The Dragon Mag Lives!!!!

[Tack]

Yes boys and girls, I am the owner of the famous dragon mag formerly owned by ShooterJM. I have had it for a couple of years now and just found it again. A former employee told me he had sold it to a customer in our store, it turns out that he just stripped parts off it and left the barely living carcass in a box in my store room. While cleaning up things I found her and decided that she could be rebuilt, stronger, faster, and better than before.

I added the Intelliframe, Front grip, X-valve and a new body right now. I am planning to add more to it as I go along. Here is where you guys come in. Should I have the body shrouds painted/annoed to further make it look like a dragon? Or should I keep her original? I am letting AO decide since she is one of the most original Mags out there. Any other input on upgrades or add-ons will be considered as well.

Here is what I have done so far.
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f145/fatcatpaintball/MVC-032S.jpg

[bentothejam1n]

dragun frame??
Do you know how long it took to mill it? Whats hold the sleeves on??

[A-Tach-One]

Sweet, maybe some extra Dragon milling in the rail to tie it together nicely. :cheers:

[Tack]

The sleves are held on by set screws. I have no clue how long it took to mill. I bought it from Shooter when I opened my store. I do know it was all hand milled.

[m-a-r-k-7]

Green, that looks the mose dragon-esque

[camilion705]

You should have the barrel annoed to look like fire :mad:

[bleachit]

You should have the barrel annoed to look like fire :mad:


yeah do that

[PBCapo]

was that milled by Tysonmanchado (sp?)

[Arstron]

Wow! I have been wishing I could see some new pictures of that for quite a while! For those that dont know (I cant rember who did the milling and somone correct me if im wrong), the dragon was milled out of 2 sight rails and was done with a dremal (thats the part my memory might be failing me on). I would say a milled rail and some flame grips from GA Devil (is he still making grips from frymarks molds?). Its great to see the dragon back alive!

[Pyroboy597]

Def anno the barrel like flames, anno the fram dark green (back) to light green (front) fade.

[Shane-O-Mac]

Yo Tack, where the heck is Ashland? You should come to AO St.Louis, heres the thread.

http://www.automags.org/forums/showthread.php?t=191176

And bring that baby with you!

Can you use a PF body oy maybe even a ULE with the sleeves?

I say a green body and a barrle that is faded to look like fire would be sweet. looks good so far, except for that classic body, But if you gotta use it, cut down the feedtube some.

Shane-O

[Tack]

Arstron, you are correct about the dremmel milling. As far as who did it, I have no idea.

I am looking into what type of rail I am wanting to use. I have a good relationship with Fireball Mountain and they do great anno work. I may have them anno things and do some laser engraved scales on the rail and into the frame, then a set of custom grips. Sadly the way the sleves are made the body has to be either a classic right feed or a hopper left power feed. I tried a HLPF RT body but for some reasion the X-valve would not fit in the body. The bolt is too thick and won't allow me to seat the valve in the body correctly. I thought about a ULE but wiht the sleve requirment I don't think it would work.

Shane-O-Mac, Ashland is a small town located on Hwy 63 directly between Jefferson City and Columbia. I have been watching the thread, I don't think I can attend at the moment because I am in the process of training a new reffing staff at my field in Columbia and can't leave them alone to run the place quite yet. I thought about offering my field for the meeting and am still up for it if everyone wants, but last time I suggested a Mid-Mo field it was our second get together and we only had 3 members show up from AO and several of their friends.

[AnthonyW]

put in the photoshop thread to pick a color. Let Bunny5 have at it!

[Maghog]

First, make sure you take some nice, high res pics to show to us.
Second, you should think long and hard before anodizing it. I'd almost say don't do it at all, but the dragon may actually look good if done properly.
Just remember you've got a one of a kind work of art there, and changing it from its original state is sort of like deciding the background on the Mona Lisa needs to be purple.
I'd leave it the way it is, and enhance all the other components to compliment it.
Dan@Triggernomics

[WakeJake05]

whoever milled that could make so much money making bodys for people

[FooTemps]

That was hand done by dremel. It'd take forever to make those bodies by hand.

