FrankenRuger MAX saga part three: tools, and a plan "C" develops...

Sweet Lord! How does anybody move those things! :D

I have a buddy at work who is convinced his house was built around the giant lathe in his basement back in the day (he got it with the house: bonus!). The largest pieces do not look small enough to fit through any opening in the structure (not to mention the weight...)

Wish I could get one of those useful bad-boys, but they're not exactly compatible with "apartment life" ;)

TCB
 
Now, this is just an amazing find that I found while surfing Google Play books. Especially since it's free:

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Cincinnati_Milling_Machine_Company_A_Treatise_on_M?id=zXQ9hFSGVWMC&feature=similar_books#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwOCwiYm9vay16WFE5aEZTR1ZXTUMiXQ..

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Erik_Oberg_Handbook_for_machine_shop_and_drafting_?id=Q0frAAAAMAAJ&feature=similar_books#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEwOCwiYm9vay1RMGZyQUFBQU1BQUoiXQ..

There's a bunch of these old scans. I think they were books that the milling companies made to give to potential customers, but there's a lot of gems inside them.

Also, I just got some aluminum end-mill bits and a few other things from discount-tools (dot com) in the mail today. The bits came in nice individual acrylic tubes. I was really happy with the prices, and after I ordered the guy called me cause he didn't have the tap I ordered in stock and he was all about getting me what I was looking for at the advertised price and seemed to care about working the shipping charges in my favor as well. It's sure a damned sight better product and price and a whole lot better service than I've seen elsewhere.
 
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Jim, here's examples of what I was talking about earlier in this thread wherein you might combine your Frankenruger's gas ejection system for blowing the empty case out, to a belt fed revolver. Here's the Josselyn chain "charger" gun revolver. As you can see, the revolver doesn't use a cylinder but uses a sprocket that revolves the chargers or free chambers to align with the breech of the barrel. You could still use your gas ejection system Jim to blow the empty cases out of the chargers when they rotated past the barrel as the next charger was aligned. (And when all the cartridges in the belt were fired, you could remove it and use it as a primary chain for a Harley Lol).

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and a strange looking Russian revolver using the Josselyn chain "charger" system.

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See how those "chargers" or "free chambers" on the belt hold a cartridge and actually become the chamber themselves so that they hold in the pressure of the cartridge's explosion? A similar idea was used on the crank fired, belt fed, Bailey gun which used "chargers" or "free chambers" permanently mounted to the belt, so that both the "chargers" and the cartridge were inserted as one unit into the barrel's chamber. (Although the Bailey's "chargers" may not have been made to hold the full force of the cartridge's explosion because it was inserted into the barrel's chamber. So it was a bit different from the free chambers of the Josselyn that held the full force of the explosion, but similar in concept).

Bailey crank fired gun's cartridge belt (Being crank fired, it's not a machine gun by today's standards despite what the old print says). The cartridges were not removed from their holders or chargers in the belt, but both the holders/chargers and the cartridge as one unit were inserted into the barrel's chamber together.

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Also below, see the sprocket used in the crank fired Union Agar (coffee mill) gun of the civil war, that said sprocket rotated the "chargers" around to align with the barrel? Actually in reality the Agar was really a hopper fed revolver.

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Does this better illustrate what I was talking about?
Now imagine you use a little gas to make the revolver's hammer cock and thus rotate the sprocket too. Jim, then you'd have a gas operated, gas ejected, belt fed, revolver. See what I mean?

Why do it? Because it can be done and no one else is doing it.

Definitely would be the most unusual revolver at the range.



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No. No no no no no no HELL nope.

:(

Magazine swaps will be a lot faster than chain swaps. I'm a biker of over 20 years experience, I *know* how many problems chains cause. Ghaaa!
 
Jim March wrote:
No. No no no no no no HELL nope.
Magazine swaps will be a lot faster than chain swaps. I'm a biker of over 20 years experience, I *know* how many problems chains cause. Ghaaa!
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Don't hold back Jim, tell us how you really feel about it. Lol.

But you aren't going to be doing "magazine swaps" in your FrankenRuger revolver since it doesn't take magazines are you? Also you don't have to have a closed loop chain like the Josselyn, but could have a non loop chain that quickly loaded just by putting one charger into the sprocket and advancing it. That would grab the chain and hold it in the revolver. Hanging out the side like a belt fed gun. That would be a pretty fast reload.

