Taking a gun apart is even easier than you think
It was only a few years ago that I thought that I needed to schedule some time with a Glock certified gunsmith so I didn’t have to sit and read a book about assembling and disassembling a G26 which is always a royal pain. Even though guns are fairly simple, there are always little tricks to holding a gun and knowing how to wiggle difficult parts out, no matter how many times I’ve read my directions for installing computer software or putting my damn kids legos together, a good old instruction video is better. I was really happy to see that Otis sends out CD and DVD instructions with their cleaning kits which probable saves there customer service department a lot of headache phone calls.
I have a few AGI gun videos I strongly suggest picking them up, but now in the age of youtube.com it’s easy to find someone who has posted there own instructional videos and I have found some really good ones. Please be aware that I am not saying that youtube is a great source for valid info because I have seen plenty of poor gun handling skills which I wish would be removed, but as much as there are some bad points about the internet, there are plenty of good ones. Installing gun parts and accessories if done incorrectly may mean damaging or breaking your gun or the part you are trying to install. I know a few gun shops that limit the amount of gun accessories that they carry because they are tired of the complaints about how the gun parts were broken when they got them.
There are firearms that are going to need a lot of attention when it comes to changing parts or doing upgrades on them. I think it’s a good idea to drop off the gun and the parts with a gun smith unless you know for sure that the part you have is a “drop in”. From my experience, most gun parts and accessories will need some fitting. This is where people tend to break rifle stocks or rails because they start forcing things when they really should be filing something. I know several gun shops that get tired of people calling them up and claiming that a firegrip or rifle stock was broken, when the gunsmith knows how it really happened. I did several AK stock changes and every one of them was different. I even found areas that need to be filed down where on similiar guns, it just snapped right in.
There are a lot of Police trade ins and used firearms out there that can be purchased and 30%-40% below what NEW prices are. There are a few online FFL dealers that pick up the police issued Glocks and Sigs and resell them for under $400. I picked up a few that had a lot of holster wear but once I opened the action, they were hardly fired and they ran flawlessy. Most of the time this is the type of condition most Police trade ins are found.