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I started to build the RGG gun last week with my friend Brian. He is a semi-retired machinist so I am really in an apprenticeship program. I am a self-taught home shopper so I am learning a lot about how to do things the right way. I thought it may help others if I post some of the things I pick up during the build. I built the D&E with another home shopper friend up to doing the firing pins. Given all of the problems with the design and all of the polished brass I decide to leave it as a model and build the RGG as a shooter. We are making it of steel. The bolt carrier, barrel plates and ejectors are made from 1144 stress proof.
First, cleanliness and deburring are mandatory. Second, building a good fixture saves a lot of time and makes for accurate parts. We decided to do a one piece bolt carrier so the first thing Brian did was make a fixture out of MIC 6 aluminum tooling plate to hold the bolt carrier and front and rear barrel plates. The fixture, shown below, only had the center hole for the hex sleeve and the .187 hole for the pin when we started making parts. The little plug setting in the lower right front replaces the hex sleeve for the front plate. Brian also circle ground an end mill for cutting the flat bottom holes. It is shown in the second picture and was used instead of a reamer for final size and to get the flat bottom. We need to turn the front of the bolt carrier, cut the flats and the groove to finish it. Oh, did I mention cleanliness and deburring are mandatory?
We did the ejectors individually instead of in a strip and slitting them. This was actually easier than I anticipated. Just time consuming. Of course, DRO’s were a major advantage doing them and especially the bolt circle function with all of the center drilling, drilling and reaming of the bolt carrier and barrel plate parts as well as on the ejectors
More later.
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Welcome and Good Luck to you on your build.
Later 42rocker
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Congratulations on your start, Dennis & Brian
It looks like you guys make a good team
Jerry/Cutter
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Welcome to the forum! Got your post fixed up. Nice work!
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So many different ways to do this project. Good luck on your build. Keep the pictures a rolling.
Looks great.
Don
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Dave Thanks for fixing my post and for the great forum.
Yesterday we finished the bolt carriers. We had to put it back in the lathe and turn the front diameter and the groove. The thing I learned here is how to verify a piece is running true. The chuck in the pic is a three jaw adjust true. I don’t have one for my lathe so I use a standard four jaw chuck and place the indicator on top and center the piece and I am done. Brian showed me that even though you indicate the part on top it can be cocked in the jaws and still not be running true. In the second pic the indicator showed the part was cocked in the chuck and running out .003. So, you need to check both ways or indicate close to the jaws and again out on the end.
We then bolted the bolt carrier to our fixture and set it up on the Tomach mill, yea sweet, to mill the flats. There were three holes all together on both bolt carriers that the bolts would not go into after milling. So we had to put them back in a vise and mill an additional .003 off the flats on those three holes. No pic of that. Guess I was too concerned with the problem to take pictures. Then glass beaded it to debur and fitted all the bolts. The bolts are from Jerry/Cutter and were PERFECT! Thanks Jerry.
We decided not to use the tube on the main shaft but turn down a .500 piece and mill the hex. When we tried this we realized we would need a follow rest for the main shaft and the barrels. Most of the stuff Brian does is larger industrial stuff so he never had a need for a follow rest on his lathe. He designed and made a follow rest shown in the pic. He had some carbide pin gages which he used for the tips.
Again, I am just a home shopper who has the opportunity to work with someone with a lot of experience and I am just trying to pass on the little things I am learning. This is of course not the only way or even the right way but it is what we are doing. It also helps to have a will tooled machine shop.
More to come.
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Very nice. Its nice to see how other people skin a cat....
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I like the follow rest idea. Please keep up with the pic share.
Later 42rocker
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Very nice work. Brian really knows his trade. Looking forward to seeing more progress from you two.
Welcome.
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We made a little more progress. The follow rest works so we did the center shaft from .500 round stock. Turned and threaded both ends and turned the center where the hex goes. We then chucked it up in a 5C indexer mounted on the mill. Instead of using a tail stock to support the outboard end we used the mill vise to shorten the amount of shaft floating in air. We could then indicate the shaft, tweak it up or down as needed, tighten the vise and mill.
We milled the ejector slots for the front barrel plate on the Tormach. That went very well.
Next we wanted to mill the ejector slots on the bolts. We decided to do those on the Tormach so we came up with the setup shown to hold the bolts. The block in front of the rear jaw was milled and ground flat and a groove cut in for the bolt. The parallel on the right was milled square for alignment. Most parallels are not square on the ends. It was also not hard so it was easy to mill. We will try cutting the groove with this setup tomorrow.
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Very nice work you guys!
With a great presentation
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We weren’t able to work on the gun much this week. We did get the extractor slot and pocket cut on the bolts and milled flats on the bolt plug so we could tighten them with a wrench. Holding the bolt in the vise worked fine for milling the slot and pocket. We need to drill the pivot holes and the extractor spring hole and the bolts will be finished so we can start turning down barrels.
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It all works until it doesn’t :?:
Everything was going great until we decided it was time to see how all the parts fit together and worked. That created a great deal of confusion and aggravation. We spent the day making test bolts and a 4 inch test barrel to study loading and extraction. After much testing and correspondence with Jerry, aka Cutter, we came up with want we think will be a workable configuration and procedure for finishing the bolts and extractors. We decided to drill the pivot hole in the bolt and extractor separately. In order to get the bolt and extractor to load and extract without binding we did the following:
Drilled the bolt pivot hole .080 as shown on the drawings but drilled the extractor pivot hole .069 off the top of the extractor. This lifts the extractor flats .011 up off of the flats on the bolt.
Milled an additional .005 off of the rear flat on the bolt.
Cut a .026 x .250 radius on the extractor tip.
We experimented with Bic lighter springs and felt they were to strong so we ordered springs from Lee Spring.
