Depending on where you are, only buy from evike if you live in the country they are. Have seen a few UK people buying from evike, and they will send broken or poorly packaged stuff that gets damaged, and you won’t pay the return freight to swap it. Try to buy local or if you can wait for Asian suppliers will usually be cheaper. It is all buyer beware but weigh up the risks to you of course. Also some won’t ship to various countries outside of their own.
Now the fun.
My tips for building from scratch for the beginner:
Don’t?
Hear me out…
It is usually cheaper and easier to get a base blaster and customise it to your taste. Even more so if you don’t know or have reliable source saying what parts fit well. There are no real standards and specs for this, sometimes things just don’t line up. Be prepared to have a couple of parts spare that you had to buy twice because of that.
If you get a base blaster, and fully customise it, you then have alot of the parts to build another one left over, then a build is from the basis that “just need this part then can turn all these spares into a blaster”.
Of the 19 M4s I have, 12 are scratch builds. And I can’t include the ones I have sold as I nearly can’t remember them all. Scratch builds are fine for me as I have loads of parts, and experience with things that work and don’t, there is also countless parts that I don’t know. The builds that had a base blaster are by far the easiest and least potentially problematic. Also the cheapest if you have to buy everything. Alot of my stuff for the scratch builds is leftover parts from things that didn’t work on another build, cheap sale items, and parts from a base blaster that was modified… junkyard/boneyard builds.
The main point is, while I love building from scratch, it doesn’t always go to plan, you end up with a few spare parts, and you usually have to modify a few parts to make things work and line up correctly.
In no way am I discouraging you from having a go, I know some people give up and it ends up on my bench to get it working, and my kinks include making things work, and getting broken and cheap stuff and making it work, it really depends on how you view the hobby. Some people just want to play with their stuff but don’t tinker. Some mostly play and tinker to save money, both, and people like me who play occaisonally but mostly tinker. It all depends on how much effort you want to go to.
Start small and easy, customise and upgrade existing blasters in your collection, and work to a scratch build once you have most of a blaster in spare parts is my recommendation.
Fear not though, as everyone here will offer help and advice for your journey