We are The Roadcrew - Angel

Aloha all, IronAngel here.

This is the first in a series of posts to let you know who we are. I am IronAngel ("Angel" for short). I am the main web guy, mostly because I type the fastest.

The roadcrew is a loose group, based in West Michigan, and I am located along the shoreline in the tiny, sleepy town of Hart. It's a lot like living in the 1950s here at times, but hey, everybody has to live somewhere.

My background is a little odd; I've been a professional blacksmith for a hell of a lot of years (*coughcough29cough*). I've also had a few weird jobs at the same time I was making weird things out of hot metal, and got hauled into being a glassblower for a while. In my past I've done a lot of work in metals, wood, leather, and glass that ranged from beds and railings to stage props for rock bands and movie props. Doing living history re-enactments since the 1980's gave me a good background in researching the use, design and creation of historical armaments and armor, along with all manner of camp and household gear. Hell, I have even build a few cannon and blackpowder guns over the years.

I have been aware of airsoft for a number of years, but I had been a paintball player longer, on and off since the early 1990's. I finally jumped in whole hog after not having a running paint marker for a while (I kept modding them and selling them, whups). Norse/Bjorn came over one day with one of his AEG's, he slapped it in my hands and I was pretty much hooked. It felt so much more natural than any paint marker I had ever handled, it looked good and it had good reach. So in short order I started doing a lot of research. As a blacksmith, you do that anyway... lots of research on new projects and replicating old pieces, so it comes naturally. Once I had seen the inside of a mechbox, I knew I was in with both feet.

Now, as time allows, I am in the process of building custom guns and other airsoft equipment. And by custom, I don't mean I buy parts and slap them into a frame, I mean ground up, you can't get one of those from anywhere else custom guns. Sure, I still use TM compatible mechboxes and pistons, but the shells (the body of the replica) are completely hand made one offs.

One of the projects is a lewis light machine gun, as seen in pretty much every biplane dogfight movie ever (think of the machine gun on the back of the plane in The Mummy 2 as an example). Some other, even more horrible/fantastic things are also in the works, but we will leave those for another post.

With my background in designing and building machines and props, doing things like steampunk AEG's, weird props like surface to air missiles and airsoft RPG7's comes naturally and easily. So hopefully, down the road I will get some pics up to give you all ideas on your own projects along with extensive how to articles to get new players up to speed on some handy and useful stuff they can make for themselves.

That about covers the basic intro, more intel as it becomes needed.

Over and out.