GunLab

Hotchkiss Portative tri-pod ideas

I own a Hotchkiss portative machine gun and with it now fully operational it has become one of my favorites to take to the shoot.

My biggest complaint with it is that I just don’t like getting down into the dirt to shoot it. The butt stock is uncomfortable to use and the little tri-pod that came with it is really useless.

A close up of the yoke.

On of my personal projects that I have been working on is designing a new tri-pod for it. I use to own a 1914 French Hotchkiss and let it go a number of years back, a mistake but we all do it. So I have taken four different paths in the design of a new tri-pod for my weapon. There is always the original British design for an adapter to a Vickers tri-pod.

Actually this just looks like a great deal of work and really complex. The patterns to make the bronze castings would take a great deal of time to work out then the fixtures necessary to machine it would be numerous.

Then there is the idea of designing the patterns to cast a new yolk assembly based upon the Hotchkiss 1914 machine gun and the French 1907 St Etienne.

This is a project I might tackle once the cnc router is up and running after the other major projects are completed.

The third idea is one that I found on the internet. It uses a yoke from a Hotchkiss portative and attaches it to a Vickers tri-pod. It is an interesting idea, but I really want something a little lighter and generally when I go to a shoot I usually bring my Vickers as well.

So this leads us to the forth and final concept I am thinking of. This is using the concept of the Vickers-Maxium light machine gun tri-pod. It could be done by making an adapter to use the original yoke assembly and attaching it to a new column. The idea would be something like this.

This yoke would be changed to use an original

I would modify the legs so they would fold back against the sides.

A rear basic traversing set up

The elevation set up would have a handle to make it easier.

It would not be done by the up coming shoot, but by the end of the year if I can find any time.

Building an MP-44 semi part 2

This is the second in a series of post of Pete, a friend of gun lab, building his semi-auto MP-44. From our previous post you could see the absolutely dismal condition of the cut up receiver pieces that Pete had to work with.

You can see from these pictures that there was no back section. So the only answer for Pete was to design the tooling and make a new rear section. This is that post.

In this photo you can see the style of the female die with the cuts for the ribs to be pressed in.

As with all stamping work to obtain the best possible product you must have a flat that is the same and you must have a method of properly locating that flat.

This male stamping die is much more complicated to make then most people think. All this tooling was made on a manual vertical mill.

With any press tool you have to have guide and alignment pins to obtain a quality product.

Pete does all his pressing on a simple shop press.

To fabricate the rear pieces it take multiply set up’s.

Some real nice tooling to make his rear section.

This is not a simple process to make the rear sections.

You can see for this final photo the quality of work that Pete produces.

If anyone is interested in a replacement section drop me a comment and I will forward it to Pete. He has a few of these left.

Barrel cleaning.

I bought a large quantity of MG-13 and 15 barrels a while back. They were bought for the VG1-5, the 05, the 06 and any other 7.92×33 rifle project that I could think of. The first batch of 25 that I got when I cleaned them up were like new barrels. So like an idiot I thought all of them would be that way. After we did the first couple of ops on them we found a bad one. The work was halted and this last Saturday I cleaned the bores on every barrel I had.

The first thing to do was set up a solvent soaking tank . This was dome out side because of the fumes.

Next the cut barrels were cleaned and the bad ones separated from the good. The good news is that most of the barrels that we cut were good.

The bad news is that some of them were not.

Then all the rest of the barrels were cleaned and checked.

The bad barrels with not be used as barrels but the steel is still good so I will use them for other things. The okay but not great barrels with be used for some odd project for my self. All in all how much fun can you have spending a day cleaning barrels, 150 of them. My hands still hurt.

Working on the MP-44 trunions.

We have started on Pete’s, a friend of gun lab, new 4140 MP-44 trunions. This series of videos and posts is the process we used to make them.

First the video.

Here are the pictures going over the changes and the steps we took.

We needed to change the depth of cut for the locking shoulder

We also did not put in the chamfer on the back of the block

Set up for ops one and two.

