BlackJack History and Mini Autobiography
This is where I get to share a bit as to who I am and how Blackjack recoil buffers came to be.
Home Life:
My name is Randy Sloan, I am a family man of over 20 years with a wife and two daughters. I live in central Tennessee near Nashville. My main job is designing and installing building automation systems. My hobbies include playing music (drums), and shooting guns.
BlackJack's Story:
I have owned several makes of AK's over the past several years and like so many of you, I became fascinated with the simplicity and reliability of this remarkable weapon. I've always been one to want to understand how something works and if possible make it better. I came up with these 1/4" AK recoil buffers after I started to experience occasional jams and mis-feeds on a SA-93 AK shortly after installing a competitor's recoil buffer. It didn't take long to realize the thickness of my competitors buffer was causing my should-be-rock-solid-AK to turn into a Bulgarian Jam-O-matic. My first thought was to grind down the offending buffer but then I just decided to build a buffer that would work in my AK. I started to experiment with different materials, thickness, and designs. What I needed was something that could quickly and easily be installed and removed, cover more impact area, last longer, and not contribute to ms-feeding problems.
Small Beginnings:
I started hand making these using crude tools such as hammers, chisels, tin snips, belt sanders and power drills. Needless to say the first several buffers I made not only looked ugly, they didn't hold up very well. I often thought of Thomas Edison's pursuit of developing the light bulb and the tens of thousands of different types of materials for filaments he tried until he got one that would work. Finally, after trying what seem to be a thousand types of material (actually about 15...), I came up with a working buffer that that met all my requirements.
The reputation of the Blackjack AK Buffer has quickly grown and now requests have started coming in to produce buffers for other types of firearms such as the SKS, FAL, M-11, FNC, AR, SVD, 10-22, and UZI, just to name a few.
Thanks and Gratuity:
I'd like to thank all those that have helped me with this project; those at the AK-47.net, Valmet-weapons.com, Assaultweb.com, Those on the Tom Bowers page, GunandGame.com, my daughters, Brittney, for designing and creating my web site and Lyndsey, for filling all the orders, and my wife, Lisa, for putting up with me working on my business so much. Thank you to everyone that has supported me and has purchased my products.
--Randy Sloan, Black Jack Buffers. |
