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The Bolters used by Space Marines in Warhammer 40000 table-top combat game is an iconic weapon is the science fiction world. In this scifi universe, the Space Marines are parallel to the U.S. Marine. And the Bolter is their equivalent to a M4 assault rifle.
Just today, when I was looking at M4 pistols, it occurred to me how the M4 pistol (without a buffer tube) resembled a Bolter. That gave me a sudden inspiration to design an airsoft Bolter using the M4 as the base.
In this article, I will walk through the process of building a functional airsoft Warhammer 40K Bolter through the use of off-the-shelf M4 parts. You can then use the M4 Bolter as it, based on the resemblance, or continue to improve the base through sculpture modeling.
To test the feasibility and perform a rapid prototype, I used the Pimp My Gun site (see "Related Links" section below). Pimp My Gun allows you to assemble guns virtually using a selection of models. I used its list of standard M4 parts to assemble the base of the airsoft Bolter. The result is shown in the design below.
Pimp My Gun has the short grenade launcher above, but it's too long for our purpose. There is a mini M203 airsoft grenade launcher now, which should be sufficient for this purpose. So using Gimp, I made some changes to resemble real airsoft parts. The result is shown below.
As you can see in the comparison images below, the assembled M4 has a huge resemblance to the Bolter. The only thing that the airsoft version is missing is the short butt stock.
So far, all the parts in the design are off the shelf airsoft parts. Therefore, you can see that is quite feasible to build an airsoft Bolter. How closely you want it to resemble the Warhammer 40K Bolter depends on how much sculpture modeling you are willing to perform afterward. In the next section, I will show you all the off the shelf part that are used in the design.
The exploded parts view below shows all the parts for this airsoft Bolter. Keep in mind that it only shows the external parts, not the internal parts.
The first part is the receiver. In this case, I picked the HK416, because it has a great resemblance to the Bolter receiver. Next, I picked the AG-43 handgrip, because it has the finger indention similar to the Bolter handgrip. The VFR-AR15 adaptive quad rail make the top even more Bolter like. And the saw-off M203 grenade launcher is just to give it the Bolter handguard look. The PMAG 30 round magazine is about the closest part I can find for the airsoft Bolter. The KX3 flashhider, if used with a short external barrel, will match the Bolter quite well.
As you can see, all these parts are readily available in airsoft or real firearm versions.
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