rifle/shotgun with him too.

Zero issues. The only reason it doesn’t work is because the receiver extension isn’t machined to allow the stock to collapse. They put these neutered extensions on to be able to sell the M1014 with the skeletonized stock. We can thank our wonderful government going back to Bush Senior for that one. Benelli can’t import shotguns with evil features like a collapsible stock.

Correct.

Exactly why he should have tested some birdshot from Valuepack to high brass! Birdshot will definitely ruin your day, but it might not take the fight out of a motivated attacker immediately. I'd leave birdshot for the birds.

Fun video worth watching. Wish he had ran some birdshot on that dummy to show how ineffective it is in comparison.

I haven’t painted the machined area yet. I use a lathe and remove the shroud. I turn radius the end over to make it as forgiving as possible. The radius runs right into the aluminum lock ring that holds the electronic or the tailcap in place. I then run a file over the angles to soften the transition points. I haven’t used that Streamlight. I’m not sure if they potted the batteries so they aren’t bouncing around under recoil damaging the battery contacts? It might hold up fine though?

Thanks. I agree they’re significantly nicer than the painted models. Those don’t have any of the performance enhancements of the NP3 finish. I use Jax Tactical which does a lot of industry paint work for firearm companies. Lately turn around time is pretty slow. Some day I’ll get the equipment to do it myself to reduce dwell time, but I’m not there yet. They’ll be air cure Cerakoting plastics. Like I have a set of FFT OD green grips that are going to be painted to get a better color match. The owner does a lot of trick specialized painting. Fancy masking and clay blocking for multi colors. Like on the FDE build, just the visible portion of the bolt carrier will be painted in FDE. That way the performance enhancements of the NP3 will be on all the areas that matter. Even the bolt link will be painted on the ejection port side. So it’ll have the hand guards, cheek piece for the collapsible stock, pistol grip plastic frame, magazine tube nut, hard plastic base of the Limbsaver 10403 buttpad and the Trijicon RMR 1 moa in OD green. You can see the RMR is already in OD green since it came that way from Trijicon. I’m doing the same overall color scheme for the same guy for an AR15.

Got a few more of these H2O builds going on. With all the covid bullshit and run on guns this past year, it's taking a long time to first get all the parts wanted, then shuffle the parts thru plating. This one is still waiting on its plastics to be painted in OD green cerakote. I'm doing another one where everything had been NP3 plated, and now we're cerakoting the exterior in FDE. About the only things that will be black will be the rubber grip, rubber part of the buttpad, and the control buttons on the Trijicon RMR. Several more are in various states of waiting at Wright for plating.

I almost never use the constant on feature of the Surefire Z68 tailcap. This is one of the reason I remove the shroud from the Z68 so I don't jam my thumb when my thumb is over the momentary button.

Never seen a set all warped like that one. Every set I have ever fit for people needed a lot of fitting to get them to seat correctly. Quite a bit of material must be removed from the front of the grips to allow the barrel seat ring to sit correctly.

Agreed on the stippled oem handguard. Rail systems are notoriously bad for ergonomics. The Surefire M80 was a Pringles can with picatinny rails on it. The Strike Industries MLOK rail was relatively comfortable, but has a horrendous mounting solution. The Briley rail runs into the weight and ergonomics issue as well as the Agency arms rail. They all add a bunch of weight and don’t serve a lot of purpose that can’t be met with a lighter solution like the IWC mount. Most of the rail slots are essentially useless. Their only benefit is they reduce overall weight by having a MLOK hole instead of material. It’s not about being weak and not being able to handle the heft. The lighter the front of the shotgun, the faster it is to swing target to target and get your shots on target faster. So if you’re shooting clays, birds, bears or communists; the faster you are the better. You’ve probably felt it when you swing the barrel from one target to the next, and you overshoot your target from the barrels momentum. All that extra weight is just burning up time for you to get sights or optic on target. Side by sides and over and unders are fast due to this low weight up front design. Do some drills just from low ready and snap the shotgun up to sight picture with varying weight on board. Try the rail. Try the oem grips. Try it loaded and unloaded. Swing target to target at shotgun ranges to see how it handles for you. Never understood the bottom angled hand stops on the forend of a shotgun. They’re slowing you down on the reload since you can’t just slip up or down the handguard. You now have a hump to move your hand around. So what are we mounting? Lights and sling mounts? The only one that interested me was the 13” Briley rail so you could eliminate barrel shadow by moving your light nearly flush with an 18.5” barrel. In the end, the barrel shadowing wasn’t worth the weight/ergonomic penalty.

5.5mm wrench for the front. It can be a pain in the ass to get the nut started. For the rear it is pretty easy. Just observe where the spring goes as you disassemble it.

I think I only made it to about 2500-3000 before cleaning it. It still worked just fine, I just got tired of it looking like crap and getting fowling on things like car seats. Overall, it has about 16k thru it since 2004.

Thanks. That’s the oem Benelli stock. I added the Limbsaver 10403 to it and plated all the metal parts in NP3.

The spring tends to squeak when inserting rounds into the magazine. I would not recommend oil on the inside of the tube, followed or spring. The lubricant will collect dirt, fouling and buffering media and cause the magazine to perform poorly. Sometimes this is the cause of the magazine to fail loading the last round from the tube. I made a polishing jig where I run steel wool in a modified drill chuck or off the lathe to polish the interior of the tube. While it does help with the noise, it never completely goes away.

Briley makes them.

The Cerakote, NP3 and bead blasted tubes all look slightly different. Most won't really notice it, but you will if you're directly comparing the two. I'd go with the weight reduction of the titanium tube if I were picking, or go the other extreme and get a carbon fiber one from Briley.

Trigger pack appears to be polymer. If so, it was likely made in the past 8 years or so. I’d wager the barrel is a 2 port model given that build timeframe.

The lighting on that color changes everything. It goes from burnt bronze looking to babyshit brown in an instant!

I did this one for a customer several years ago. I had a lot of the accessories painted to match for him.

Nice work!