We did get a day’s work in yesterday and got all of the above done on the bolts and extractors. We milled a pair of aluminum soft jaws from MonsterJaws to hold the extractor for both drilling and milling as shown in the pictures. We milled the same jaws to hole the bolt for drilling. Using soft jaws like this was a new experience for me but it really is a great way to accurately hold small parts. Brian picked up the DOM tubing and started to make the barrels. We ordered the barrel liners from Brownells and some snap caps for testing as we were not thrilled with using live rounds testing the bolts and extractors. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words so enough from me, here as some pictures.
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A few more pictures
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And a few more
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If your drilling out that tubing 5/16 the barrel liners may not fit. The barrel liners I got came in around .316 -.317 diamter even though they say 5/16. I drilled the tubes out with a 8 mm drill. Then it only took a couple minutes with some emory on the barrel liners to get a nice slip fit.
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My liners came in heavy on the OD, too. I put them in the lathe and ran a file on them until they slid in. Great pictures.
Don
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:o Thanks for the heads up on the liners being oversized. As long as the liners are big I guess we can make them smaller. Glad you didn\'t tell me they came in undersize as we already bored the tube. We should have waited until we received them but assumed the spec\'s on Brownells site were correct. The liners just shipped today so we won\'t know for sure until Monday or Tuesday.
Any suggestions on what to use other than brass for the housing. Also, any mandatory mods in order to get this gg to shoot reliably. I have looked at so many things on this site I am not sure what is actually necessary and what are just personal improvements.
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Looks good!! You\'re off and running!
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I couldn’t work on Thursday so Brian set up his CNC lathe to turn down and thread the barrel blanks and ream the inside diameter. This was before Bzrkr give me the heads up on the liners being oversized. Our liners should arrive tomorrow so I will mic them and see if we have additional work to do.
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We ground the firing pins to size. Made a jig, basically a little chuck mounted on a ground flat plate, to grind the heads and another to grind them to length.
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Brian set up the cnc lathe to turn the hammers. We used Cutter\'s design for the hammer. While he was doing that I used my clock makers lantern pinion tool to cut the pivot wire for the extractor. We used .060 music wire for the pivot pins.
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We hardened the hammers and the extractor using Cherry Red. Smells really bad when you put the red hot part in it so do it where you have good ventilation.
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Got a little more done yesterday. Brian threaded the hammers and I spent the day putting the hex on the barrel. We didn\'t want to have to polish the hex, which we would have to do after cutting with and end mill, so we set it up to cut them with a carbide insert fly cutter. Had an indexer on one end, a tail stock on the other and the vise in the middle as close as we could get to the hex to minimize chatter. The set up is shown below and the finished product.
We got our barrel liners from Brownells and they measured .3095 so we are good to go there. May Loctite 609 them in tomorrow. We hope by next week we can put the whole bolt/barrel assembly together. Then on the cams and cocking ring.
I was so busy turning the hex I didn\'t get any pictures of Brian threading the hammers. I know he did part of it in the mill and then used a bottom tap to finish them by hand.
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Well, we hit a clog in the wheel of progress. After 15 years the DRO on the Leblond lathe decided to go crazy. Brian ordered a new one from DRO Pros and it arrived yesterday so we need to get that installed.
Today, we did get the liners Loctite into the tubes, so I guess there are now barrels, and I put the bolts together.
Then we started on the DRO. The z scale is 80†and had to be cut down. We cut it on the radial arm saw and laid out a .5 x 3†piece of aluminum to mount it on. Brian is going to tap and drill the mounting holes and holes for the grub screws tonight so we can mount it tomorrow. I know this isn’t GG stuff but I thought someone might enjoy the pictures.
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We did get the DRO installation finished so we can get back to the gun. Brain has the most organized home shop I have ever seen and I think the best equipped. That certainly makes building this GG a lot easier. The folks that do it on 3 in 1 machines and HF 7 x10\'s really have a lot more work to do. Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of the final DRO job and then I\'ll get back to gun stuff.
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Back to the gun. Brain did finish the barrels to length over the weekend so the first thing we did this week was chamber them. We did purchase a chamber reamer from Bronwells. We just got the finish reamer since we only have 20 barrels to do. We set a stop and held the barrel in the vise as shown. We then used a pin gage in the bore to indicate on to get the barrel lined up on the x and z as shown. Of course, I should point out that we used a right angle head on the mill. It took a while to do all 20. We used lots of lub and pulled the reamer out a number of times to clean chips on every barrel.
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It\'s now time to get the hex sleeves into the bolt carrier and barrel ring. We decided to use the great little jig we made at the start to line up the hex so everything was the same. We drilled and tapped a hole for a set screw to hold a hex in the jig. We then milled a short hex rod to fit into the jig. We took the test barrel we made and cut it down and milled part of it away to align the barrel plate on the side of the pin. Brian explained to me how you would use diamond shaped pins to align a part like this but he didn\'t have them. We cut the hex to length and used Loctite 609 to hold it in place.
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Next we did the bolt carriers. Two pieces of sleeve were needed for the bolt carrier. We thought that they would line up but found that the main shaft binds where the long and short piece meet. In hind sight we should have made the hole in the bolt carrier under size so we could have turned the hex sleeves true on an arbor. We will need to run a broach through the bolt carrier to clean it up.
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We wanted to make a brass socket so we could tighten the barrels in the barrel ring without marring up the hex on the end of the barrel. However, Brian decided to make the hex on the end of the barrel larger than it was suppose to be so we couldn\'t just broach a piece of brass because the hex wasn\'t a standard, nominal, or is it just a bastard size. That was a rather long discussion. So, since necessity is the mother of invention, we found that a 12mm six point socket could be lined with brass and fit perfectly. Sometimes you just get lucky......yea lucky. :>)
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Got started on the cocking ring. Turned the outer ring. Making it out on 1144sp. We are not making the bottom slot as deep as the drawing so there is a larger area to silver solder. That means we will have a little extra work making the cocking switch piece.
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Thanks for taking the time to do the posts..... I\'m learning a lot
Markus
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Great pictures and presentation.
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As an employer for over 30 years, I was always looking
for someone like Brian. GREAT WORK !
