Since I was making several purchases of various goodies from HunterSeeker Armory, I also decided to add their “Barrel Lockdown Kit” to my shopping cart to give it a try.
The Barrel Lockdown Kit (BLK) is a relatively basic four piece kit consisting of two shims and three o-rings that is designed to do what it’s namesake claims: lock down your barrel to help increase accuracy. By now most should be aware that a wobbly or loose inner barrel to outer barrel fit is detrimental to accuracy. So as such, various designs and techniques exist to keep things as tight and immovable as possible.
Installation
No instructions are provided with the BLK, but if you can’t figure it out, you’re doing it wrong. The main centerpiece of the BLK kit is the conical shim that is designed to replace the traditional brass, plastic, or steel ring that fits in front of your hop up bucking. Typically these rings are usually too loose to do much more than wander back and forth under the AEG’s measly recoil. This can be more of a problem if you swap your stock barrel out for an aftermarket as some designs don’t allow for fitment of those rings anymore. The conical shim pictured here is designed to accept a wide tolerance of barrel diameters and sizes.
An important caveat to the installation of the conical shim is that you simply press it into place. You don’t want to tap it in with a punch or force it too hard as this can cause you to damage your hop up chamber or cause your hop up window and bucking to become misaligned. Simply press it into place with your fingernails and let the o-rings do the rest.
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The set of o-rings are supposed to be fitted after you’ve installed the conical shim. On some AEG’s (Ver. 2) you will have a spring on the hop up chamber or one that fits over the outer barrel that helps facilitate a better air seal with your gearbox. The o-rings are there to replace the springs and provide a firmer fit. Technically you’re supposed to experiment a bit with the number required. Too many and you won’t be able to insert your hop up chamber fully into the outer barrel assembly. Too little and it won’t have the desired effect of making things a tighter fit. Additionally these also serve to help retain the conical shim too.
The final piece is the barrel wedge. This is supposed to be installed at the muzzle end of the inner barrel and is simply a wedge to take out any of the slop at the muzzle end area. HunterSeeker5 recommends placing it at the top of the inner barrel as it seems to have the best results for accuracy.
Here’s where things get bad
Considering this is a relatively simple kit with even simpler installation, I have a few complaints:
- I do not feel this kit was designed for anything other than a Version 2 design. The design of the Ver. 3 does not lend itself to the correct use of the o-rings. As you can see in the above photo, you can’t fit more than two of these before the outer barrel design makes things too tight. As it is, it’s a pretty tight fit with just two o-rings (they’re almost too big in diameter), and it makes it kind of tough to slap things together. I think over time this will wind up destroying the o-rings actually. You can make it work, but it’s not what I would call ideal. The alternative would be to widen the profile of the outer barrel some where it contacts the o-rings, but this is more work and effort than should be required for some silly o-rings.
- The barrel shim is too flimsy. I broke mine within seconds of installation – it simply snapped in half. Far too brittle of a material in my opinion. Furthermore, you will not be able to use the shim if your inner barrel is recessed at all within the outer barrel. It’s only designed to work with barrels that protrude past the outer barrel end.
- At $16 shipped CONUS, this is an exorbitantly expensive kit for what you get. In my opinion the real value lies with the conical shim – that piece does it’s job perfectly and is a good solution for the traditional shims. However, the rest is kind of … the word “blegh” comes to mind. I could source O-rings from the local hardware store for $.05 each and wrapping the muzzle end with Teflon, electrical tape, or fashioning shims from ABS sheet is far cheaper and incidentally, more reliable.
Conclusions
Ultimately I don’t think I would recommend this kit to someone who is looking to lockdown their barrel. The conical shim is the only piece from this kit that I feel has legitimate value (even then, someone with lots of spare time could fashion a similar device), whereas the rest is mostly money wasted. It would be far more preferable if you could purchase the conical shim as a separate standalone piece, but this is not the case. As it is currently, locking down your barrel is an easy proposition with commonly available materials that shouldn’t set you back more than $5.