Building from Scratch?

AGB_Ghost

Ive decided to build an M4 as kind of a year round project, piece by piece, part by part

What advice would you give and how difficult would you say it is to build something like this?

MonkeyGuy

You'll probably come into difficulty with brands mixing. I think you'd be better off starting off with a cheap clone maybe second hand as cheap as you can and then replace all the bits you want as you can afford them.

Puding

not hard at all especially with the m4, only trick is just insuring compatibility between part, only issue with a scratch build is that its ridiculously inefficient and you will pay was more than just buying a base aeg and modding it into what you want

buy yourself a base m4 and mod it from there rather than scratch build everything

Leftyflip

My last custom rifle that I put together (the fagpul carbine) worked out at well over €300, with many many hours of work and adjustments.
The DMR was over €400.

It's not cheap and takes time to get it running perfect, you'd want to be very dedicated to do it. Not to mention having a rake load of time...

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Puding

AGB_Ghost wrote: »

Any suggestions of a base M4 to begin on?

depend on what you want the end product to look like, what are your aim ?

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NakedDex

This is one of those very rare cases where I don't suggest a G&G plastica/popular rifle as a base, simply because changing the lower receiver takes a lot of adjustment, and often a lot of milling/grinding, if you want to fit any receiver that isn't a G&G.
If you're willing to stick with the plastic receiver, or get a G&G metal one, that's a great start point, but if you want a specific receiver with specific markings you'll be in for quite a bit more work than you may expect.

As Puding said, it's horribly inefficient as a method of building a custom, but it wouldn't be the first time someones done it, so if you're willing to incur the costs, have at it.
I'd also agree, however, that starting with a base rifle is the best choice. Not only will it give you a running start, it will also give you a spare to anything you replace, which is mighty handy if you need to modify something later. Furthermore, building on a tried and tested system gives you a better chance of having a cracking finished product.

Pick an M4/16 close to the design you want to end up with, and mod out from there. For example, you mention wanting a crane stock and rear wired gearbox, so choose your base rifle as having that feature. A head start with parts and no working with the wiring. Win-win.

Inari

Definitey agreed with Puding and Dex. I see the attraction of building it all from scratch, however it would be an awful lot easier to use a base model. That way, as Dex said, you have spares. However, the infinitely more practical point is that you can game with it from the word go. You can make the modifications as you go, and let your ideas evolve organically.

Another big point is that a big expense is the Gearbox - a G&G gearbox is like €20-30 cheaper than a GR16 Plastica...I know bloody well what I'd choose :P