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I\'m very honored by your compliment , especially coming from you !
Thanks, Jerry .
Brain
PS We appreciate your help ! :D
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:oops: Reverse Progress :oops:
After a failed attempt at running a broach through the now Loctite hex sleeve in the bolt carriers we spent Friday morning boring the sleeves out of the bolt carriers and barrel rings. We ordered oversized sleeves which we will turn on a mandrel to insure the hex in concentric with the od. We will then redo the sleeves. You can see the very thin piece of the hex sleeve after boring. We were able to clean the bore of the Loctite with any damage to the bore. We have decided that the little extra piece of hex sleeve in the bolt carrier will not be Loctited in but just used as a spacer. In hind site, we wish we would have made the main shaft 5/8 and used a keyway rather than the sleeves.
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We cut the extractor slot in the barrels Friday afternoon. We decided to cut them in the barrel ring and not to try to mill to a scribed line. We installed the barrels in the barrel ring and tighten them to 150 inch pounds. We did this so we could get them back in to the exact same position every time. We set the assemble up in the vise and used the right angle head to mill the slot in the barrel. This all seemed to work fine.
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:twisted: More scrap :twisted:
Saturday morning we decided to scrap the two piece cocking ring and redo it by grinding a cutter and making it one piece. We won\'t put it in the scrap pile until the other one is finished. The extra grooves were for solder.
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Saturday was spent learning how to draw and covert a flat file of the cams to a wrapped file for the 3rd axis. We used a really great little program called \"CNCWrapper\" which sells for $25.00 to wrap the Y axis on the A or 3rd axis. You can check it out at their web site by the same name. While on the topic we used a great engraving program called Millwrite for engraving the barrels and bolts. He sells a hobby license for $90.00 and that is a real bargain. You can locate his site by searching for \"Millwrite Version 6\". I have no connection to either of these other than I think their software is a great deal for a home shop machinist. We cut some wax to verify the program and verified it with full size patterns. We are going to try and get the cams cut tomorrow.
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Thanks for sharing those sources and photos with us. Looking great.
Later 42rocker
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You guys really have it going. Very impressed with both the master and the student. Thanks for the suggestion on the sites.
Looking forward to more pics.
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[quote name=\"sconigatman\"]You guys really have it going. Very impressed with both the master and the student. Thanks for the suggestion on the sites.
Looking forward to more pics.[/quote]
Thanks !
Have to give credit to Dennis for the posts and pictures and the great job he is doing on helping to figure out this project. Fast learner and is doing a great job machining parts and helping in the shop.
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Looks great and your pics have given me great ideals for the set up. I really need to get back to working on my Gat. Work has been to much lately.
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Thanks to all for the encouragement and kind comments. Glad to hear someone finds the posts helpful.
Unfortunately my wife decided she needed wallpaper taken down and painting done a week after we started this project so I had to abandon Brian for a couple of days to get things ready for the painters. Needless to say he did not sit down and eat Ponpons while waiting for me. Rather, he made large piles of chips turning big chunks of 1144sp in cam blanks, casings and cocking rings. We decided we did not like the thin, out of round brass or steel tube we purchased for the casing so he turned .250 thick wall blanks for the casing. He was kind enough to wait for me to help clean the chip pan. :o Sorry no pictures of that. He also ground a lathe tool to cut the first groove in the one piece cocking ring blanks on the lathe. We will finish the cocking ring blanks on a rotary table on the mill.
He also turned the fixture we will use the cut the cams.
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Here are some pictures cutting the outer groove in the cocking ring blank. We will cut the inner grooves using a rotary table on the mill. Brain ground the end mill that we will use to cut the bottom groove in the cocking ring that the button head screw on the hammer follows. We are not making that bottom groove as deep as the plans specify because it is only that deep so you can make the cocking switch from the same piece. We are thinking we may use that two piece cocking ring blank we made earlier for the cocking switch piece. We are making three sets of cams and three cocking ring blanks just cause we\'re paranoid.
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It’s time to cut the cams. We mounted the fixture in a collet chuck on the 4th axis on the Tormach. We cut the rear cams first. In addition to the two clamps at the back of the cam blank we drilled two .125†holes through the blank and into the fixture .500 in from the rear at 45 degrees from TDC and BDC for dowel pins. These were to insure the blank didn’t slip on the fixture. We put a piece of Duct tape over them to make sure they didn’t fall out as it rotated. Besides, who can build anything without a little Duct tape? :lol: We used CNCWrapper to wrap Y around A.
When we cut the front cam we drilled the holes in .250 from the front of the cam or we thought we did. We haven’t figured out why but the front cam ended up .017†short. If that had happened to the rear cam it would have been a big problem but the front cam being .017 short really doesn’t matter. Just wish we knew what happened. Not knowing what happened is what’s really disrupting. :oops:
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We received our new hex sleeves so while I took care of the Tormach cutting the cams Brian made an arbor to turn the hex sleeves so that the inside hex was concentric to the od. When we purchased the original hex sleeves and Loctited them in we were not happy with the results so Brian bored them out and we ordered oversized sleeve so we could turn the down.
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Now we can Loctite the hex sleeves in the bolt carrier and front barrel ring. The sleeves are shorter than the bolt carrier so it takes a full sleeve and a short piece. We decided not to Loctite the short piece since it really is just a filler and could cause another alignment problem.
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We needed a morale booster and some motivation so we decided to put the barrel assembly together. It is a great feeling when you get to this point. We only put the firing pin and hammer in one bolt. We still need to fix the button heads in the hammers.
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Nice Work and you keep on moving. Hope to see more.
Later 42rocker
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Dennis and Brian,
Must have missed it. What did you do about chambering your barrels?
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[quote name=\"sconigatman\"]Dennis and Brian,
Must have missed it. What did you do about chambering your barrels?[/quote]
I posted that on March 20th. If you check in about the middle of page 3 postings. We purchased a finish reamer to do the chambering.
