Sunday Axel and I got together with Ian and Carl from Forgotten Weapons to do some high speed photographing of the VG1-5. The information that was obtained holds a number of clues to re-occurring issues that have come up. For the next week or so I will be posting high speed and standard videos of all the VG1-5’s, the 05, 06 and stg45 rifles.
Here are a couple of pictures of the rifles tested. The first is the VG1-5’s
The second is of the 05, 06 and stg45.
This was a very useful day at the range. My thanks go out to Axel, Carl and Ian for all the help they provided in the testing.
The first video in the series. This one is on the VG1-5 first prototype rifle that was made years ago by John. This rifle has had more rounds put through it then can be counted. These include reloads,WW2 German steel case, Czech post war steel case and all the different types of factory ammo that was made.
For any of you that have been around awhile or have not been on the far side of the moon you would know of Don Bell at Omega. The sad news is that he passed away last night.
I have been to his place to many times to count and he was always a generous and friendly friend to me. I will miss him and visiting his shop.
I have a number of belt loaders and one that I picked up a number of years ago is the MG-51 belt loader. This is a Swiss belt loader originally design for the Swiss Maxim gun. Later they were converted from the cloth belt to a metal belt for the MG-51.
In this case the loader has been converted to 8×57 and uses the MG-34/42 belt.
This is the box holding the loader.
As packed in the box.
A couple of views of the loader.
This is the video of me loading up a belt of 8×57 for the MG-34 and MG-42.
A while back a friend of gun lab brought over a new press. It will really help with some of the pressings that we have coming up, however it is a 7 1/2 HP 3 phase motor.
I have nothing in the fab shop that can handle that power requirement. My phase converter is a 7HP rotary phase converter. Well worry no more. On Thursday came a knock at the door with the opening statement “friend of gun lab” and I am barring gifts.
On his trailer was a 15 HP rotary phase converter with a fabricated stand.
Now a new project for me is to wire it into the fab shop and run a 3 phase circuit in there.
Thanks to John U. for the phase converter.
Side note is that all the Budweiser aluminum in the drying rack in the back ground are for the metal casting project coming up and they are not mine. They all come from a certain German fellow.
This Sunday we spent 6 hours testing a variety of weapons. A few more VG1-5 rifles were tested. The MG-34 had all the springs replaced and was tested as well as the mpi-69. This is a quick video of what was 6 hours of actual work and testing.
A while back I was a construction site where they were removing a number of trees. One of them in particular was a large and fairly straight Mesquite tree. The guys were going to cut it up for fire wood and that just kind of pushed the wrong buttons for me. After a little chatting with the superintend I convince him to let me have it.
This is the log and a few of the limbs.
After some clean up this is what I was left with.
The scrap was turn into mulch.
A quick trip to the saw mill left me with some beautiful slabs.
It is all back home.
and stored for an upcoming project.
It will be stored for a year to air dry out the sun and rain and then it will be kiln dried to the proper moisture content. I cut these slabs at 2 1/2 inches for stocks and to be able to re-saw for a few other projects.
Yesterday while out working at the range we also brought out my nemesis the MG-34. Keep in mind this is my 3rd MG-34 that I have owned and they have all been the same. Everyone else’s MG-34 seem to work great,but mine always seem to be to have an issue. The current one that I own used to belong to a friend of mine and it worked like a champ until I bought it. I have had the gun run away when I shot it, multiple jams, the ammo not firing and every other problem that you can imagine.
I brought out spare barrels, bolts ,belts, springs and grips. My friend and owner of a perfectly operating MG-34 also brought out enough parts to rebuild my gun twice including barrel jackets and butt stocks. We had enough parts to make a WW2 German armorer jealous. This gun was going to work or else.
Now for the rest of the story.
The machine gun was placed on the original tripod and would only shoot in semi auto even though it was set to full auto. The Axel fix was a piece of cardboard.
It wasn’t until after we got home that we found the problem with the tri-pod. However that was not the only issue. The gun would fire a few rounds then stop. The primer strikes were heavy, so it was thought to be the ammo. A second strike would always fire the round. This is the same ammo that I use in the MG-42 and 1919 and it always works. Romanian 8×57 is good stuff. A number of attempts were made to fix the issue. Bolts were changed as well as the pistol grip, top cover and barrel. All of this was to no avail. the only time it even ran a complete belt was when we had a run away gun that would not stop firing.
After giving up on the machine gun it was time to go home and start over, again. This time like all the others we went through every assembly and sub assembly. every spring was checked, every contact surface was checked again and all the sub assembly’s were taken apart and checked. extra barrels and bolts were cleaned, oiled and rebuilt as necessary.
It was back out to the shooting spot. This time there was some success.
The video of the MG-34.
It has only taken 6 years, however I only take it out once a year due to the aggravation factor. On the next trip out will see if it still works or goes back on the blink again
A while back I picked up a FN-FAL heavy barrel Israel contract rifle that would not work. If you inserted a single round in the chamber and let the bolt close on it the rifle would fire but not eject. If you tried to load the rifle from a magazine it would feel but the bolt would not close fully. In the video you will see that the rifle would not eject.
After looking at the rifle it was decided to just rebuild the gun from the front to the rear. Every part was checked and and measured. The head spacing was way off, the gas piston was bent and the gas tube was also bent, there was an issue with the gas block and we checked all the components of the fire control group.
Now it is a nice shooting rifle. Enjoy this short clip of it working.
It has been a while for a VG1-5 post. Once the rifles were completed we notice a few issues. With the changes of a new reamer and new fluting tools we were have some issues with proper operating pressures and proper operation. This caused use to go back and check everything. A through examination of the rifle caught a few minor problems.
We started by redesigning the fluting tool, actually there was 6 different designs. Each new tool was tested with two new barrels. Some of the barrels did not provide sufficient pressure to move the slide all the way to the rear. A couple of the new fluted barrels caused excessive operating pressure. Finally success was accomplished and the flute design worked very well.
The secondary sear was re-worked to allow for save operation, there is a complete post coming up on the tooling used to do this. The secondary sear was cut at 1 degree increments until the correct angle way determined.
When the slide came back we located a couple of spots where we had metal to metal contact that we should have not had. Each of these contact points had to be looked at and a determination made as how to fix them. Most were fixed by changing the buffer spring and redesigning the barrel support.
There were a few other very minor but aggravating issues that would pop up at irregular intervals. One would be corrected only to find that the correction made a different problem worse.
To put it in context we have used close to 7000 rounds in testing this rifle design. After all this work this is a video that was shot yesterday.
The rifle was tested in both slow and rapid fire.
We went through 200 rounds today shooting the rifle and the only issue that came up was my arthritis, the rifle worked great.
This was a very useful day at the range. My thanks go out to Axel, Carl and Ian for all the help they provided in the testing.
