Rifle 6mm, No.9, Mk. EM-2

[MSSNAFU]

 TL:DR - This is the working prototype of my Airsoft EM-2 rifle. I designed and made this, mostly by CNC machining solid Aluminium and Walnut. I've only made one. I'm posting it here for the great Airsoft Hive mind to tell me what they think one might be worth if I were to make any for sale.

 
Longer but still briefly 🙂

  The story of the Janson 'Automatic Rifle, .280 in, E.M. 2'  is a relatively minor but interesting bit of British Firearms history, and the Bullpup design and 0.280 inch / 7mm calibre choices were way ahead of their time. The rifle was actually adopted, briefly, in 1951 as the UK's new standard Service Weapon to replace the aging Lee Enfield's and Stens after WW2. But Politics, and especially American insistance on what would become the NATO standard 7.62mm round, saw it un-adopted only a few months later (by Winston Churchill no less!) and no 'Rifle 7mm, No.9, Mk1' was ever actually produced. 

   I started trying to make myself a reasonable Airsoft version of Stefan Jansons EM-2 around 4 or 5 years ago, before the OTT videogame versions appeared btw 🙂. Teaching myself a bit about hobby scale CNC machining and 3D CAD/CAM as I went along . . .  I'll let you imagine what my first attempts looked like! and how much wood and metal I wasted, and how many tool bits I've broken!

I began making my Airsoft version based on a copy of one of the original blueprints for the 'Rifle 7mm, No.9, Mk1.',  and later on corrected it a lot after I had the rare and utterly invaluble privilege of being able to compare my initial efforts with a real steel example, courtesy of Mr Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms & Artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. Jonathan is also the Author of the definitive 'Thorneycroft to SA80. British Bullpup Firearms 1901-2020', which has two chapters on the E.M.2 and its history. Without Jonathan's book and his help answering questions on a most memorable day in Leeds my version wouldn't look anything like the real thing does.
  The major parts of the prototype are made from CNC'd solid Aluminium and solid Walnut planks with a steel outer barrel and real Walnut veneer. It is fitted with a Wolverine Inferno HPA engine as there just isn't room for a gearbox inside the EM-2's frame and the inner barrel is 600mm long stainless steel.
  This project has taken a lot longer and cost a lot more than I imagined it would when I started. Obviously the thought of selling them, if only to make some of my money back(!) has crossed my mind, and I've spoken to a couple of people about the idea. But the consensus seemed to be there wouldn't be enough demand to justify having a batch of them professionally manufactured, even if I have already done most of the R&D, and  without professional production and their economy of scale savings, the unit price and the time needed for me to make each one makes it almost certainly uneconomic to do so.
  But just recently while corresponding with a user on the forum I thought hey, I may as well ask what other Airsofters think a realistic price for it would be? and if anyone would want to buy one if they could?

So, over to you Hive mind 🙂

[jormguh]

I'd absolutely buy one! I'd pay around £900 for something so unique, ideally for a gas blowback version but if not possible I'd still definitely pick up an HPA one. I know several people who'd be thirsting for a GBB one too!

Edited 14 hours ago by jormguh

[mightyjebus]

A couple of thoughts, You are in the Shoei or Trigger happy price doing these as they are very custom with a lot of work to produce. The other thing worth mentioning is that it's most likely a collection piece so a way to remove or hide the HPA hose would be a good idea.

[ButcherBill]

Well... my rubber prop EM-2 cost £230, your 1 off working Em-2 should certainly be worth asking 4-5 times that. I agree with mightyjebus regarding the HPA tho.

[MSSNAFU]

1 hour ago, jormguh said:

I'd absolutely buy one! I'd pay upwards of £900 for something so unique, ideally for a gas blowback version but if not possible I'd still definitely pick up an HPA one. I know several people who'd be thirsting for a GBB one too!

I would buy a GBB version! Way beyond my very limited engineering skills sadly.

 

1 hour ago, mightyjebus said:

A couple of thoughts, You are in the Shoei or Trigger happy price doing these as they are very custom with a lot of work to produce. The other thing worth mentioning is that it's most likely a collection piece so a way to remove or hide the HPA hose would be a good idea.

Going way back, the original design was for a self contained CO2 system, so the hose is/was to be a temporary testing only thing. It's since been mentioned, pointedly, that high pressure gas systems of any kind might need a bit of testing and regulatory approval if they were to be put on sale!