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There it is. Rt angle mill head, eh. Hadn\'t thought of that. Have to add that to the knowledge base.
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To finish the cams we needed to cut the slot for the bolt extractor. We used the same fixture that we used to mill the cams on the CNC mill. When it was in the CNC we milled a reference flat at 0 degrees on one side and at the 15 degree offset where the slot is cut for the bolt extractor. Using the zero reference we indicated the fixture, drilled and reamed two holes for 3/16 dowel pins. We set the fixture up in the vise with the pins on a parallel and milled the slot in the back cam. We then turned the fixture upright with both cams on it and did the front cams to match the back.
Now, for the big however, the 1144 stress proof is not totally stress proof. After we cut through the back cam and took it off of the fixture it closed up .035â€. Both side curled in and closed, although the one side did curl more than the other. This means the bolt extractor will not fit in the slot and the cam is curled inward toward the bolt carrier. This caused many hours of frustration, consternation, and anxiety.
Brain decided to turn another cam blank oversized, cut the slot, turn to final size and part it off. Unfortunately it did the same thing. Next, we took a jack and spread the cam as shown but it would just spring back when we took the jack out so we will try cutting a slot opposite of the bolt extractor slot but not completely through to see if we can spread it and get it to stay.
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Mine collapsed too. This is what I did to spread it. I forced it open an extra .030\" and I put a torch on the opposite side and let it cool that way. Then it was slightly too wide. But at least when I put it in the casing it was then forced to size. I didn\'t know what else to do. It may depend on the material what will happen.
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If you guys make another one, heat the material to aneal it and releave the stresses before you cut the extractor slot.
bruski
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I guess I was lucky. Mine expanded about .01. Ended up being a nice fit once I collapsed it a little
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I used 17-4 for my box cam and didn\'t notice any distortion, but I cut the bolt extractor slot before I cut the cam slot. Don\'t know if the sequence makes any difference, but thought I\'d mention it.
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Hi All,
For sure, we all new trouble was brewing when we saw the cut thru in the rear cam. :shock: Was hoping for the best from the 1144, but to much stock to remove. Thanks for the replies and other solutions !
Brian
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I am about 5 days behind on posting our progress and about 10 days behind Brian on making parts. I will try and get posting of our progress caught up today and on turning crank handles later this week.
We did think of trying to heat the cam and spread it but just wasn\'t sure where the part would go if we heated it with a torch. Yes, I think we should have heated it before we cut the slot but my foresight isn\'t a whole lot better than my hindsight. What we decided to do was to cut a slot in the bottom of the back cam and spread it and let it relax until the slot for the bolt extractor was correct. Brian made a fixture to locate and space the cams as shown. Since the back cam was tight, due to the distortion, we pressed the whole assembly into the casing using a plug cut to the correct depth. This located the whole assembly to the correct depth so we could screw it to the casing.
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I have found that a part of this nature is greatly improved if it should find it\'s way into our Kitchen Oven when it is running a Self Clean Cycle. Seems like occassionaly I will misplace a dirty old steel part when I am trying to be helpful with cleaning the kitchen. After cleaning the stove sometimes the part will show up in the oven, go figure.
Our GE Stove gives the part a 800F to 900F stress relief with a medium ramp up and a slow ramp down. Ideally I would like to go a little higher but the uniformity is very good. Remember however Stress Relief is a bit of a misnomer. More correctly the part is stress balanced. If you cut away material and unbalance the stresses the part may still change shape. Hopefully just not as much.
nitewatchman
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Yes nitewatchmen, getting it into the wife\'s oven on a cleaning cycle for a preheat would have been advisable. We did remove a great deal of material since we started with a solid 3\" bar rather than tubing. We were actually surprised that it didn\'t move more. We were sure that it was going to do something it just we didn\'t know what or how much.
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The next step was to get the cam assembly secured in the casing.
To accomplish this we pressed the cam assembly into the breech casing. We made a .950 deep plug to use to press the cam assembly in from the rear which gives us the exact depth from the rear of the casing to the rear cam. We put a bolt through the cam fixture assembly to insure the cams were tight against the .200 spacers in the fixture. The super space went on the mill with a three jaw adjust true chuck and a set of soft jaws turned to the id of the breech casing. We then mounted the breech casing with the cams on the super spacer. With the super spacer set at zero we used a protractor to set the 8 degree angle with the plug in the bolt extractor slot. This set up or TDC and BDC. We then blued the whole thing and laid out the flats for the side rails. These lines were used as a reference as we rotated the thing to drill and tap all the holes.The pictures show how we held it, clamped it and indicated it true. We then proceeded to drill and tap the holes in the cams and then mill the flats for the rails.
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A few more pictures getting things put together
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[quote name=\"drhardin\"]Yes nitewatchmen, getting it into the wife\'s oven on a cleaning cycle for a preheat would have been advisable. We did remove a great deal of material since we started with a solid 3\" bar rather than tubing. We were actually surprised that it didn\'t move more. We were sure that it was going to do something it just we didn\'t know what or how much.[/quote]
Might still work to throw the whole thing in the oven fixture and all. Kinda like Hansel and Gretel with the witch.
Except for turning very deep blue to gray it probaly wouldn\'t hurt.
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Error correction. In my previous post I said we set the 8 degree angle with a protractor, that should read 15 degree angle. I had the 8 degree offset on the cocking ring etched in my brain.
While I was off taking care of so personal business Brian made the recoil plate. He made it on the Tormach. Note that he made another mounting fixture with two locating dowel pins. I think it\'s neat that the piece of aluminum tool plate has been used any number of times. It is full of holes and cuts. :roll:
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[quote name=\"nitewatchman\"]
[quote name=\"drhardin\"]Yes nitewatchmen, getting it into the wife\'s oven on a cleaning cycle for a preheat would have been advisable. We did remove a great deal of material since we started with a solid 3\" bar rather than tubing. We were actually surprised that it didn\'t move more. We were sure that it was going to do something it just we didn\'t know what or how much.[/quote]
Might still work to throw the whole thing in the oven fixture and all. Kinda like Hansel and Gretel with the witch.