[magman007]

tyson machado made it, he made rails as well.

[FooTemps]

Maghog...

By the way I look at that body, I see it as an unfinished piece. I mean, it's a great piece of hand crafted (sorta) work, but it's still raw. He should at least anno it (clear if he really wants to keep it as close to original as possible) to protect the thing.

[ShooterJM]

Man I still love looking at that thing! If you ever decide to get rid of it, please give me a shot at buying it back from you!

Yeah, tyson carved it all with a dremmel. It started out as two of those long bulky old school site rails actually.

If I remember correctly it took around 100 hours of work to complete.

As for changes to it. The only thing I REALLY wanted to do was to mount jewels in the eye sockets. I had matched saphires in there for awhile, but I never could get them to stay in there reliably. In retrospect I should have had a jewler mount the stones to small screws and had the eye's tapped. That would have probably worked. Dang it. Why didn't I think of that before!?!? :cuss:

Either way it's good to see it's still around and being apreciated. Wish Tyson were still around to keep carving stuff though.

[temps]

I wish I had the tallent to carve something like that.

Definatly send the rail out maybe even see if someone can make a custom frame for it and have it all milled to match the body. then get it annoed and fire anno the barrel. It would be sick.

Emag lowers?

[Tack]

Shooter, if I ever do decide to sell it you get first dibs. Once I get her set up and good to go again I will be using it for alot of open play and some scenario games.

Anyone know of a place that does custom milling? I would love to get a body rail set up with more cuts to realy add to the look.

[sicone]

Id deffinately get set of emag lowers for that beast tie the rail of it in and get a green mainbody with black all around the edges like the green fading into it the eyes accented red and a flamed barrel its be nuts

[doc_Zox]

if anyone wants to roll yer own
the these rails are dirt cheap
http://www.iisports.com/assets/images/product/iispaintball/Large_Photos/XP8932A-CUSTOM-H0.jpg
i just bought one for my M1A project $2.75!!

http://www.iisports.com/product.asp?s=iispaintball&pf_id=XP8932A-CUSTOM&dept_id=3201

[PBCapo]

find tyson-lol, he made a rail that went with that man, it was sick it was just like horned pretty much the whole way back

[REDRT]

Sweet, maybe some extra Dragon milling in the rail to tie it together nicely.

You should have the barrel annoed to look like fire

I like both these ideas. I like the idea of the dragon being green. Man I have to wait for slower times if I ever consider making an atempt for the MOTM! Sweet custom! :headbang:

[okiTony]

It looks sweet the ways it's now. I'd leave it the way it is and mill the rail to tie it together just like somebody said. Once you get the rail done, polish that baby. Ups on a sweet mag!!!! :cheers:

[Lumberjack]

Sup Tack!!!

Man that thing looks awesome!!
If you could get a front grip milled to look like a dragon arm and claws, that would look preet sharp. Also a green to black fade would reall make it pop.

Glad to hear the store is doing so well.
You have a website up?
I've tried calling a few times but you were out.

[Tack]

Sup man, havn't talked to you for a while. My website is not updated and won't be until I can get things worked out with my webmaster. My hours are Wed-Fri 1-6pm,Sat 10-6 and Sun 10-4. You can get me at home any other time.

[okiTony]

What ever happen to this? I’ve been away so if there is another post on it I’m sorry.

[koleah]

A) Necro-post much?

B)Ignoring my above comment, having never seen the dragonmag before, I nearly spit my brocolli all over my computer screen when I glimpsed the hotness of that thing.

AMAZING!!!

[Warwitch]

This is what I was saying Xmagterror shoud work on. Body kits that could be put on ULE bodies. They would sell like hotcakes, no doubt.

[Don Carnage]

This is what I was saying Xmagterror shoud work on. Body kits that could be put on ULE bodies. They would sell like hotcakes, no doubt.

Agreed.

Didn't we already have a thread on how body sleeves/skins would be cool upgrades?
I'm sure they'd be easier to make than entire bodies. It would also make changing your Mag's look a lot cheaper than buying an entirely new body.

