GunLab

Weekend after action report for 8-24

Another typical weekend here at Gun Lab. As with all weekends a certain amount of maintenance has to be completed. Saturday morning was spent doing some design work in solid works for a new piece of equipment that we are building to make fluted barrel chambers (more on that a little later in the week). I rebuild a friends AR-15. In this case it was a barrel change with new gas block and a very nicely design front hand guard and barrel nut. A write up of those components will be shortly as well. I really like the fit and feel of this equipment. Enough in fact that I am ordering on for myself. After the rebuild I did a test fire of the weapon in my test firing tube. This is a basic testing tube for function and reliability. I made the tube out a section of heavy wall steel pipe then filled it with sand and to reduce the noise level I added a series of small tires in the inlet and then caped it with a rubber end piece. It works well and reduces the noise level so there is no problem with the neighbors.

There is however one small glitch. That is unburnt powder will build up in the tires. This can cause a bit of excitement at about ever 50 or 60 round when all that powder ignites. This is a video that was taken while I was test firing the AR.

I will post this video as soon as possible. The video that was taken was done on a phone and when sent to me was of such low quality that it is not usable. Post was made off a phone video.

I installed the air dryer for the shop air system. This is it as delivered.

And as it now sets hooked up.

It was a basic hook up, just needed the hoses made up and power run to it. A quick shot of the plumbing.

The last task completed this weekend was finally finishing the lights and power in the fab shop. A couple of pictures of that.

A couple of pictures at night with the lights on to give you an idea of what it looks like.

Everyone say that it is to be used as a beacon for the international space station when all the lights are on.

Hope you enjoyed the updates.

Sunday answer

The answer to the mystery part is an MP-44 sear . Here is a picture of the component parts and how it sets in the rifles fire control mechanism.

It is hard to get a good picture of it in the rifle as you can only see the top of the part.

Thanks to everyone who answered. Tune in to next Saturday for another interesting part.

What is it Saturday

This is the first new post on what is it Saturday.

Changes to Gun Lab

I have decided to make a few changes to the way gun lab works. I personally can watch machining videos and look at solid models and guns all day. I guess that is because it is what I enjoy. I mean I take my vacations to go to factories to watch things being made Plastic factories, pottery factories, machine shops, museums to look at weapons and my wife goes along with me. However, I understand that most people want to see other things as well. So here are a list of the changes that I would like to make to the site.

Weekend followup Monday

Monday will be for an update of what went on during the weekend. A basic run down of everything that happen in or around the shop. This is to give an idea of everything that has to go on to keep things running.

Shop Tuesday

Tuesday will be for showing the part that has been made. The solid model that was worked on or the program that was written. Anything that went into making the parts that we make.

Random info Wednesday

Wednesday will be for information that we have come across that would help. Where we buy material, people and companies who have helped us, new products, videos that we find dealing with gun or parts making. I want to do a segment on people that are in the industry. Anything that I feel like taking about. Classes that we are taking, talking about the shop equipment that we have and use. Talking about firearms that we are interested in making in the future, general discussions on manufacturing or weapons, interviews when possible.

Book review Thursday.

There a large number of books in the reference library here at gun lab. Machining books, gun books, manufacturing books, information that is helpful in every aspect of what we do. I want to do a basic run down of the book and where to obtain it. In some cases a sales commission is give if you buy the book through our link. All money from this will be donated to the wounded warrior project. Having served in the military and coming from a family of military people I feel strongly toward this cause. I hope that you do too.

Video Friday

This will be the day that I post videos of the parts or equipment that we have made.

Guess this part Saturday

I have a 40′ container of misc parts. Saturday will be for taking pictures of parts so you can test your knowledge of small arms.

Answer Sunday

This will be the follow up day that answers Saturday’s question.

I want to add a library to the site dealing with information pertaining to gun lab.

Please feel free to comment about the changes and any recommendations that you have. We are looking to involve our viewers to improve gun lab to become the best site possible.

