GunLab

Weekend update

First things first. I am dog beat tired. I will post pictures later about everything. Changes were made to the wood shop, solid models were done and a new rifle rack was worked on.

So lets start at the beginning. Saturday was spent with the computer system that I could not get to work correctly only to have my son come in on Sunday and not even find a problem. Make note to self to beat to death a computer for the computer gods.

I started redrawing for a new set of gun racks which will be finished this next week. The solid modeling just did not want to play nice. It took a number of tries to get it correct in an assembly. Pictures to come.

I also started working on drawings for a Volcanic pistol that I want to make some day. That also went to crap, it was just not a day for computer work.

I went to work on cleaning out the pantry and setting up the photographic area. It is amazing just how much junk I can accumulate on a single horizontal surface. With that completed I started on the rifle/pistol photograph stand. I have the remainder of the stand to complete this coming week when the missing components come in.

Sunday turn out a great deal more productive. I move out a great deal of equipment from the wood shop and installed a new CNC router. Wow, another machine to learn how to use. Half of dozen friends dropped by to say hi and it was nice to see them all. And the most exciting news, I made most of the new gun rack for the gun room.

This is it for now as I am done. I will be back tomorrow.

Sunday Answer 3-15-15

This is the bolt that you looked at yesterday.

The ring on the back is to cock the bolt.

You can see where the hammer travels through the bolt and strikes the firing pin. This rifle fires from a closed bolt.

It goes to the Beretta model 1918/30 carbine in 9mm Glisenti. It is a cartridge similar to the 9×19 but of much less powerful, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9mm_Glisenti.

You can see the similarity to the Beretta model 38 smg bolt.

9mm Luger ammunition will fit and fire in this weapon but should not be used.

It was a well made carbine using a forged and machined receiver.

It was generally issued as a police carbine.

What is it Saturday 3-14-15

Solid model on the AR-16 rifle

In my off time, work has been completed on the AR-16 upper receiver right side. In case you don’t remember this rifle it is a 308 predecessor of the AR-180. Only 4 were made and of those only 2 are known to exist. I had the opportunity to photograph one a while back at the Reed Knight collection.

Here is a close up of the receiver left side.

The right side.

A close up of the right side

Mr Knight was nice enough to let me look at and photograph them, however I doubt he will let me have one. As I really want one of these in my collection I have taken it upon my self to reverse engineer it to make me one. This is what I worked on this weekend between everything else.

More to come

Archive Photo’s 3-12

I shot these pictures while at Woolwick at the Rotunda. It was an absolutely great museum. It has since been closed down and replaced with a typical diorama walk through everything behind glass museum. In its day it was a place where you could study some small arms, but mostly artillery up close. I spent numerous vacations there.

This is a weapon design by an unknown Africaan during the Boer war to keep the heads of the British soldiers down while they escaped. It is a clock weapon. The feed device seems to be missing but what you would do with this weapons is to set it for how fast you wanted the weapon to fire. One round a minute or one round every 5 minutes or more.

A side view showing the complete size of the weapon

In this picture you can see the cartridge being picked up to be fed into the barrel

I am not sure this was ever used or just a prototype that was made and not completed. It is however an interesting design and concept.

Fluting machine up date

More work has been completed on the fluting machine.The tool holder and guide pin have been machined and installed.

A close up of the tool holder with the broaching tool installed.

The 3 jaw chuck has been machined for the barrel to fit into.

Next on the list is finish the hydraulics and installing the DRO.

Fun at Gun Lab Week end of 3-8-15

Not everything is as much fun as this was.

My old back hoe started leaking oil on two of the cylinders. So the project for Sunday was to remove the cylinders to take them down to the hydraulic repair shop. As with all plans things just do not go as easy as they sound. The bushings had shattered and would not allow the cylinders to come out. The pins could move but the bushings needed to be driven out. So a special tool was made for this task. The pin was machined to fit the inside of the bushing and be the exact same diameter as the bushing.

Then all the tools necessary to remove the bushings were gathered together.

So there were two cylinders and 12 bushings to remove. This is the video of the last one.

It took the better part of Sunday to finish this job.

The cylinders are on the way.

It is always fun here.

VG1-5 update

It has been a while since we have chatted about the VG1-5 so I thought an update was in order. All the individual parts have been made and the first non-firing copy was made. This last weekend we finished a testing example to try and determine if any problems exist. We looked at everything from the barrel chamber and flutes to the firing pin length. We needed to check the recoil spring length and tension. Is the buffer spring to strong or weak. Will the fire control group work properly. All the drawings showed that everything should work but these are all questions that can only be answered during a test fire.

The test rifle that we made uses all the same parts that the rifles we are going to sell but uses parts that we can not sell. We actually ended up with 2 receivers that did not come out as nice as I would like. One will be sent to the ATFE for approval and the other will be shot to death with proof loads to determine strength and safety.

So a very basic testing rig was made to hook up to the firing tube and testing began.

The initial test showed the firing pin worked properly but it was not ejecting properly and the cases were falling back into the receiver.

We then lengthened the ejector and re-tested the rifle. The rifle fire and ejected properly. These are the fired cases after the ejector was lengthened.

This final picture shows the fluting marks on the case.

So far the tests have been successful. Then we tested for proper engagement of the secondary sear. The manually testing we did showed good engagement and the disconnector operated properly. However during actual live fire testing the secondary sear did not catch properly.

This is a video of the tests.