GunLab

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.

Now to the pictures of this interesting and unique rifle.

This is a side view of the .223 version

The following pictures are of the 7.62×39 version

You can see a lot of the M-1 carbine and M-1 Garand in this rifle.

The bolt comes from the M-1 carbine.

A few pictures of the gas system.

With so few guns ever being made and the political upheaval that was going on at the time the bugs were never totally worked out.

Austrian WW1 37mm

I have a thing about 37mm, one pound, cannons. So over the years I have taken a number of pictures of different types of 37mm pieces. This post is a series of photos that I have taken on the Austrian WW1 37mm piece. The proper name for this weapon is the 3.7 cm infanteriegesch,TZ Skoda M.15 This weapon was design and produced by Feldmarsschalleutnant Pucherna. Originally not approved, he went ahead and design the gun. The test gun was made in late 1914 and put into production and put into the field in October 1915.This is a basic line drawing of the weapon.

My goal is that one day I could make a model of this interesting weapon. So here are the pictures.

If you have an interest in 3.7cm artillery pieces you should check out this book.

Weekend work update

Not much posting or working in the shop this weekend. Everyone at gun lab.net is SICK. Massive head aches,body aches, miserable coughs, just sick. Work and everything else just caught up with us. I hope to spend time cleaning up my back up hard drive if I can focus on the screen for any length of time. Other then that I am going back to bed.

Doing a major back up file run

I have been transferring files from an older back up hard drive to a newer one. This process has taken the last 11 hours and still has another 6 hours to go. Sorry, no post right now. I hate to think how long a full transfer of data would take. Now I get to go through everything on the older 2 terabit hard drive that I have not looked at in a while.

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