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Hotchkiss feed strip ammo box

I happen to own a Hotchkiss portative light machine gun. Now that I have it working, with the help of my friend John, I find it one of the more fun guns to shoot.

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So since last December I have been working on a couple of accessories for it. Well it happen that on Sunday I had a little Chuck time and went out and finished one of the accessories that I have been meaning to build. In this case it is a feed strip ammo box for the gun. I have looked at the original design and want to make something that would at least look time period correct.

I did not like this style of box.

IMG_0523A couple of pictures of an early American feed strip box.

IMG_0527Another view. This basically the style I wanted.

IMG_0526A Japanese ammo box. I found this one to be to basic.

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In my collect of old ammo boxes I had a couple of Czech 8mm wooden boxes that were almost perfect in size.

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DSC_8151sA quick check with a few strips of 303 showed that this box would be excellent.

 

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So some measurements were made and a solid model was made to allow be to design the spacers.

hotchkiss ammo bos spacersThen it was out to the wood shop to have a little fun. Now on to finding material from the pile of scrap stuff that I have. The side panels came from some material that Axel, a friend of gun lab, found on his last trip out to Arizona.

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The dividers were already in my scrap pile from some cabinet building I did a while back. As is always the case nothing was the correct thickness, but a trip through the planer solver that problem.

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Once it was the correct thickness it went to the table saw for the width then off to the radial arm saw for length. Cutting the groves was a little bit of a challenge as I don’t have a router table. A little changing on the radial arm saw and we got the dado blades from the table saw to work on them. Next a real basic fixture was set up on the saw and we cut all the groves to the proper depth and spacing.

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So now this is the final product. I need to add a felt pad on the bottom of the trays as soon as I find enough. I have a few pieces of felt from 303 Vickers ammo cans, just not enough.

DSC_8152sA fun project and it will definitely make it easier on range day with the Hotchkiss.

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