Except for turning very deep blue to gray it probaly wouldn\'t hurt.[/quote]
I think at this point I\'ll wait and heat it up running ammo through it. Brian keeps asking me where all the videos are of this gun being fired. If this thing doesn\'t shot when done I may have to change my name and move to Montana.
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We knew that the rear cam had curled in and twisted when we cut the bolt extractor slot. We were able to get all of the curl out with the relief slot and spreading the cam with the machinist jack. The twist was only .003 to .004 but that was enough to cause a little rock in the recoil plate when we put it in the casing. So, Brian decided to put the complete assembly back in the lathe to true up the back of the came. This was only a few thousands but doing this let the recoil plate sat flat against the cam.
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I keep telling Brian we only have a few more hard parts to make but I think he has stopped listening to me. While I was off again doing some stuff I would have rather not had to do Brian decided to whip out the bolt extractor. He turned the blank on the lathe. Put the blank in the cnc mill and cut the bottom flat. He then set it up on the bottom flat on a parallel on top of the vise to cut part way through the sides. After cutting the sides he sawed it apart on the band saw. Put the piece in the vise and indicated off the small flat cut on the side and finished the whole side to match. Flipped it and did the other side and cut the cam groove. Seems easy to me. :P
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Just a little work to finish the bolt extractor.
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Dennis, you can assure Brian that the gun will fire, as long as you can get ammo. For me personally, I have not posted videos because I\'m so dog gone paranoid. (I actually keep a notarized copy of the letter I got from the ATF with the gun at all times) Never know who\'s watching those You Tube Videos. That\'s just me. There\'s always some tweaking to do. When that first round is fired you\'ll giggle like a school girl. Don\'t worry Brian, It\'ll be a shooter. Keep up the excellent work.
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[quote name=\"sconigatman\"]Dennis, you can assure Brian that the gun will fire, as long as you can get ammo. For me personally, I have not posted videos because I\'m so dog gone paranoid. (I actually keep a notarized copy of the letter I got from the ATF with the gun at all times) Never know who\'s watching those You Tube Videos. That\'s just me. There\'s always some tweaking to do. When that first round is fired you\'ll giggle like a school girl. Don\'t worry Brian, It\'ll be a shooter. Keep up the excellent work.[/quote]
Thanks Sconigatman. I needed those words of encouragement. I built the D&E version and never even put firing pins in it. I talked with a lot of guys who built it and only a few ever got it to fire at all and then it just self destructs. I decided it would be easier to build the RGG than rework everything on the D&E. That said, it is a beautiful model
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[quote name=\"drhardin\"]
[quote name=\"sconigatman\"]Dennis, you can assure Brian that the gun will fire, as long as you can get ammo. For me personally, I have not posted videos because I\'m so dog gone paranoid. (I actually keep a notarized copy of the letter I got from the ATF with the gun at all times) Never know who\'s watching those You Tube Videos. That\'s just me. There\'s always some tweaking to do. When that first round is fired you\'ll giggle like a school girl. Don\'t worry Brian, It\'ll be a shooter. Keep up the excellent work.[/quote]
Thanks Sconigatman. I needed those words of encouragement. I built the D&E version and never even put firing pins in it. I talked with a lot of guys who built it and only a few ever got it to fire at all and then it just self destructs. I decided it would be easier to build the RGG than rework everything on the D&E. That said, it is a beautiful model[/quote]
Have you seen the many posts here on the D&E gun? A few have came up with changes and got theirs to fire pretty well.
I have a D&E about 80% done when I learned of the firing problems. I have often wondered if the RG&G internal design could be tweaked to fit in a D&E housing. That would seem to give the best of both worlds, looks and function.
I moved south about a year ago and am still getting my workshop established. I sold my big machines prior to the move, long distance moving not being practical. I am on the home stretch getting the shop re established and look forward to resuming work on the gattling.
George
(Anderson SC)
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Hi Sparky_NY_SC
I was will into my build when I started to learn of the problems with the D&E design. The biggest of which is the little fixed extractor that will break off if you look at it to hard and the small end of the bolt. I did talk to a guy named Tex at the model engineering show who redesigned the bolt with a moveable extractor and made the bolts out of I think 1144. He got the gun to work fairly well but after a few hundred rounds the end of the bolt began to mushroom and the gun would jam. I think you could redesign it to work but you would have to increase the bolt diameter which means a larger bolt carrier which means a larger housing, etc. I think you get the picture.
I want to say that I met Doug and talked with him a number of times both at shows and on the phone. He was a great guy. I think he designed a beautiful scale model and designed it so a hobby guy could build it with minimum tools. He was always willing to help. I did call he shortly before he passed and he even was willing to talk with me and answer questions even though he was bedfast. I didn\'t know he was that ill when I called and I was certainly impressed.
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Hi All !
In case it was not obvious we are building two guns at once. Twice the fun ! :lol:
Brian
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[quote name=\"sconigatman\"]Dennis, you can assure Brian that the gun will fire, as long as you can get ammo. For me personally, I have not posted videos because I\'m so dog gone paranoid. (I actually keep a notarized copy of the letter I got from the ATF with the gun at all times) Never know who\'s watching those You Tube Videos. That\'s just me. There\'s always some tweaking to do. When that first round is fired you\'ll giggle like a school girl. Don\'t worry Brian, It\'ll be a shooter. Keep up the excellent work.[/quote]
I agree completely.
Brian
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Nice work and Thanks for sharing what you are doing.
Later 42rocker
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It’s time to go back to the cocking ring.
We started out making a two piece ring but after turning the two blanks we decided to scrap that and make a one piece ring. Additionally, we decided to use the shoulder design as shown by Cutter in his thread in Machining – New Builds. This eliminates the square holed sleeve in the recoil plate and makes for an easier cocking switch.
