The Ultimate Travel Oleo? - A Custom-Sized Mirage 93

[Diving Gecko]

Hey all,
Been away from this lovely forum for way too long.
Just wanted to say that if any of you end up on this thread and are frustrated that the picture links went dead, so am I. They were hosted on a free image data base that decided it didn't wanna be free anylonger. And on top of that, I lost most of files in a bad laptop crash.

Anyhow, I have just managed to download most of them from said data base so if any of you have any questions let me know and I can elaborate and repost pics. Seems I can't add them back to the original posts as I can no longer edit them.

Also, stay tuned for a brand new Mirage adventure from my hands in the months to come

 

[Diving Gecko]

Thought I'd dump some pics here from the recently recovered "archives".
It's scary how time flies but this build was late 2017, early 2018 so seven years ago...

Anyhow, the overall goal was to have a Mirage which would fit inside a fin bag for easy travelling, so the length was optimized for that.

It was a fairly long build on which I learned a lot but the short version is here:
I cut down a long stock Predathor shooting barrel and made my own pumping barrel. Then I chopped down an original Mirage handle by an obsene amount and rebuilt it with my homemade, lightweight but strong mix of epoxy, chopped carbon fiber and micro ballons:

It takes a few rounds to do this and here are some in-between pics:

I made a trigger guard out of thin wood veneers with carbon fiber layers between the wood layers, made a custom carbon fiber trigger and also managed to get an active line release in there using a Salvimar part:

The gun had a ton of leaks when first assembled and one of them was from a very beat up trigger bushing bore so I ended up enlarging that to get into clean material and made some new bushings - also with a thinner trigger pin:

And the (almost) final result ended up looking like this:

There's an UBL vacuum muzzle on the gun. DIY soft shackle in the handle and a homemade fiber optic sight holder at the front of the reservoir.

This will sound strange but I am super forgetful and it's been a while - seven years - but I'm not sure I ever shot this gun. I actually think I didn't. Which is a real shame as it's probably the best looking of the modded Mirages I made in that period. And the idea of Fin Bag Mirage is still a worthy undertaking.

Looking at my old notes, it seems I fixed all the external leaks but somewhere inside where all the Mirage magic is happening I still had a leak. I must have had an upcoming trip and ran out of time and brought another gun. And then when I got back to tinkering it's likely that I concluded that the original Mirage parts were too fickle and I opted for a fresh start making a Mirage without Mirage parts... Hence, I abandoned this project for the bigger Evo Mirage (which has it's own massive build thread).

The thing is, even though I am no longer based in China and haven't been back in years, I still have a lot of stuff in storage there so I think this gun must be hiding in a room somewhere.
It would be nice getting it back and giving this project a worthwhile ending. I have actually upgraded my machining capabilities since then, so it's quite possible I could make it work this time

 

[tromic]

Thought I'd dump some pics here from the recently recovered "archives".
It's scary how time flies but this build was late 2017, early 2018 so seven years ago...

Anyhow, the overall goal was to have a Mirage which would fit inside a fin bag for easy travelling, so the length was optimized for that.

It was a fairly long build on which I learned a lot but the short version is here:
I cut down a long stock Predathor shooting barrel and made my own pumping barrel. Then I chopped down an original Mirage handle by an obsene amount and rebuilt it with my homemade, lightweight but strong mix of epoxy, chopped carbon fiber and micro ballons:
View attachment 60613

It takes a few rounds to do this and here are some in-between pics:
View attachment 60614


I made a trigger guard out of thin wood veneers with carbon fiber layers between the wood layers, made a custom carbon fiber trigger and also managed to get an active line release in there using a Salvimar part:
View attachment 60615

The gun had a ton of leaks when first assembled and one of them was from a very beat up trigger bushing bore so I ended up enlarging that to get into clean material and made some new bushings - also with a thinner trigger pin:
View attachment 60616

And the (almost) final result ended up looking like this:
View attachment 60617
View attachment 60618

There's an UBL vacuum muzzle on the gun. DIY soft shackle in the handle and a homemade fiber optic sight holder at the front of the reservoir.

This will sound strange but I am super forgetful and it's been a while - seven years - but I'm not sure I ever shot this gun. I actually think I didn't. Which is a real shame as it's probably the best looking of the modded Mirages I made in that period. And the idea of Fin Bag Mirage is still a worthy undertaking.

Looking at my old notes, it seems I fixed all the external leaks but somewhere inside where all the Mirage magic is happening I still had a leak. I must have had an upcoming trip and ran out of time and brought another gun. And then when I got back to tinkering it's likely that I concluded that the original Mirage parts were too fickle and I opted for a fresh start making a Mirage without Mirage parts... Hence, I abandoned this project for the bigger Evo Mirage (which has it's own massive build thread).

The thing is, even though I am no longer based in China and haven't been back in years, I still have a lot of stuff in storage there so I think this gun must be hiding in a room somewhere.
It would be nice getting it back and giving this project a worthwhile ending. I have actually upgraded my machining capabilities since then, so it's quite possible I could make it work this time

Glad to see you back after long time! I was worried about you...

 

[Diving Gecko]

Glad to see you back after long time! I was worried about you...

Thanks so much Tomi!
Hope you and Marko are ok, too.

The pandemic and losing my work visa to China resulted in some rough years. Still not recovered career-wise but my health is OK and I ended up on an island in the Philippines with ocean all around me - hardly any fish left here, though.
But in better news, I have gotten some of my tools, toys and machines sent here and I found a small workshop space for it all - and I have a few upgrades, too. Something I dreamed about back in China finally became reality with a bit of delay but I now have a small CNC mill/router capable of cutting aluminium.
So, yeah, I will get back to tinkering and making parts pretty soon. And the airgun that has lived in my imagination for a long, long time may very well become real, too!