medphys
UZI Talk Life Member
The Max-11k.
Posted with permission from Richard Lage.
To start, I’d like to explain why I did this. Some of you might be think that it was just to have something different. That is true, but only it’s only a small part of the ‘why’.
The first goal was to shorten the upper to get a better look and feel. I had been trying to get my TASK converted upper to be nice and tight to the body, but could never figure out a good way to do the foregrip. Eveything I tried just looked crappy to me. Interestingly, two critical things happened following the Fall, 2010 Knob Creek shoot: The Lage MAX31 upper was sneaked to the public (whoops… I wonder who did that
) AND AZ Doug posted a picture of his shortened MAX-11 upper. It had never occurred to me that the MAX-11 upper would be a good candidate until AZ Doug’s “k” version. His is about 2.5” shorter than a stock MAX-11 upper and just looked very cool to me. Also it prompted someone on the UZItalk forum to sell an “extra” upper they had for a great price. I bought it before it ever went public.
Fast forward four months or so of me flip-flopping back and forth about whether or not to do it, plus a period of time when I was going to sell it and go back to the TASK configuration. I had been shooting the MAX-11 a bit and had noticed that it felt very different than the TASK upper. The bolt/buffer assembly in a TASK upper is very linear and has little muzzle rise. The MAX-11 upper always felt front end heavy and had more muzzle rise. Others may have a different opinion on this, but this is what I felt and was the second determining factor for the conversion.
Another small reason that recently occurred to me is the fact the Michigan does not allow us ‘normal’ people to have suppressors. When I signed up to run a match up there, I realized that my TASK upper is really set up to be run suppressed. It just handles WAY better than with out it. This means that I would have to run the MAX-11 to be competitive, and thus practice with it.
So the snow is thawed, the wife and kids are away, and I have some new hacksaw blades and a new file. As Captain Picard would say “make it so.”
Enjoy.
Before:
The bolt: I started with a Tactical bolt and cut about 2.5” from it. This is more than the amount I removed from the upper. I added a chunk of lead in the back section to put some weight in in order to bring it back to the factory Tactical bolt weight; hopefully to reduce muzzle rise.
The underside of the bolt: The underside of the bolt and the top-backend of the trunion were tapered in order to allow the bolt weight to ride over it. A stock MAX-11 bolt rests on the trunion while in motion, but when you shorten it, it comes back beyond the trunion and will collide with it when it moves forward, unless of course, you taper everything.
The trunion:
Cut #1: I only cut the upper back to the third vent hole. This was to allow enough room to grab the forgrip while using the high mount metal forgrip. Maybe I’ll add a VFG at a later date. Who knows?
Cut #2:
The cut foregrip:
Finished: Still not sure if I'm going to cut the barrel down. I need to add a Carleson Compensator and play with it a while first.
Posted with permission from Richard Lage.
To start, I’d like to explain why I did this. Some of you might be think that it was just to have something different. That is true, but only it’s only a small part of the ‘why’.
The first goal was to shorten the upper to get a better look and feel. I had been trying to get my TASK converted upper to be nice and tight to the body, but could never figure out a good way to do the foregrip. Eveything I tried just looked crappy to me. Interestingly, two critical things happened following the Fall, 2010 Knob Creek shoot: The Lage MAX31 upper was sneaked to the public (whoops… I wonder who did that
) AND AZ Doug posted a picture of his shortened MAX-11 upper. It had never occurred to me that the MAX-11 upper would be a good candidate until AZ Doug’s “k” version. His is about 2.5” shorter than a stock MAX-11 upper and just looked very cool to me. Also it prompted someone on the UZItalk forum to sell an “extra” upper they had for a great price. I bought it before it ever went public.Fast forward four months or so of me flip-flopping back and forth about whether or not to do it, plus a period of time when I was going to sell it and go back to the TASK configuration. I had been shooting the MAX-11 a bit and had noticed that it felt very different than the TASK upper. The bolt/buffer assembly in a TASK upper is very linear and has little muzzle rise. The MAX-11 upper always felt front end heavy and had more muzzle rise. Others may have a different opinion on this, but this is what I felt and was the second determining factor for the conversion.
Another small reason that recently occurred to me is the fact the Michigan does not allow us ‘normal’ people to have suppressors. When I signed up to run a match up there, I realized that my TASK upper is really set up to be run suppressed. It just handles WAY better than with out it. This means that I would have to run the MAX-11 to be competitive, and thus practice with it.
So the snow is thawed, the wife and kids are away, and I have some new hacksaw blades and a new file. As Captain Picard would say “make it so.”
Enjoy.
Before:
The bolt: I started with a Tactical bolt and cut about 2.5” from it. This is more than the amount I removed from the upper. I added a chunk of lead in the back section to put some weight in in order to bring it back to the factory Tactical bolt weight; hopefully to reduce muzzle rise.
The underside of the bolt: The underside of the bolt and the top-backend of the trunion were tapered in order to allow the bolt weight to ride over it. A stock MAX-11 bolt rests on the trunion while in motion, but when you shorten it, it comes back beyond the trunion and will collide with it when it moves forward, unless of course, you taper everything.
The trunion:
Cut #1: I only cut the upper back to the third vent hole. This was to allow enough room to grab the forgrip while using the high mount metal forgrip. Maybe I’ll add a VFG at a later date. Who knows?
Cut #2:
The cut foregrip:
Finished: Still not sure if I'm going to cut the barrel down. I need to add a Carleson Compensator and play with it a while first.
