8 minute read
TECH: CL PROJECT DESIGN
WE’RE LUCKILY NO STRANGERS WHEN IT COMES TO WORKING DIRECTLY WITH SOME OF THE VERY BEST IN THE GLOBAL AIRSOFT INDUSTRY, AND TO SAY THAT OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH CLARENCE LAI IS A CLOSE ONE WOULD BE A DEFINITE UNDERSTATEMENT! AS HIS NEW UPGRADE PARTS HIT THE MARKET FULLY WE’LL BE REPORTING ON THEM IN FULL, AND JIMMY KICKS OFF THIS COVERAGE WITH AN IN-DEPTH OVERVIEW.
Doyou like your pistols with or without spice? Recently I have been given an opportunity and it’s an opportunity which I am truly blessed to have. I’ve been lucky enough to have been sent a selection of “Clarence Lai Project Design” parts that have been designed for competition shooters but are equally at home in the hands of any skirmisher or milsim-er and it has been my job to test said parts and let you the readers know all about just how good they are! Sucks to be me, right?
I’ve worked with some big brands to date but for me being able to work directly with Clarence really is an achievement. When it comes to pistols I believe this guy to be one of the best and I am not alone on that opinion. Some of you will remember the name “Airsoft Surgeon” but recently there have been a few changes; I’m not going to go into the politics of it all to be honest, but now he operates under a new name which is CL PROJECT DESIGN.
CL PROJECT DESIGN is the home of all and only genuine Clarence Lai products. Yes you read that correctly! Clarence Lai how very exciting, it is a true honour to work with Clarence and I aspire to be as good as he. I’m slightly jealous of Stewbacca, one of my fellow AA contributors, as he lives in Taiwan where Clarence operates from, and Stu has met the man in person and worked on some of Clarence’s rifle projects. To learn more on Stu’s adventures please check out Issue 132 (available in Back Issues) as you can find the full low down on this and it is well worth a read.
Clarence kindly shipped us over a nice collection of some of his latest creations and I have to say these have made a massive difference to all the pistols that I have fitted them to. It soon became apparent as to why he is still known as the “Airsoft Surgeon”. We got parts for Hi Capas/1911, Dan Wesson 715, Chiappa Rhino and the CZ Shadow 2, a veritable selection or springs, hop rubbers, mag feed lips, nozzles and the like!
PROPERLY PREPPED
I already had at my disposal a Hi Capa but we needed the revolver and the Shadow in order to test; having some great contacts in the industry I managed to acquire them for a very good price which was mighty
cconvenient! I started on the Hi Capa which already had some minor upgrades in the form of recoil spring, short stroke buffers and a nozzle spring. CL parts fitted were the new hop rubber, leaf spring, thumb rest and the winged safety catch. All of these parts made one hell of a difference, and I forget how many times I said “Wow”!! The hop rubber over the stock rubber gave amazing results sending BBs out to around 70m with accuracy, and for testing I used CLPD BUSHIDO BBs (of course I did!), the 0.30g, and it handled that weight comfortably. Giggle factor 12 seeing BBs disappear off into the distance!
The leaf spring made everything much lighter to operate, and of course lighter means faster! The trigger pull became lighter being as little as 1lb 2oz and the distance of pull had also been made shorter, making for lightning response and super-fast follow up shots. The leaf spring combined with my minor upgrades transformed the Hi Capa tenfold I couldn’t believe how fast this was operating. The addition of the thumb rest and the winged safety completely altered how I handled the pistol. Due to the positioning of these parts the pistol sits in such a way that when you bring your pistol up it aids with sight alignment meaning target acquisition is much easier; through testing my personal accuracy increased substantially and I look forward to some competition scenarios to see how I fair up under pressure of the clock. Next up would be the ASG Dan Wesson 715; I would never have thought a six-shot revolver would be used in Action Air pistol shooting. I’ll take this opportunity to mention that ActionSportGames (ASG) have joined forces with CL Project Design to create fully licensed upgrade parts for their products, so it’s all good. Now, having never even thought about upgrading a revolver, I first felt a little out of my depth but for the purpose of science I needed to put that worry aside and crack on. Fortunately for me, Clarence has drafted a set of
CLPD Ambi Safety with Wing
pictorial instructions which were incredibly helpful and very easy to follow. I never actually realised just how easy the 715 revolver is to work on; six screws and it’s apart in no time. All of the original springs need to be removed and I recommend following Clarence’s instructions step by step.
So I replaced the cylinder spring, cylinder release catch spring, trigger spring, hammer spring and gas release valve spring. Before any tinkering I did some weight tests on the trigger and initial results were very disappointing, the double action trigger pull was off the scale at over 8lbs and single action was
a little over 4lbs. After all the upgrade springs were fitted I retested the weight of the trigger and what a transformation. It has gone from slow and heavy to light and speedy with a new double action trigger weight of 4lb 2oz and a single action weight of 2lb. You can reel out six BBs in under three seconds it is rapid. For anyone who is thinking of or currently using a Dan Wesson revolver for competition I strongly advise you to get this spring kit, as it will be money well spent.
There are other parts in the pipeline which complement the 715 even further. Check out Clarence’s social media for all the latest on this.
With the CZ shadow I tested the new recoil spring which I believe has been designed to work in conjunction with green gas, but as I’m using CO2 I believe this is causing a few issues with the slide return. I know it works fine on green gas and makes the use of green gas a lot more efficient. The modified feed lips are working a treat over the standard ones, and with the standard feed lips I was experiencing some feed issues due to BBs sticking. I switched out to the CL modded one and not a single problem as it now feeds impeccably. There are some additional parts which have been manufactured, for example steel slide catch and CNC steel trigger bars, but sadly we didn’t receive these as they were still under production at the time. Knowing what I know I can safely say these will be a great compliment to the pistol.
CLPD Dan Wesson Competition Spring Set CLPD Shadow 2 OEM Hand Polished Magazine Lip
TEAMWORK/DREAMWORK!
Stu Mortimer, AKA Stewbacca, our Taiwan correspondent has been using CL parts for a while now and he is enjoying his pistols working properly; Stu labours his pistols quite hard and is constantly training and also competing in IPSC/IDPA so he needs to ensure his equipment works right every time. Stu tells me:
“I’m really enjoying making use of the manually fettled magazine feed lips on my magazines and Clarence gave me a whole goodie bag at the IDPA event recently including his new fibre optic front sight block with red and green fibres, new CNC barrel, tuned recoil spring and other accessories”.
These parts and many more to come will be widely available from many outlets, to stay up to date with the latest and greatest please do visit www.clprojectdesign.com where you will also find information on all of the dealers and where you can purchase these amazing products. Clarence has asked I mention UK SHIELD who recently became the UK distribution centre for all official CL Project Design upgrade parts, so congratulations from us all as we at Airsoft Action are also very pleased to see a UK-based outlet.
I’d like to once again thank Clarence for offering me this opportunity, and thus far I have enjoyed it immensely! AA
COMING IN EARLY 2022!