All of the trunions have now gone through ops one and two

Op 3

the bored hole and start of gas tube cut out.

you can see the finish of the bored hole and the step for the barrel

All the 4140 and test trunions have now completed op 3.

OP 4 is coming up and will be next post on the MP-44 trunions.

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.

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.

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

Another view. This basically the style I wanted.

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

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

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

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

Then 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

VG1-5 update lapping the bolt holes.

We are making head way on the VG1-5. There are a lot of small steps that take a great deal of time to accomplish. In this case it is the two hole on the bolt that lock it into the upper receiver and hold the firing pin in place.

A quick video.

This how the bolts looked as they came back from heat treat. These are the two test bolts that were sent along to test the heat treat specs. You can see the marks on them to differentiate them from the actual rifle bolts.

This is an actual bolt after cleaning.

The two holes that were undersized after heat treat. These bolts are made of 8620 and case hardened to .020 deep.

The series of reamers that we used to try and open the holes.

A new lap as received from the supply house.

The adjustable lapping tool

Some of the laps that we went through bring the holes up to the proper size.

The gauge pins used to test for proper size.

It actually took a couple of weeks off and on to finish this step. The reason for this was testing the different processes necessary to provide a correct product.

Building a MP-44 semi part 1

In previous post we showed the process of machining out a MP-44 trunnion. To test that our trunnions are correct Pete, a friend of gun lab and owner of the trunnions, has started a project of rebuilding a badly torched cut receiver.

It must be stated up front that Pete is licensed to manufacture weapons up to and including machine guns. This rifle however is being made as a semi auto only and not a machine gun.

This article is a number of posts as the work required to rebuild this rifle is extensive. You can see from the Photo’s just how badly it was destroyed.

By most peoples standard this would be just junk.

However, to a master metal man this is just a challenge.

A great deal of fitting and fixturing is required to assemble this receiver.

A fixture is made for everything

In the next installment we will discuss making the new back piece.

More on the Japax wire edm

This is another installment on the Japax wire edm at gunlab.net. When I bought this machine from an auction house last year it did not run at all. The plan was to get it operational if possible with the least amount of money. Thus far I have replace a number of the switches. This was the first necessary to get it working. All the pumps were taken apart, cleaned and tested so they now work. A new monitor and circuit board was gotten in from McWillaims and it works great. The wire feed system was adjusted to stop the problem of the wire running off the feed rollers. And this last weekend we finally got power to the cutting wire. This is a big step toward actually running the Japax wire edm. Here is the video of that process.

CNC Router update

I just recently got the last of the control circuit components in for the cnc router. We replaced the older interface with the computer with a new smooth stepper. Sunday I finished wiring it up. This is the basic wiring diagram for that operation.

This is how it looks now.

A close up of the smooth stepper.

This next weekend it will be mounted in the cabinet and I will start wiring up the motor drives.

Gordam Ingram

Today’s post is about a series of rifles that I have read about but never had the opportunity to look at until just recently. I thank Reed Knight for letting me have the chance to examine the rifle when I was down at his place a while back.

So lets start with a short write up of the rifle.

There is not much written about his rifle designs and what is available is in Tom Nelson and Gary Paul Johnston book The World’s Assault Rifles.

And in Frank Iannamico and Don Thomas book. the Mac Man

In 1976 Mr. Ingram brought up the idea of a multi-caliber design rifle. Using the basic design of the M-1 carbine action and receiver he re-design the rifle to allow using more modern manufacturing processes. The receiver and bolt were to be investment cast of 4340 steel. The remainder of the parts were to be made of die cast aluminum or high impact plastic. He kept the tried and true wood stock instead of changing to a plastic or sheet metal stock. The gas system was changed to long-stroke system. Initially design in .223 and then in 7.62×51 he later added 7.62×39 in the caliber line up. There were not many of the weapons ever made and the rifle ended up a foot note in history.