"FrankenRuger MAX" - the quest for the ultimate in weird BEGINS!

Jim March

New member
OK. So most of you know about "Maurice", the shell-ejecting-under-gas-pressure Ruger SA (New Vaquero in 357). If not:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZAGpJr5RsU

The next step (naturally!) is magazine feeding - spring-loaded tubes plugging into a new hole in the recoil shield just left of the hammer. Once the cylinder is dry and the first empty chamber passes in front of the mag, a new round slams forward into that chamber, goes once to the right to fire, once more to the right to get gas-ejected by tapped muzzle gasses off the previous round.

A 1ft long straight mag should be able to hold 8rds of 9mmPara, and I *think* I can make a helical-coil "spiral mag" of up to 20 rounds :D.

Now, to do this right the 9mmPara caliber makes a lot more sense. Rimless means a smaller hole in the recoil shield, narrower bore magazines, etc. And a big one: because the 9mm case doesn't need full support at the rear I can run massive chamfers at the rear of each cylinder bore for smoother insertion of rounds. That in turn means a 9mm custom cylinder.

I have $7k that should finally show up this week. No, I'm not spending all that :D but doing the mag upgrade is in the budget.

I also have access to a machine shop and a couple of experienced machinists. More on that in a later post.

I'm starting this thread because I lucked out on Ebay and scored this for less than $20:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...sspagename=STRK:MEWAX:IT&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

It's an excess 6.5" section of a Douglas Premium rifle barrel in 9mm, left over from somebody else's project. By pure dumb luck the fattest end is .7" for half an inch, exactly perfect for Ruger's barrel threads (11-16ths/24tpi). Yes, that means it's too narrow. That's OK - because I'm not going to screw it in in the usual fashion. I'll do some other thread on the nose end and use a custom nut out there to push a sleeve backwards over the barrel and press against the front of the frame "Dan Wesson style".

This will let me set the barrel/cylinder gap to whatever I want once the new cylinder is done.

The cylinder will be off a Bowen blank, line-bored custom to the frame and with an oversize cylinder bolt (Power Custom) and oversize base pin (Belt Mountain) added first. The goal is a "zero free play" setup when done.

If I can get it running with 5rds in the cylinder plus a 20rd mag, continuous, I'm going to run an entire SASS stage with no reloading once before they laughingly throw my butt out. Better yet: there's no rules against this critter in either Steel Challenge or ICORE...well...OK, not YET.

:)
 
Jim March said:
If I can get it running with 5rds in the cylinder plus a 20rd mag, continuous, I'm going to run an entire SASS stage with no reloading once before they laughingly throw my butt out.

So will you be costumed as Artemus Gordon or Dr. Loveless? :D
 
well here is the odd thing Mr Jim March,

would you rather have the gun be a 9mm revolver, or would you rather it be a true fun gun in 357 or even 38 special?

it would be a lot cheaper to keep it a 357. Send me a few decent measurements in a drawing of the contraption and ill shoot you back a way to use ACTUAL semi auto pistol magazines in it.

30 round glock magazine seem fun to you? no designing a spiral system, etc.
 
Well a few things here...

9mm has gotten pretty stout of late. This gun will be able to shoot unlimited diets of the nasty +P and +P+ stuff that Winchester and Federal call "police sales only" plus the Buffalo Bore +P+ loads. None exceed the pressure of the full-house 357s. And since I don't hunt, I don't see those edgy 9s as being a big disadvantage. The Federal 147HST in particular is just a beast, and a more advanced projectile than the Gold Dots that remain the best you can get in 357Mag.

Regardless of source, the rounds will have to go through the recoil shield on the left. 9mm will mean a narrower hole.

I can think of a way of feeding out of semi mags: use a forked hammer. The left fork would have a rubber tip and ram home rounds from the top of a mag. Right? But then how do you use the cylinder's capacity before eating out of the mag?
 
That's a very cool gun. I can't wait to see it when it's done. You're never going to have to worry about someone else showing up with the same thing.
 
W73:

The thing is, the 1873 Colt-type ergonomics are just awesome...unmatched in my opinion. Nobody ever went back and tried to update it's rate of fire to modern standards.

Until now :D.
 
The thing is, the 1873 Colt-type ergonomics are just awesome...unmatched in my opinion. Nobody ever went back and tried to update it's rate of fire to modern standards.

I agree about the ergonomics. They are fantastic in the hand. If you get time, could you also install a tactical rail somewhere on the gun? One of the problems with the SAA is that there is nowhere to attach a bayonet or any other accessories such as a tactical light, laser, or pistol-handle foregrip (like for an AR 15).

A little history: before the US entered the civil war against Soviet Germany, they actually dropped the SAA in favor of the Wesson & Ruger 38 magnum because of the lack of bayonet attachment. The pistol bayonet mandation was part of the Treaty of Bonzai. Go look it up in your history books children! You probably didn't know that until I taught you right just now.
 
I agree about the ergonomics. They are fantastic in the hand. If you get time, could you also install a tactical rail somewhere on the gun? One of the problems with the SAA is that there is nowhere to attach a bayonet or any other accessories such as a tactical light, laser, or pistol-handle foregrip (like for an AR 15).

I imagined the addition of a full basket rapier style with a laser from a rail at the bottom of the grip.
 
I can think of a way of feeding out of semi mags: use a forked hammer. The left fork would have a rubber tip and ram home rounds from the top of a mag. Right? But then how do you use the cylinder's capacity before eating out of the mag?

That hammer would need a very strong spring, and a LOT of mass. It would have to overcome the friction of stripping and accelerating the cartridge from the magazine and still having enough inertia to detonate the primer, while still providing a reasonable lock time.
Possible, but not worth the effort and the perpetually-sore thumb.
 
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