Our military uses "chain" guns. I don't think they would if the chains created too many problems. In reality the linked cartridges in our standard military & civilian belt fed guns are really "chains", just chains that hold cartridges. You know as a biker, an old Harley uses a primary chain and another for the rear wheel sprocket. Older cars and some new ones too use a timing gear chain. Chains are very useful for a variety of applications. I doubt you would be firing the FrankenRuger fast enough for the cartridge "chain" to come off and get all wrapped up.

Your steampunk-eske FrankenRuger with its gas tube blowing out the case empties from a removed loading gate position is pretty outlandishly unusual itself. Just thought you might be interested in taking it to the next step ;). The thing is, as we see with the Josselyn, Bailey and Agar, it is possible to do by combining what you've already made with these other principles.

Appealing to most people and practical? Of course not but then neither is a empty cartridge case gas ejecting FrankenRuger single action revolver. But it sure would be fun to combine what you've already done with your FrankenRuger with these other principles and build what I've shown just for fun and to prove it could be done. I thought with your "outside the box" thinking (a good thing) with your FrankenRuger that these ideas might appeal to you.

You said earlier in another FrankenRuger thread that you wanted something very unusual that would really "wow!" the folks at the range. Well there it is. :)



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But you aren't going to be doing "magazine swaps" in your FrankenRuger revolver since it doesn't take magazines are you?
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Yes it will!

1ft long tube mags that will plug in from the rear, in a new hole in the recoil shield just left of the hammer (from the shooter's point of view).

The cylinder spins clockwise. Once the cylinder is dry and an empty chamber appears in front of the mag, the spring-loaded mag will inject a round into that chamber. Cock it again and that round is in the firing position and the empty chamber behind it gets injected live. At the position one right of the hammer, empties get ejected from the gas of the firing round.

Once the mag is empty, the follower (an inverted empty shell on the end of the spring) will go forward a bit into the empty chamber, tying the cylinder up and telling you it's time to swap mags. I'll be able to do so before or after firing the last round. Holes in the mag tube will also indicate round counts; the follower will be painted red so I can track it's progress easily.

For carry there will be a short "stub magazine", possibly carrying one extra round, possibly not (just a follower) and no more than 2" or so long. Either way it will keep the cylinder's loaded rounds in there under recoil. It will have less spring pressure so that turning the cylinder with rounds underneath the last round (or follower) will be fairly easy. The full-length mags will be inserted only after the cylinder is dry and will have full-strength springs.

I also have an idea to get a tube-bender and make "coil mags" of possibly as much as 20rd capacity - the equivalent of "happy sticks" (33rd) for Glocks or the like :). Dunno if that'll work quite right :D. Straight mags should be no problem.

I'm debating among two or three different ways to do the mag catch.

Anyways. A 1ft straight tube mag should be able to hold 8rd of 9mmPara, possibly more. And I may go with mags a bit longer than a foot...dunno yet.
 
Why not chamber rounds the exact way you extract them?

Since you're using non-rimmed rounds, couldn't you feed them into the front of the cylinder? Have a second gas tube blow them back into a straight-bored chamber. You couldn't headspace off a counterbore, but you wouldn't need to if your cylinder is the same length as the cartridge. Just put in a spring-loaded barbed-detent to "snag" the extractor groove a bit, so the round can't move forward after being chambered. The gas blast would still be able to kick them out the back, fired or not. Can your current setup kick out unfired rounds? If so, you have your loading method!

For this to work, you'd need a box/hopper mag, but you wouldn't have to use flat/round tip bullets, either. Plus, it'd look way cooler (either out the side, like a Sterling, or straight down like other machine pistols). And if there's already a round chambered, the gas force will be gone before you try to rotate the cylinder, so the back of the next round won't tear up the bullet tip.

Depending on how assertively you can safely push these rounds with powder gas, I'll bet you could get some scary-fast cycle times out of such a set up (think mini-gun). It'd basically be a straight-blowback without the mass of a bolt slowing things down. You'd have a fully-functional "SAAutoloader", with no additional moving parts! (not counting mags)

Now you just need to come up with a way to actuate the hammer, and you'll be "cocking with gas" (tee hee hee).

TCB
 
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Since you're using non-rimmed rounds, couldn't you feed them into the front of the cylinder?
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Oh for...

Right so...how is the firing pin going to hit the primer with a good solid thwack?

Second...this is NOT going to work with 9mmPara. The shell is tapered, not straight-wall. So the tail end is about .40cal wide, the front is .355" plus two thicknesses of shell (which is nowhere near .045" total). So there's no way in hell you're going to push that shell in from the nose.

But let's assume we solve that with a .357Mag shell with the rim cut off. Dunno how I'd get reloading tools for such a thing but ignore that a moment.

