GunLab (KnownHost) » 1919 Browning

Fixing the 1919A6 barrel

Chuck — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 08:00:52 +0000

This is kind of an after action report on the 1919A6 barrel that was involved in the accident. The last post on the damage to the 1919A4 due to some Turkish ammo showed a barrel that had a case stuck in it that the base was sheared off.

With the cost of everything these days there was no way to not try and get that barrel back into operation.

The first step was to use a broken shell extractor. I have one or two of them

The ones we tried that acted like they might work.They did in small way. I was able to remove the neck and shoulder of the case with them.

With the neck removed I used my chambering reamer to slowly remove the brass case. After about 20 minutes of running the reamer in then cleaning it I was able to remove the remaining part of the brass case.

The barrel is as good as new and ready to be used again.

Fun at the machine gun shoot

Chuck — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 13:02:23 +0000

This last weekend was our semi annual when we get around to it kind of twice a year maybe only once a year machine gun shoot. It is nothing great or grand. There are no fees, no explosives, no sales tables, no flying targets and no spectators. Just a boring time of a bunch of guys that enjoy shooting machine guns, cannons and mortars having fun. We have had up to a couple of hundred people show up and as little as only 10. This was a nice get together of about 40 or so people with about 400 or so different types of weapons. It was a time to relax. The guys next to me had a very nice mini gun as well as an assortment of other machine guns. There were MG-42,MG-34, Vickers in both 8×57 and 7.62x54r, M-2 , Maxims, a couple of Hotchkiss guns and a pile of 1919 and 1917 Brownings. A very nice cross sections of machineguns.My wife and I did a number of videos generally in slow motion, it just looks cool and it also allowed me to study the operation a little more closely. I got to work on a couple of Brownings and get them up and running as well as a Vickers. I had a great time. What could be better then working on and shooting machine guns. Here is a quick video of some of the fun had.

There is more to come on the shoot. A couple of interesting items coming up is a 8mm Vickers using MG-34/42 belts, the Hotchkiss portative, and an MG-34 that was said to work in 308.

Just as a side note I now have the updated version 19 ultimate version of pinnacle studio. I am trying to improve my videos and using some of the more complex extras. Hoping to get better at this.

Repairing broken equipment after the shoot

Chuck — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 08:00:36 +0000

The machine gun shoot went great. I had a great deal of fun and actually relaxed for the weekend. When I got back home and unloaded the vehicle I noticed that my wooden ammo box had been broken. So to go along with unloading, cleaning the guns and gear, putting everything away I also had to do a quick repair.

A crack occurred down the length of the top and well as a fracture on the lid.

The first step was to use wood glue in the crack and split. Then it was clamped together.

After the glue set all the clamps were taken off and it is as good as new, sort of.

A little clean up and you will not be able to see the break.

The crack is still there. However it should not continue to get any worse.

On top of this my felt came in. It was time to cut the felt for the slots in the Hotchkiss feed strip box.

Sorry for the shortness of the post. I worked 131/2 hours and drove 450 miles today just ran out of steam.

Goofed off this weekend and went shooting

Chuck — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 08:00:07 +0000

I took off a few personal days and went to out local machine gun shoot. There will be a few posts about that over the next few days as soon as I get the videos sorted out. I had an opportunity to examine a serious failure. A friend of mine was shooting his 1919 browning and was using Turkish 8mm ammo. There was a failure to fire as had happen a number of times due to bad primers, except this time it was not a bad primer. What had happen was that there was a squib load and the bullet went a short distance down the barrel, just far enough for the next round to inter the chamber. So when the weapons was re-charged and fired a serious problem occurred.

If this had been a more expensive gun with no available spare parts I would have to try and fix this. However, spares are available.

We could not remove the case with a broken shell extractor as the neck was gone. The brass case also looked like it was brazed to the chamber wall.

I will be trying a chamber reamer this next week to see if I can salvage the barrel.

I was able to press the receiver sides back together and we were able to get the 1919 Browning back up and running while at the shoot.

The moral to this story is to keep away from Turkish ammo. Use it only in bolt guns or tear it down for components. If this accident had happen in a MG-42, MG-34 or one of the rarer guns the cost could have been enormous.