Comments on: Making the miniture Gardner Gun “The Receiver” http://gunlab.net/making-the-miniture-gardner-gun-the-receiver/ Adventures in gun building! Sat, 11 Apr 2026 23:49:22 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.41 By: Joe http://gunlab.net/making-the-miniture-gardner-gun-the-receiver/#comment-8248 Wed, 31 Dec 2014 21:37:07 +0000 http://gunlab.net/?p=1982#comment-8248 S.N.A.L.-Yes, that was one of my first costly mistakes. I was attempting to get from drawing to pattern and had no pattern making experience. A local pattern maker wanted $14K for my patterns and speaking with a local prototyping company, I got sold on the idea that their SLA model would work for a pattern…Those models cost me my NFA Uzi and MG08 Maxim. In the end, they helped me home in on the rest of the design but were useless as patterns! Like any good obsession, I kept going.
Joe

]]> By: Rod http://gunlab.net/making-the-miniture-gardner-gun-the-receiver/#comment-8246 Wed, 31 Dec 2014 21:10:25 +0000 http://gunlab.net/?p=1982#comment-8246 Nice work! I have been doing my own patterns and core boxes for a few years now (and still learning). I will be following this project with interest. Will the raw castings be for sale, or only finished guns?

]]> By: S.N.A.L http://gunlab.net/making-the-miniture-gardner-gun-the-receiver/#comment-8238 Wed, 31 Dec 2014 14:25:19 +0000 http://gunlab.net/?p=1982#comment-8238 you used a 3D printer for the plastic mock-up ?

]]> By: Joe http://gunlab.net/making-the-miniture-gardner-gun-the-receiver/#comment-8233 Wed, 31 Dec 2014 12:28:25 +0000 http://gunlab.net/?p=1982#comment-8233 Actually, the wooden mockup was my very first attempt to understand the scale of the gun that I wanted to build. It was intended to be for the English model Gardner as that was what I really wanted to build. Unfortunately, I could not find any good information or photos and so the model was helpful yo give a starting point for the dimensions that I would try to derive from patent drawings.

The patterns shown are all later generation and all could really have stood further revision, especially as they relate to the cores.

As I poked at the project, I was blessed to begin finding people that owned gardner guns and were willing to help me…it happened that they were all Pratt & Whitney guns and so my project went in that direction instead of the English model. The more I learned about that gun, the moee I loved it. For all the perceived simplicity, it really is an engineering marvel!

Some things that I found interesting about the castings are that the main casing’s barrel shroud is machined along the entire bore, that the original tripod had a fire dispersion device incorporated and that the cores for the upper elevation mount are tapered!

Regards,
Joe

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