The shell would be pushed in from the front. The bullet is narrower than the shell, right? And the shell has to be back pretty far, unless we want to limit the gun to full wadcutters only. So the bullet is going to come out of the shell and cross an area of the nose end of the cylinder that's significantly fatter than the bullet...there's no "throat" in the cylinder bore at all. Velocity goes down. Next problem, the bullet is going to hit the back of the barrel at some kind of funky angle, getting dented, putting serious stress on the gun and making accuracy go wonky.

Sigh.

Now...some of this could be solved with a heeled bullet but we abandoned those in larger calibers for a reason back around 1871 or so...
 
Please forgive me, I don't own a 9mm (just a .357 and 5.7x28, which are obviously straight-walled and necked, respectively). Upon very close inspection of the wikipedia article picture on 9x19, I see that there is a slight taper. Having never had much first hand exposure to the round, you may see how I might have missed it.

Second, I gave a suggestion for holding the round at the correct headspace with a spring-loaded claw that snags the extraction groove, preventing forward movement of the round during pin-strike. I've also heard of folks shooting non-secured .45acp rounds (though it sounds a bit foolish) successfully in .45LC revolvers.

At any rate, there's no reason you couldn't push the round in from the back, with a 180deg bend in the gas tube (yes, you'd would lose a good deal of pressure due to the longer tube length, as well as the bend, but enough force would likely still be available).

Thanks for explaining why my initial pitch was stupid, instead of just saying "You a Big Dummy!" :cool: I still think direct-impinging gas could perform just about all the duties you need it for in a revolver, since there's no bolt to push around.

TCB
 
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why not just use a basic coil spring to push the rounds forward from a tube?
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There's no reason not to, it's a design decision you'll make for yourself. A tube mag seems a bit unwieldy/fragile to me, unless of course you have visions of making this project a carbine, with the tube supported along the butt.

A box-mag wouldn't push the soft bullet nose against the rotating parts of the gun. I suppose FMJ would be okay with this (and is probably what you'd use for plinking, right?), but it seems like lead-nose or hollow-points would get "shaved". That said, hanging a large stick mag behind the cylinder would be tricky for your hand, unless you're able to reach around both a mag and the handle.

Personally, I think a hopper would be the most ridiculous (second only to belt-fed):D You could call it the Meat Grinder :eek:

TCB
 
A box-mag wouldn't push the soft bullet nose against the rotating parts of the gun. I suppose FMJ would be okay with this (and is probably what you'd use for plinking, right?), but it seems like lead-nose or hollow-points would get "shaved". That said, hanging a large stick mag behind the cylinder would be tricky for your hand, unless you're able to reach around both a mag and the handle.
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Well the mag will be above the grip line. From a Weaver or Iscoceles it would be a non-issue. The only possible problems happen with a high and tight version of a Center Axis Relock hold, like so:

miami3.jpg


...but I think I can do without that.

Mag toughness shouldn't be a problem - I think I know how to solve that.

The one problem you've pointed to is that the front bullet in the mag will slide against the back rims of the cylinder's bullets until the cylinder runs out of ammo. This can be solved a few ways:

1) Literally don't put a mag in with rounds in it until round 4 or 5 of the cylinder are at bat. This can be accomplished a few different ways. The best is to have a small "stub mag" filling the mag well that has no ammo in it - instead the follower is a shallow dome-shaped affair designed to slip easily over the shell butts. This "stub" is just a filler for the mag well until it's time to reload, at which point it comes out and a real mag goes in.

2) Build a "carry stub mag" of only one round capacity, containing a round that is very good at sliding over the back ends of other rounds and with very light spring pressure. Possible rounds for that mag are Federal EFMJ/GuardDog types, the Cor-Bon Pow'R'Ball with a polymer ball nose or possibly a handloaded full wadcutter of 100gr.

3) Set it up so that it doesn't need a mag for carry at all. Have a mag retaining switch that penetrates the mag well deeper when there's no mag in, blocking backward motion of rounds in the cylinder. This would be tricky to build but not impossible.

Once the cylinder is empty and you insert a 9rd mag for example, the first round in the mag goes forward into a chamber. At that point cocking it to advance to another chamber should be easy enough, esp. if the round is a modern JHP with a fairly tough, slick copper nose rim instead of soft lead. The sort of nose needed is common enough in 9mm - Gold Dots, Winchester's Ranger-T and scads of others. I'm also looking at the Hornady Critical Defense as possibly solving a lot of issues, or the Federal EFMJ/GuardDog.
 
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