The Hebrew Heater

As is apt to happen, I sometimes drop off the face of the earth for very long periods of time.  Lots of things between where I left off and now, but I'll spare you the details.  What's important is that it's the middle of hecking winter and I have another wholly impractical project to work on.

Yeah.  The Hebrew Heater, ready to dispense some Jewish Justice.  The Uzi.  Why the Jewish jokes?  Because despite being the star of every 80's action movie and the Secret Service's sidearm of choice, the Uzi was actually designed way back in 1950 by Jews, for Jews, and manufactured by Israeli Military Industries(IMI) from 1950-present.  Like the AK, it's one of the world's most recognizable guns, and millions have been produced(so many that even my well used one is serial numbered in the 9 millions).  The Uzi been used by military or police units in over 90 countries, including this one.

There are a few varieties of Uzi parts kits on the market, original Israeli kits, and, in an historical irony, German kits.  The German military bought this Jewish weapon for over 25 years.  I decided I wanted the original, a genuine IMI built, Israeli used Uzi.  Like all machine gun parts kits, the receiver on my kit is torched to BATF specifications, and there are large chunks of the receiver missing.  Technically, it's now a pile of scrap metal, and no longer a machine gun.  Both the receiver markings and the safety selector markings are in Hebrew.

I'm rebuilding this parts kit as a legal, semi-auto pistol.  Why a pistol?  A couple reasons.  First pistols don't need to worry about 922r(which you may remember was a big deal with the AK, and I'm going to keep track or parts count anyway).  Second, by using a 16" barrel, I can convert it to a carbine with a shoulder stock, as is becoming popular with many off the shelf Glock pistols these days.  There are several Glock to carbine conversion kits on the market.  If it were built as a rifle, it could NEVER be made into a pistol.  Legally you can go one way, but not the other.

There are tens of thousands of semi-auto Uzi's here in the US already, so I could just buy one, but where's the fun in that?  To get this former machine gun together and be legal, I am going to convert the original open bolt system to a closed bolt, striker fired semi-auto.  When it comes down to it, Uzi's are dirt simple, and I've got some special, and overly complicated plans for this project. 

One last little bit of business.  In order to make it clear that I have no intention of using this as a machine gun, one of the very first things I did when I got my parts kit was grind off the firing pin from the original Uzi bolt.  It CAN NOT be used in a functional gun anymore.