GunLab

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.

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.

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