Started working on the sights;
Front sight shroud. I picked 22ga rolled sheet steel as my material. It's easy to cut w/ tinsnips and of course takes a gorgeous blued finish. Both front and rear sights will be constructed entirely of steel.
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Finished the rear sight shroud today, as well picked up materials so I can finish and mount the sights (hopefully tomorrow, ran out of daylight today).
Although the 22ga sheet steel is pretty robust, I was worrying about them getting beaten up severely. So already having a blowtorch I decided to quench the finished pieces to harden the steel;
1. Heating the pieces on a 1" steel square rod, then hammering them out to get nice right angles.
2. Blasting the shit out of them till they glowed a nice red hot
3. Quenching in a tin can I found (really, it was in the middle of the floor of my common room, already clean!)
4. After rebluing, each part is much more resistant to being deformed, and the bends hold there angle much better against pressure.
I left all the tool marks etc on the parts, as I felt it made them look more "made in china". This is supposed to be a chinese made RPG-2 btw.