Had to get the rotary table on the mill and indicated in. Made another set of soft jaws for the ring blank and indicated the blank to verify everything. We made drawings showing the location of the cuts. In addition, Brian prints full size transparencies which are really great for checking things prior to cutting. We would blue it all and make a skim cut and check the angles before making the final cut. We cut the top slot in the ring on the lathe. The other two slots were cut on the mill using the rotary table. We did have to grind the shank on the end mills smaller to get into the upper slots.
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More pictures making the cocking ring.
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Nice setup Thanks for sharing that.
Later 42rocker
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[quote name=\"42rocker\"]Nice setup Thanks for sharing that.
Later 42rocker[/quote]
Hope you find it useful. How is your build doing? I haven\'t notice any progress posts lately.
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[quote name=\"42rocker\"]Nice setup Thanks for sharing that.
Later 42rocker[/quote]
Hi !
Thanks for all the nice replies and comments and hope your build is progressing !
Brian
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Several other things had to be worked on. A few of us in our group got together tonight and talked. I\'m going to work on some of the bolt parts on Sat. I hope.
Thanks for sharing all of this in your build thread.
Later 42rocker
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We sure will be glad to get these cocking rings finished. Need to cut the ramp angles, cut them apart, finished both ends to the final length and the height of the added step for the cocking switch.
We used a 30 degree cutter to cut the outside ramp angle and a 15 degree cutter to cut the inside ramp angle. It appears that as long as the bolt clears the ramp the actual angle is not important. The flats will take the recoil from the bolt plug.
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Brian continues to plow ahead after I go home for the night. He drilled and taped the holes in the rear cam. We are using 4-40 rather than 2-56 screws. Tapped the mounting holes in the cocking switch and mounted it on the recoil plate. Sharpened the endmills I dull. Match drilled and reamed the recoil plate hole for the cocking switch.
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Great job. I like the idea of coming in from the side for the 30 degree cut on the cocking ring.
Looking good.
I worked a few minutes on cutting material for bolts last night and also worked on finishing my house. Someday.
Later 42rocker
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great job on the cocking ring
Markus
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While I was finishing the final clean up on the cocking ring Brian whipped out the cocking switch. We decided not to use the square sleeve in the back plate and to make the cocking switch from a round blank as shown in the pictures.
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While I got started on the rail supports Brian drew the rear plate and set up the Tormach to cut it. It will take eight cutters to mill, drill and ream the rear plate.
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had a delay of game yesterday. I happened on a Tormach 770 on Craiglist 15 miles from Brian\'s house. We rode over to look at it and it is now sitting in my garage waiting to be cleaned and for a new base so it can get moved to the basement. It will take some cleaning as the previous owner was not into that. He even managed to put an ink pen in the spindle and spin it up spraying blue ink all over the front of the mill and the monitor. he must have thought it look nice as he just left it that way. A little elbow grease and denatured alcohol cleaned up the door without damage to the paint. I don\'t know about the monitor yet.
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So many \"way to go!\". Way to go on the Tormach 770. Hope you get everything setup the way that you want to. The cocking ring, and cocking switch all look great. What the heck almost everything you two have been doing looks great to me.
Way To Go!!
Can\'t wait to see more.
Later 42rocker
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[quote name=\"42rocker\"]So many \"way to go!\". Way to go on the Tormach 770. Hope you get everything setup the way that you want to. The cocking ring, and cocking switch all look great. What the heck almost everything you two have been doing looks great to me.
Way To Go!!
Can\'t wait to see more.
Later 42rocker[/quote]
Thanks for the nice comments ! They are appreciated !!
Brian
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Remember my comments and $5.00 will almost get you a cup of coffee almost anywhere.
Enjoy the build. I\'m enjoying some time behind my lathe working on my bolts.
Later 42rocker
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We have taken a sabbatical from gun building to take in the NAMES show, do some cleaning on the Tormach and do other things that some people think are more important. Go figure? This will give me a chance to get caught up on posting as I am behind.
Brian finished the rear plate and used a dowel pin in the bolt extractor hole to verify that the cocking switch lined up with the rear plate and cocking ring plate.
We then mounted the rail supports to the casing. Had to drill and tap the holes. We decided to go with four instead of two. After they were mounted we set it up on 1-2-3 blocks to verify that they were level.
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After the side supports were attached and verified we decided to put a bushing in the rear plate for the center shaft and then set up to drill, mill, and ream the hole for the crank shaft through the side supports and casing.
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Used an end mill to start and cut the hole in the casing. Then did the other side and reamed it for the shaft. We then started on the gear block.
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We have been doing some work on the gun. Brian never really quit so i have a lot more posting to do. The forum has been really quite and i am sure that is because of the warm weather and other things to do this time of year. I made the side rails and after all of the milling and cutting Brian said we needed to square them up. We used ground stock but that doesn\'t mean the edges are square with the sides so the final step was to insure the two mounting surfaces were true. We clamped them together as a pair and milled the front and back all in the same set up. You can see in the third picture how the edge on the outside rail was out of square.
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The web site still has a problem. It is difficult to get the posts completed but i will keep trying. Brian made a lot of parts during our down time. He made the complete crank assembly, the bolt extractor and the cocking switch knob.
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With the side rails complete we were ready to do an initial test assembly. :D However we soon discovered we had forgot to mill the slot in the main shaft so it was back to the mill.
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The initial assembly was at best a little frustrating but we got very good at doing it after thirty or forty times trying to discover what was happening inside. We were thinking we needed to make the casing out of clear Plexiglas to make it possible to debug this thing.
The first thing we discovered was that our cocking switch worked just fine. We made our cocking switch as a separate piece and milled the slot straight through rather than on the same radius as the cocking ring. We were not sure if the button head screw would bind. It didn’t! :D Making the cocking switch this way was much easier and eliminated the need for the square bushing. This was a combination of Cutter\'s design with Brian\'s modification
We next found that in the safe position the button head screw on the hammer was hitting the leading edge of the cocking ring. To correct this we just milled a small ramp on the leading edge of the cocking ring that was .015†at the front edge tapered to .000†over a length of approximately .125â€.
