GunLab

More on the type 63 Chinese rifle

I kind of like the look of the type 63 rifle and a goal is to eventually make a semi-auto ATFE legal one for my self.

It really has a nice look to it.

A couple of close ups.

These last 4 photos were pulled from the internet.

So I have had a quest for the last 15 years or so to obtain type 63 parts. Not the easiest task. This last week I was able to obtain a few more parts for the type 63 Chinese rifle.

My stock as it sets now is:

8 barrels.

Seven complete bolts.

More then enough top covers. Interesting that there were two different upper hand guard designs. I still need to make some more recoil spring brackets.

8 fire control groups

I have enough front hand guard sheet metal pieces as well as gas pistons and locking pins.

Sks bayonets and springs and latch mechanism. The bayonets need to be re-ground and shortened but will work. I am going to cut off the latch mechanism on the sks and weld on a type 63 mechanism.

I have 2 stocks and a stock duplicator. I can make the rest of the stocks I need.

A great little piece of a cut off end of a type 63 barrel. I will have solid models of both of these parts soon.

A close up of the type 63 lock up and the sks lock up on the bayonet lug.

This is a Chinese folding bayonet for the AK-47. This is still available even if it is quite expensive. I will order one this next week to have to use as a pattern.

A view of the gas block,rear sight base and gas system, this one is missing the gas tube. I do have 2 gas tubes to use as patterns.

A close up of the gas block

I am hoping that one of the readers of this happens to know of or own a type 63 and can take me some detailed pictures of the receiver of the rifle, hopefully with some basic measurements. I could also use some pictures of the gas block with measurements. With any luck I will be going to England this summer and have an opportunity to look at one at the pattern room.

This will be a project in the future.

What is it

It has been a while since I have posted a what is it. I was up in the container cleaning up and looking for parts for a project I was working on this last weekend and came across this. It is a casting of some kind of mount. Some machining has been performed but it is far from complete. I am trying to determine the weapon that it goes to. Any help would be appreciated.

I picked this up years ago when I bought and imported a large quantity of parts out of England.

Fun at the machine gun shoot

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

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

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.

Building a semi auto MP-44 part 3

In this post we are going to look at how the badly cut up and rusted lower portion of the MP-44 receiver was repaired. You can see in the first photo the condition of the under side of the lower front portion of the receiver.

The first set was to cut out the bad section.

Now it is time to fabricate a completely new section. A section of sheet metal is first cut to approximately the correct size. Then the first bend starts the process.

A second bend is made around a filler piece to allow for the correct thickness

Now back into the vise to bend both sides.

The correct thickness

The cure is installed.

This is starting to look good.

You can see that a great deal of hand fitting is required.

Very nice work by Pete. I am looking forward to the next installment. Pete still has a few rear sections if anyone needs one.

Machining the MP-44 trunions op 5

With this post I am going over a few of the problems that have occurred during the machining of op5 on the 4140 hardened trunions. We ran into a snag while doing this op. A problem that did not occur on the 1018 steel parts.

A quick video discussing the problem and solution.

The problem is that we just broke our second 4″ solid carbide end mill.

This one being brand new.. Something need to change in the process that we were using to make the 4140 trunions. The problem as far as we can determine is chip load up that did not happen while cutting the 1018 blocks. Now the new procedure is to cut a slot down the top of the trunion.

This slot and the next op will allow for more coolant flow into the part and better chip removal away from the cutter.

This is the set up for the this op.

Basic and very functional.

This new procedure was just started and we are well on the way to being back on schedule.

This new method as reduces the chatter that we had to deal with.

Movie clip

I normally do not make posts like this. However, this is so bad it’s just funny. For your viewing enjoyment.

Update on the VG1-5 lower receiver welding

The welding on the lower receiver is now complete. This is the video on that update.

Now for some pictures showing close ups of the work performed.

A side view of the lower receiver

A top view of the receiver

The rear stock supports is first spot welded in place. However, due to the thickness of the number of steel pieces we also tig welded the supports on.

The magazine housing is spot welded and tig welded to the proper angle.

Now the next item to complete is a little grinding on some of the welds.

The project is getting closer. I will be setting up the parkerizing tanks soon to finish the lowers.

New router table

A while back a customer had a brand new router table set up that he did not like so he gave it to me. Keep in mind that this set up also came with a brand new porter cable router as well. Nice set up but it just did not meet my needs and as such was useless in my shop. I tried to use is a couple of times but no go.

There was no way to hold the material and I just did not feel comfortable using it.Well this last Sunday, while I am waiting for the rest of the components to come in for the cnc router, I started a project converting it to a machine that I can use. I have been looking at router tables for a while and I wanted something that would allow me to raise and lower the router easily and accurately.

Something like these commercial units. I would have bought one except for two reasons. The first is the cost involved and the second is that I have the beginning components to start with and a shop to build what I need.

The first order of business was to disassemble the entire set up.

The second item on the project list was to design and make a solid model of all the components that I need to make.

I needed to convert to height adjustment device to operate from the opposite end. Then I needed a way to move the router once I converted it.

My answer was to turn down an old cap screw to fit over the shaft then drill and pin it. Now the router mover up and down with an allen wrench..After that a new plate needed to be designed.

I need to finish the solid model, next weeks project. Currently I am planning on using the old table that came with it. That is still up in the air and may only be used as a temporary stop gap measure. I am thinking about building an actual router table set up on wheels.

Something like this:

Still thinking about it and still waiting for my cnc router parts to finish that project.

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