Saturday, April 5, 2008

The 1377 Carbine Project Continues

The next part of my 1377 carbine project was the "muzzle brake". I put that in quotes because the brake doesn't actually do anything except hide the flat spot at the end of the barrel, protect the muzzle and look cool.

A long piece of aluminum rod stock was chucked up. I put the steady rest on to minimize vibration.

Turning the diameters at the muzzle end.

Drilling out the end as far as I could go with a 1/4" bit.

Drilling 1/2" diameter for the barrel.

I bored for a slip fit over the barrel.

I flipped the stock and chucked it true in the 4 jaw chuck, with a shim wrapped around the turned portion to protect it from the jaws.

Turned to a cylinder.

Drilled out.

Countersunk at the end.

Turning a taper on the end. I started doing it at 30 degrees, but settled on 10 degrees for a rather long taper.

Filed and scotchbrite to finish.

As you remember from last time, I had done a rather casual job of indexing the two holes on the pump plug, this time I remembered to use my 5C collet block to fixture the work. The stop locates the block for each successive operation and the dial indicator tells me when I have travelled the same distance each time.

Starting to slot the brake.

This is one of my prouder moments. I had to drill for a set screw at 45 degrees from the slots, so I put the collet block on a vee block, then clamped the end of the brake in a vise. I unclamped the brake from the collet block and drilled the hole on the drill press.

Another view showing the vee block.

I drilled for a #6 setscrew and tapped by hand.

I filed and used scotchbrite on the slots.

The finished brake.

As you can see the slots are at 45 degrees from the set screw.

Mounted to the barrel, continuing my Sci-fi theme for the conversion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very nice! I simply love the whole sci-fi look you're going for; one of the few instances where a muzzle break actually makes the gun look better! CAN NOT wait until it is done.