The gun rotated very smooth with a single bolt in both the safe and fire positions. As we added bolts it became clear that we had way too much firing pin spring pressure. So we decided to put bolt 1 and 6 in the gun and head to the firing range. I just need to prove to Brian that it will shoot so I don\'t have to leave the country.
Since we do not have the magazine or top cover done we fed the rounds by hand. Bolt one fire once and misfired every other time. It was obvious that the firing pin was to short and not hitting far enough into the rim. Bolt six fired 12 rounds without a misfire. All of the rounds ejected without fail including the misfires. Overall we are very pleased with the initial test firing.
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I noticed in the above pictures that you don\'t have any jam nuts on your shaft ends. With my gun, the head space would change while firing it without the jam nuts tightened down good. This would add to any frustration that was already happening.
bruski
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Great work and great write up. I really need to get working on mine again.
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Hi All,
We are using nylok nuts at the barrel end on the main shaft. Not easy to see in the picture. Thanks for the reply and tip concerning a possible issue. Final assembly will be all nyloks when the gun is finished.
Brian
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Here are some pictures of the changes we made to correct some of our problems.
As I said, we used Cutter\'s hammer design but failed to use shorter firing pin springs so we had way to much spring pressure when multiple hammers were being pulled back by the cocking ring. So we just turned the end of the hammer to match what it would be like using the screw design. This corrected that problem.
We were also having problems with the button head screw on the hammer tagging on the leading edge of the cocking ring in the decocked position. This seemed to be just way to critical of an adjustment so we milled a small ramp on the leading edge of the cocking ring as shown below.
We have also determined that the .020 protrusion length of the firing pins was not enough. We attempted to solve this by milling .004 off of the bolt face and resetting the head space but the firing pin was still to short. We remade one pin with .028 protrusion which works but comparing the impact of the firing pin to a commercially made gun shows that we are still light. More testing next week.
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Did some more tweaking and finally seem to have it shooting reliably. We don\'t have the top cover or clip finished so we loaded bullets by hand in the barrels and it fires and ejects them all. We had a couple of misfires before we made the firing pins longer and it ejects the misfires as well. We are very pleased at this point. The plans leave a lot to be desired but with a good bit of head scratching and frustration it can be figured out. Oh yea, and with a lot of help from people on this forum. If we can get it to load as nice as it shoots I will be HAPPY! :D :lol: :P :twisted:
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GREAT JOB GUYS !
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Thanks, and thanks for all your help and all the great information you posted over the years.
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Double thanks to Jerry and all that have helped ! We are not done yet , but getting close. :) To all that have finished and are in progress, the good news is :
No need to sign up to LUMOSITY to strengthen our brains after figuring out these plans ! :mrgreen:
Brian
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It’s time to make the top cover. We purchsed some DOM tube to make the top cover. It looked good but when we cut it, it was out of round and twisted, so Brian was elated to be able to bore out yet another piece of round 1144 stock into tube. We cut it to length and silver soldered the side plates on before cutting it in half. We drilled and tapped the side plates to the cover to hold them in place doing soldering. The pieced twisted a little when heated so we had to take .010 cut to get the top of the side plates parallel. Hopefully we will remember to compensate for this when we make the baseplate for the stick magazine. We are not going to make the rotary mag.
Since we made the breech casing wall .187 instead of .063 we will have to take the gun apart yet one more time to turn the front .375 of the casing down to .063 for the top cover. When you make changes it always comes back to get you, kind of like Cutter’s “smidgens of doubtâ€. Oh how I can relate to that.
Finally, let me mention that when you are surface grinding the firing pins you should remember to turn on the magnetic chuck before grinding or the results will not be good. I won’t elaborate, just trust me on this. :o :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops: :oops:
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What length protrusion for the firing pins did you find works?
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Hi,
We were about .035 past the bolt face. The the best way to determine length with all the variables involved is to have the firing pin length so it clears the bottom of port depth by about .003 to .005 thousands. Other wise when dry firing the pin hits were the bullet case rests and will damage that surface. We cut the pins a little to long and found out the hard way and worked backwards to establish the longest pin length with out hitting. Hope this helps you !
Brian
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Thanks for the response. I had the solder fail during test firing with a bolt made per the plans. It pushed the pin back about 3/8\" causing the hammer to stick out and jam the gun. After that I decided to start over on the bolts and make them one piece like Cutter\'s. I never liked the solder method to begin with I should of just made them one piece to start with. I\'m finally back to almost test firing again and all that I have left is the firing pins. This info will help a lot getting mine going.
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Another thing we did was to depth mike all the barrels after porting to make sure the port depth was the same on ALL barrels. You can check firing pin stick out with bolt assembled and pushing firing pin forward with bolt held in v-block and use height gauge to check stick out from bolt face. ( bolt vertical on surface plate )
Since head space is \" zero \" you will get accurate results on assembly.
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As we got down to the final few pieces I was feeling really good about our build. Man did that change.
The magazine base assembly or what I call the top cover was one squirrelly piece. As I said earlier, we
scrapped the tubing and turn our own cylinders from 1144sp. That even proved to twist and close up
when we cut the holes and did the soldering as shown below. The solder joints also popped from the
stress in the piece. I was sure they would have held as we used Brownells high force high temp silver
solder but they still broke loose. Brian decided to remake his from a single piece. He took a 5.25
diameter solid round bored and turned it as shown and then milled the side plates, the hole and slot.
Finally he bored the ID to size. This worked much better.
[attachment=9776:DSC01985-id=2193.JPG]
[attachment=9777:DSC02044-id=2192.JPG]
[attachment=9778:PIC 72-id=2189.JPG]
[attachment=9779:PIC 74-id=2188.JPG]
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Brian whipped out the elevating ball socket. We are doing the non oscillating version and he made it to
bolt on rather than more soldering. He used a boring head to turn the radius and then bored and milled
the pocket as shown. Since I wasn\'t there when he did it I assume he just whipped it out. It is always
easy when someone else does the work. i have to Thank Brian for doing an awful lot of work that I was
not party to.