[Warwitch]

Agreed.

Didn't we already have a thread on how body sleeves/skins would be cool upgrades?
I'm sure they'd be easier to make than entire bodies. It would also make changing your Mag's look a lot cheaper than buying an entirely new body.


Yeah, I was trying to generate a little interest (which there obviously is). Planned on doing a couple on my friends mill but he is extremely unreliable. Its not rocket science and Im still no one has ever put any effort into making them avail on the forum. It would be so much nicer to just swap body kits for a different effect. Rather than having to deal with the much more complicated milling on the internals and rail areas of bodies.

Couldnt someone just do a 3D scan of a ULE? Then use CAD to design the sleeves?

[angrysasquatch]

Hmm, I might do that, wouldn't be very hard at all to make a cad file of its external shape.

Though I'm not thrilled about sleeves. A bit too ion-ish. I think part of what makes aftermarket bodies so awesome is their price and the fact that it's quite rare to see aftermarket bodies as a result.

[txaggie08]

You need to go check out the Z-grip mag sitting in the BST section. I think the rail he has for that gun may have come from this one initially. If not I want to see what it was built for.....

something like this, minus the terrible photoshop abilities....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v245/txaggie08/magshopcopy.jpg

[Warwitch]

Hmm, I might do that, wouldn't be very hard at all to make a cad file of its external shape.

Though I'm not thrilled about sleeves. A bit too ion-ish. I think part of what makes aftermarket bodies so awesome is their price and the fact that it's quite rare to see aftermarket bodies as a result.


But price is a major factor that prevents those bodies being accessable by the masses. And quite honestly, the fact that you can change up Ions just by swapping sleeves is pretty darn sweet IMO. Not that Im condoning the use of Ions by any means. :nono: Its just a sweet concept and much more easily accomplished.

Of course anyone attempting this might just have to deal with SmartParts somewhere down the line (or at least their attorney's.) :cry:

[Don Carnage]

Tippmanns have body sleeves too. The mil-sim crowd loves them.
Mags and even my wife's old VM68 had sight rails that slid over them and locked on with a nut. Why not just make the sleeves longer and accomodate for feed-necks and ball detents?

Or follow Spec-Ops example and use those screw holes that RT Pro's already have in the rails?

[Warwitch]

Tippmanns have body sleeves too. The mil-sim crowd loves them.
Mags and even my wife's old VM68 had sight rails that slid over them and locked on with a nut. Why not just make the sleeves longer and accomodate for feed-necks and ball detents?

Or follow Spec-Ops example and use those screw holes that RT Pro's already have in the rails?


Thats exactly my point. You could go from milsim to a designer body with a couple of set screws.

[angrysasquatch]

Alright guys, I'll give it a go, just need to find a version of Inventor to "borrow" off the internet for my home computer. Darn schoolwork won't give me enough time to do it at college. One last question, should it be a 2-sleeve system like the dragonmag or a one-sleeve with a cutout for the feedneck like the Ion?

[Don Carnage]

A 1-sleeve would look better in my opinion.

[Mechanic79]

Now all you need is hat or jersey with a dragon tail.

If tippmann made something like this with their propane gun, think of the dual fun you could have! :p

[ShooterJM]

Couple of quick points that I can shed light on:

1) The body shell is complete as shown in the picture. When I asked tyson to carve it for me I didn't have a rail done.

2) In order to get the mouth of the dragon to go over the barrel area we had to go with two of the long style rails. I'm not sure how it would work the a ULE body.

3) The sleeves are held in place with setscrews. They didn't make much of a mark on the stainles steel body, but keep in mind they may dig into an alumnium body and will, at the very least, give surface scratches. I suppose you could use nylon screws or something instead though.

[Warwitch]

Three words for you: Plastic grub screws. ;)

[Spider-TW]

2) In order to get the mouth of the dragon to go over the barrel area we had to go with two of the long style rails. I'm not sure how it would work the a ULE body.

Those were the tall, old style rails, not the short, stuby TASO rail, right? I had one for the sharpshooter sight (for a day or two).

[ShooterJM]

Yep, you got it