(If you look at the top of the trigger group in the last picture, you can see a section of copper pipe. That is/was part of the CO2 system)

 

So yes the position of the HPA connection would very definitely change. I haven't thought it through but 1st idea would be to make a connection at the rear sling attachment point, very preferably flush with the butt.

[Adolf Hamster]

The first step would be to work out what it would cost you to build, rolling in the lessons learned from making your first one.

 

I suspect that that cost would be pretty steep, and unfortunately the market will probably be smaller than it appears.

 

The number of people who will say they'd pay £££ for a high quality unicorn and the number of people who would actually follow through when the time comes wont be the same.

 

That isnt to say you shouldnt do it, because it is cool af and looks like you're making a proper quality product. I am absolutely here for anything that dilutes the pool of ar derivatives.

[BigStew]

So pricing is how much are raw materials? how much is the machine time? how many man hours goes into making it. If you can make a shell for less than a couple thousand I'll be impressed. Also that is beautiful work. 

[MSSNAFU]

33 minutes ago, Adolf Hamster said:

That isnt to say you shouldnt do it, because it is cool af and looks like you're making a proper quality product. I am absolutely here for anything that dilutes the pool of ar derivatives.

Thank you. What you're saying is pretty much what I suspected and have been told by a couple of people, and the last comment did make me chuckle 😄

Mind you I really understand now why it takes so long for Marui et al to design and produce any new model, rather than iterations of M4/AK/G36 etc. types that they already have the main designs and tooling for, let alone finding enough actual consumer demand for something that would make business sense to produce.  

 

 

19 minutes ago, BigStew said:

So pricing is how much are raw materials? how much is the machine time? how many man hours goes into making it. If you can make a shell for less than a couple thousand I'll be impressed. Also that is beautiful work. 

 Thank you 🙂

I haven't really worked out the true costs at this point. I couldn't do it accurately anyway unless I finish the 'snagging' on the prototype, and sourcing some items rather than just using what I happened to have from some years back may be a problem. Case in point is the optical sight. I happened to have a little 10mm diameter optic that was apparently part of a test rig for the swingfire missile system from the 1970's. It was just about the right size for the EM-2 and fitted within the conical shroud nicely. However finding any similar size modern version that will fit has eluded me the few times I've searched.

Machine time, tool breakages, man hours and so on as you point out are unknowns for a 'production' version, rather than my try, try swear at it, hit it, curse it, bleed on it and try again approach to the prototype 🙂

[ButcherBill]

I suppose we could argue/assume that the big players in airsoft would have developed one already if there was sufficient demand, and smaller players migh not due to costs. It's a shame really but we can live in hope.

[Adolf Hamster]

1 hour ago, MSSNAFU said:

Thank you. What you're saying is pretty much what I suspected and have been told by a couple of people, and the last comment did make me chuckle 😄

Mind you I really understand now why it takes so long for Marui et al to design and produce any new model, rather than iterations of M4/AK/G36 etc. types that they already have the main designs and tooling for, let alone finding enough actual consumer demand for something that would make business sense to produce. 

 

there might be a model, maybe a commission basis kind of thing especially if you're game to build whatever gun the client wants rather than specifically an em2, that way the market becomes "anyone who'd buy a custom gun for £££" rather than "people who'd buy a custom em2 for £££"

 

ofc that would involve every project pressing the reset button on all the design and development work, so the hours involved in that are going to up the bill and you might not want to go through it again, but it might also mean being able to take shortcuts if the particular order can use modified doner(s) rather than an entire scratch build.

[MSSNAFU]

1 hour ago, Adolf Hamster said:

 

ofc that would involve every project pressing the reset button on all the design and development work, so the hours involved in that are going to up the bill and you might not want to go through it again, but it might also mean being able to take shortcuts if the particular order can use modified doner(s) rather than an entire scratch build.

When the idea first crossed my mind building a shell around an existing AEG was the idea, like the Aliens rifle around a Thompson. But the EM-2's unique shape rearwards of the mag well meant nothing would really fit. Weirdly the closest was the Real Sword type 97! 🙃with a SVU as runner up.

(searching... found it!)

Doing it again, completely from scratch, is not going to be done by me. Maybe a company that already makes specialised CNC parts? with an Airsoft enthusiast boss?