FG-42 first model rear sight button

This post is about making the rear sight button for the FG-42 first model. To give you an idea of the complexity of this part I am adding a picture from “Death From Above” . This is a component break down of the parts for the first model FG-42 rear sight.

There is also a picture of it installed on the rifle.

The important information on these pictures is the angle of the button that holds it together and the design of the sight post. This post is about the lathe operation for part A 26. This is the button that holds the entire sight together. If you compare this sight with a later model Fg-42 you will notice the differences in the angle and the thickness of the part. The internals however are inter changeable.

With the part we are making in this post we are dealing with the button that holds it together.

This picture will give you a slightly different view.

Now that we have finished the lathe op for this part we will start designing the tools and fixture necessary to complete the mill operations.

Video on finishing machining the FG-42 rear sight base

In the last video concerning the FG-42 rear sight base we showed you the lathe work required to complete the first op. This video will show you the rest of the work required to complete the rear sight base on the machining center.

Again just a reminder of the part we are making is solid model form.

In this video we will take it from a turned part.

To a final part ready for assembly.

So Lets start.

The total milling time for this part is 10 minutes. Hope you enjoyed the video.

Update on work around Gun Lab.

Not everything is fun and games around here. There is always maintenance to accomplish as well building projects not related to guns to perform. This Sunday was one of those days. My boss, wife, deemed that the doors needed painting as well as the door frames. So all the doors except the big steel doors at the shot were painted. That is a total of 14 doors and frames that were painted ( house, guest house,shops and metal storage room) as well a new insulation cover built and painted for the walk in cooler I built.

In addition a friend dropped of his wacker to compact the soil for the addition at the fab shop. At my age I am just to old to play with this stuff, but I did it any way. The good news is that task is complete the bad news is that I feel it, big time.

However with the compacting completed finished I am ready for the next task.

It was also time to clean up the fab shop. It has gotten a little out of order and impossible to work in.

So a major clean up was in order. My better half and I finished it late Sunday. What a job.Next I finished installing the lights I had on hand and wired them up and installed light bulbs.

The excitement was that hootie showed back up and stayed around for a few glamor shots.

He is great for dealing with the mouse problem. That’s all for this Sunday and I am already back at work on gun stuff.

Need a Little Help

I have finished the lower receiver for the Sudanese AR-10. I would now like to make some of the other parts for it and the Portuguese AR-10. I am really looking for Drawings and parts. If anyone could help it would be greatly appreciated.

More updates on the Sudanese AR-10

We have finally finished the solid model of the Sudanese lower receiver. The total time that has been spent making the solid model is 60 hours. Considering that there were no engineering drawings that were readable and the receiver we had to work with is cut up, I do not feel that is was excessive. We are still working on the tool list , programing and fixtures that are necessary to make it, that will be in the next post. The material for two test receivers is here and we are working toward the next phase.

So here are the solid model updates. We have gone through an corrected some of the radius on the inside and out side of the receiver.

With the final model they blend better and look like the original rifle.

We have also started the lettering on the side of the receiver.

The next update was to add the logo we are going to use on our receivers. Being that Armalite is copyrighted as is AR-10 we had to made a few changed as you can see. this is an original rifle.

This is our version.

The full auto trip sear was removed from the model and stops for the selector were added.

The original Sudanese selector was different the all the rest.

Which means that we going to now have to change that as well.

The changes have been made and the lower receiver should be correct. Comments are appreciated.

Machining the FG-42 bi-pod leg female stamping die

This post is about machining the stamping die for the bi-pod leg on a first model FG-42. This will be the third stamping die out of a set of 5 dies. It is also one of the more complex of the dies in the set. I will start with the solid model that was drawn up in solid works after being scanned.

Here are a few pictures of an original bi-pod leg

Here are a few still pictures of the female die.

To give you an idea of the time required to do this die it took a week of design time to take the 3-d scans and convert them into usable solid models. It took another day to write the master cam program. The total time to set up the machine and run the die 5 hours. The material cost was $ 65.00. Tooling cost was $120.00.

We are working on the matching male die and will have a post about that soon. Hope you enjoyed the video and understand the time required to complete a project

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