There's an assault rifle in the wall!!

Here's an odd one:

I've got a friend who lost his dad recently. A Vietnam War veteran and certified badass, at his funeral an old family friend told my friend that his father once sent back (in pieces) a select fire/full auto M-16 from Vietnam during his third tour. My friend remembered his father telling him the same story some years earlier, but this is where the question pops up....

The rest of the story his father told the family friend was that he reassembled the full auto rifle and when remodeling his wife's master bathroom, he hid the rifle in a sealed bag inside the wall, behind the cabinet/mirror setup.

His dad was a firearms lover and, knowing him personally, this story adds up for me. Herein lies the issue:

Without ripping the huge mirror/cabinet setup out of the wall and basically destroying the bathroom--how can we confirm there's a rifle in the wall to begin with? If it's there, my friend is all for updating the bathroom, but he's obviously worried about pulling the mirror out of the wall and coming up with nada! The first thing that came to mind for me was to use a metal detector--but, where in the world would we even get one for this purpose, and that would be accurate enough to confirm or deny that it was a rifle that was back there and not just plumbing/piping/electrical garb?


TL;DR Story is told to friend about his father's rare rifle being hidden behind a wall in his childhood home's master bathroom & he needs a better idea than just tearing the wall apart to confirm or deny what is a very plausible story. Father recently passed away and there's no one to run the story by.


Let's go, Beeb!! :FL:

 

Drill a small hole and take a peek with a bore scope

 

Those cabinets usually come out without too much work.

 

You can rent a bore scope or buy one at HF.

 

Just take the mirror off and make a small hole. May want to look into class III issues if it's back there before you do something stupid.

 

Link? I'll start searching....anything in particular I should look for as far as capabilities? EDIT: THERE ARE NO 'BORE SCOPE' OR 'BORESCOPE' TO BE FOUND ON HF.COM

And we realize the cabinet should come out easily...the issue is this was a meticulous, thorough dude; he probably dry walled it deep into the wall to where you wouldn't find it unless you knew what you were looking for.

Thanks for the help thus far!

 

He's got a trust and Class III doc's....good on that, but good thinking!

 

http://www.harborfreight.com/digital-inspection-camera-61839.html

There ya go.

 

Metal detector

 

Found it eleventeen seconds ago with a reg Google search...thank you though!

Anyone used this particular one? Do you think it'll work for my application as we're going to be looking into an extremely dark, and large area compared to the purpose built application of this product?

I'll update with pictures if the story turns out to be true.

 

Ruled out already...it's expensive and idk if you can rent one or not from Lowe's/Home Depot/ the like. And I don't believe it's got a setting that will tell us the difference between a nickel boron bolt carrier group and a pipe with doo doo in it!

 

It's drywall….jesus h Christ…just rip it out and find the freaking rifle. If not, a 4x8 piece of sheet rock is like 20 bucks, mud for 8, tape for 2…..30 bucks and a couple hours of work.

 

And the super manly skillset you have to do all that for $30 bucks will cost me how much to rent for a couple hours?

 

If you weren't 6 hours away, I'd gladly come over and do it for some beer and a chance to shoot said treasure. Certainly someone is close to you that can do drywall work. It's not that hard…hell, Metalhead can do it.

 

You know there's a forum for everything, right! :up:

https://www.google.com/#q=site:metaldetectingforum.com+valdosta


This guy might be willing to come give it a try.
http://metaldetectingforum.com/showthread.php?t=158853

As you kinda said, there's probably not some magical device that will scan the wall & point a needle on a dial to "gun", but it can tell if there is/is not a chunk of metal behind the wall.

 

X-ray. We use them on post tension buildings to find the structural tendons. It's probably cheaper to fix the drywall though

 

First suggestion: When you find it, take the "Class III Trust" document to ATF with the serial number on the rifle you find, and watch how fast:
1. The BATFE rearranges ALL of the drywall and cabinets in that house, and probably your house too.
2. How much it costs in legal fees to get NONE of the trust related articles returned to the trust beneficiaries while your friend spends 10 years in the can.
3. How stupid it seems to get hammered with a Possession of Stolen Government Property fine of probably $150 is on top of the rest, especially while making $4 per day in the prison commissary.

Second Suggestion: Repeat after me: "I made this shit up. I made this shit up. I also don't take pictures of stuff that may or may not be made up and put it on the internet."

 

I can't comment on the HF one, but the borescope the guys in our shop use at work are illuminated and would surely light up the insides of an interior wall enough to determine what is back there.

Since it's probably closer to the floor than anything else, you can always remove the bottom trim and run the scope in a hole you won't have to patch up and paint.

 

urban myth dude. go obi wan on this. these aren't the rifles your looking for.