The Black King

[PopRocket123]

I started a project a while back to make a copy of the Black King rifle seen in Netflix's Shooter and it led me down an autistic rabbit hole of early 2000s precision shooting that I have to post somewhere. It's an ugly rifle but in that unique way that is way too memorable to leave alone. I started with my TAC-41P as a base. For no other reason than it's what I have to hand. It's not accurate to what's seen on screen but it's a solid base. I planned on printing most of the parts out of carbon fibre reinforced ABS with a few off the shelf screws and metal parts holding it together

 

So let's start off with what it is I'm trying to replicate. The rifle seen in screen is a D&L Sports MR30PG. Which is an issue since as far as I can tell they're custom build rifles built to order. Which has led to me finding at least 4 distinct rifles each with different details.

 

These were M700 long action recievers clamped into a solid aluminium chassis. This gave an immensely heavy rifle perfect for long range shooting with minimal felt recoil. It also gave a solid interface between the receiver and the stock, something that was hard to achieve with the more common wooden and synthetic stocks of the time. This was in the late 90s-early 2000s, when the only precision rifle using a modern chassis system was the Accuracy International L96 so most rifles in the US used for competition were basic polymer stocks. These would have to be reinforced and bedded with glass fibre and metal inserts to avoid shifting zero under recoil.

 

The MR30 gets around this by replacing the stock with a big lump of metal. Not an elegant solution but very effective. It eliminated the internal magazine so it was a single shot. This is often done by long range competition shooters to avoid bending the cartridge as it is pushed out of the magazine (It's a whole other argument if this even makes a difference but we're talking about people so anal that that will load their own ammo and only use bullets and brass from particular batches as certain dies have slightly better results than others). The distinctive carry handle simply made it easier to lug this overweight beast between your truck and the range. Having such an adjustable stock was something of a novelty at the time, allowing for cheek height, length of pull and even shoulder pad height adjustments as well as the rear monopod. The barrel seems to have a lot of variation between rifles but the one used on screen is a fluted 20" bull barrel with a unique spiral muzzle break drilled into the barrel. All of this worked. In the only video I could find of one actually being shot, a random YouTube video from 13 years ago it barely moved when shot and made easy hits at 1000 yards.

 

So I know what I'm making, now I needed reference pictures. That's where things got tricky. Screen grabs from the show were basically useless, too low quality and at unhelpful angles. After finding out the name I was able to find some more examples, mostly old listings of ones being sold second hand. Of those only one had all around shots and up close detailed looks at different parts.

https://www.gunsinternational.com/guns-for-sale-online/rifles/benchrest-and-target-rifles/d-l-sports-mr30-professional-grade-precision-rifle.cfm?gun_id=100897224

 

I also found a rendering done by a 3d artist in blender. That had a lot of useful angles but was made by an artist, not an engineer, so while the general shape was usable, the details couldn't be used than anything more than a reference. But what it did have was a side shot I could use as a template in Fusion360.

https://thuanha823.artstation.com/projects/Aq6YrN

 

So that's where I started. I modeled up the receiver, bolt, barrel and the most difficult part to draw accurately, the magwell. Then I lined up the template picture, using the length of the original stock and the barrel length to scale it.

The TAC-41 receiver is loosely based on the Mcmillan Tac 338 which has a .388 length ejection port instead of the .308 length one of the original so already some inaccuracy there but it could be worse. I also left the original mag sticking out of the bottom instead of the completely flat bottom. Maybe if I come back to this at a later date and design one for a VSR it'll look closer but I'm happy with how this has come out. The stock has been thickened up a bit compared to the original too as the plastic I would be printing this in wouldn't be as strong as the original aluminium. 

 

[ruskitseller]

On 30/12/2024 at 22:02, PopRocket123 said:

I started a project a while back to make a copy of the Black King rifle seen in Netflix's Shooter and it led me down an autistic rabbit hole of early 2000s precision shooting that I have to post somewhere. It's an ugly rifle but in that unique way that is way too memorable to leave alone. I started with my TAC-41P as a base. For no other reason than it's what I have to hand. It's not accurate to what's seen on screen but it's a solid base. I planned on printing most of the parts out of carbon fibre reinforced ABS with a few off the shelf screws and metal parts holding it together

 

So let's start off with what it is I'm trying to replicate. The rifle seen in screen is a D&L Sports MR30PG. Which is an issue since as far as I can tell they're custom build rifles built to order. Which has led to me finding at least 4 distinct rifles each with different details.

 

These were M700 long action recievers clamped into a solid aluminium chassis. This gave an immensely heavy rifle perfect for long range shooting with minimal felt recoil. It also gave a solid interface between the receiver and the stock, something that was hard to achieve with the more common wooden and synthetic stocks of the time. This was in the late 90s-early 2000s, when the only precision rifle using a modern chassis system was the Accuracy International L96 so most rifles in the US used for competition were basic polymer stocks. These would have to be reinforced and bedded with glass fibre and metal inserts to avoid shifting zero under recoil.

 

The MR30 gets around this by replacing the stock with a big lump of metal. Not an elegant solution but very effective. It eliminated the internal magazine so it was a single shot. This is often done by long range competition shooters to avoid bending the cartridge as it is pushed out of the magazine (It's a whole other argument if this even makes a difference but we're talking about people so anal that that will load their own ammo and only use bullets and brass from particular batches as certain dies have slightly better results than others). The distinctive carry handle simply made it easier to lug this overweight beast between your truck and the range. Having such an adjustable stock was something of a novelty at the time, allowing for cheek height, length of pull and even shoulder pad height adjustments as well as the rear monopod. The barrel seems to have a lot of variation between rifles but the one used on screen is a fluted 20" bull barrel with a unique spiral muzzle break drilled into the barrel. All of this worked. In the only video I could find of one actually being shot, a random YouTube video from 13 years ago it barely moved when shot and made easy hits at 1000 yards.

 

So I know what I'm making, now I needed reference pictures. That's where things got tricky. Screen grabs from the show were basically useless, too low quality and at unhelpful angles. After finding out the name I was able to find some more examples, mostly old listings of ones being sold second hand. Of those only one had all around shots and up close detailed looks at different parts.

https://www.gunsinternational.com/guns-for-sale-online/rifles/benchrest-and-target-rifles/d-l-sports-mr30-professional-grade-precision-rifle.cfm?gun_id=100897224

 

I also found a rendering done by a 3d artist in blender. That had a lot of useful angles but was made by an artist, not an engineer, so while the general shape was usable, the details couldn't be used than anything more than a reference. But what it did have was a side shot I could use as a template in Fusion360.

https://thuanha823.artstation.com/projects/Aq6YrN

 

So that's where I started. I modeled up the receiver, bolt, barrel and the most difficult part to draw accurately, the magwell. Then I lined up the template picture, using the length of the original stock and the barrel length to scale it.

The TAC-41 receiver is loosely based on the Mcmillan Tac 338 which has a .388 length ejection port instead of the .308 length one of the original so already some inaccuracy there but it could be worse. I also left the original mag sticking out of the bottom instead of the completely flat bottom. Maybe if I come back to this at a later date and design one for a VSR it'll look closer but I'm happy with how this has come out. The stock has been thickened up a bit compared to the original too as the plastic I would be printing this in wouldn't be as strong as the original aluminium. 

 

Good research mate, very interesting. How is the build going?