[attachment=9780:PIC 68-id=2197.JPG]
[attachment=9781:PIC69-id=2195.JPG]
[attachment=9782:PIC70-id=2194.JPG]
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Next we made the stick magazine base plate.
[attachment=9783:DSC02000-id=2206.JPG]
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Finally we made the hinge and took everything apart to drill the rails and we were ready to go or so we thought.
[attachment=9784:DSC02003-id=2207.JPG]
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So now we put things together and everything goes south. The first thing that doesn\'t fit is the base plate does not go completely down because the barrel plate protrudes into the area where the base plate fits. I am thinking we did something wrong but after checking everything we look at the 3d drawing and it shows the barrel plate protruding into the opening in the top cover for the base plate. Below are to pictures showing the problem and a very small snippet of the 3d view. Since there is no way two pieces can occupy the same space we had to take the gun completely apart yet again and modify the hinge and casing to move the top cover back so the barrel plate was clear of the opening. :???:: :oops: :cry: :cry:
[attachment=9786:pic2-id=2214.jpg]
[attachment=9785:GATLING GUN FINAL ASSEMBLY VIEW 18-id=2213.bmp]
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Since nothing every seems to fit when made to the plans we decided to make a short 3 inch test stick mag to see how things were going to work.
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This is what I did to solve the ejection problem.
Putting the contact point at 48° , kicks out the misfires.
Empty casings usually just fall out. Also on the left edge
of the .281 channel, a .02/.03 radius or chamfer.
And the beat goes on
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I agree with you that the magazine base plate will hit the barrel plate. The barrel plate is 2.75\" in diameter. The I.D. of the magazine base assembly is 3\" in diameter. That leaves .125\" clearance on a side. Add that distance to the .125\" thickness of the magazine base assembly wall thickness and the .375\" of its plate height and that comes out to .625\". The depth of the part on the drawing of the base plate is .700\", thereby hitting the barrel plate by .075\". Is that, what is happening?
Don
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Hi !
The barrel plate protrudes into the area where the magazine block fits. ( towards the rear of the gun ) It shows in our picture and in the assembly 3d views. This prevents the cover from closing and blocks the slot where the bullet drops into the bolt carrier by at least 1/16\". Best we can figure all to the print and CD views as being correct, which of course it is not.
We checked everything as to print without finding an error so we moved everything per the posts.
Clear as mud, right ! :roll:
Brian
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Thanks Cutter for the info on the ejector problem. For those who may not understand what we ran into I finally got a picture to show the bullet being held at the rear by the bolt extractor and the nose still in the barrel whilst the ejector on the underside of the top cover hits the case. What you get when you have a misfire is a dead stop with a bent bullet. See picture below. The second picture shows the bent case.
Did you keep your ejector the same shape and just move it up 6 degrees or did you change the shape as well?
We also worked today to eliminate misfires and after seeing your post over on the Gunsmithing - Six Shooter thread we added bushings to increase the firing pin force. Brian added a .063\" bushing on his and I jumped up to .080\". The trade off is cranking force required to crank the gun verses the force the firing pins hits with. Adding the .080 is about all we can do without undue stress on the rest of the gun but both the .063 and the .080 seem to eliminate the misfires.
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Did you guys shape your firing pin protrusion end at all?
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D & B
At 48° the nose clears the barrel plate.
After that I\'m not much help, as I use a drum magazine with a different adapter.
The gun should rotate freely when not cocked. When cocked, only a smooth progression of spring compression.
The alignment and clearance between the bolt/shear screw and cocking ring slot is somewhat critical.
Too much misalignment will cause bolt drag in the carrier.
Lookin Good :!:
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[quote name=\"Bzrkr\"]Did you guys shape your firing pin protrusion end at all?[/quote]
Elaborate , not following what you mean.
Thanks !
Brian
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Most firing pins are rounded on the end or shaped in some way. I shaped the protrusion end like a blunt chisel or a \" I \" shape like .03 wide . I got the idea from my ruger 22 pistol\'s firing pin. It focuses the force of the firing pin on a smaller surface area.
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I don\'t think that a shaped firing pin will work with a round rotating firing pin. Some guys made there firing pins so they would not be able to rotate in the bolt, and then shaped the end of the pin to a chisel point.
bruski
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Your right Bruski i forgot that part. The heads of my firing pins needed a flat for clearing the inside diamter of the bolt. They can\'t rotate inside the bolt so the chisel end is always hitting the rim.
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These plans are just the gift that keeps on giving. The next problem we ran into when we tried our test magazine was the bullet slot was too short and the bullets would bind at the front of the mag base. We could not move the slot in the magazine back or the rim would fall on top of the extractor so we had to take .15 off the front of the slot in the mag base. This cut that .040 bridge down to .025 but the bullet would now fall through the mag base into the bolt carrier. Since we originally drilled the nose of the mag base we had to grind a cutter to plunge down the slot.
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Making the short test mag convinced us that hogging a key way cutter the length of the mag was a good way to break the cutter so we decided to do a two piece mag and cut the rim slot with a slitting saw.
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I like the idea of the 2 piece mag. I\'m working on the oscillator and I\'ve had to make changes because of the drawings. That, and screwing it all together to avoid the soldering. I\'ve ruined too many parts trying to solder them.
Don
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I wonder if a 3 piece mag would work, to avoid a slotting cutter all together? Two \"L\" shaped pieces and a spacer between them.
Don
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That would work,too. A little less stock to hold on to and keep straight, but workable.
Brian
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Finally got back to the gun and started the tripod. We needed to design a yoke to fit the larger casing and make it more proportional to our gun. Due to weight we decided to make the tripod out of aluminum. The yoke is made from 1.5\" stock. We rough cut it on the bandsaw, bolted it to a jig plate and cut it on the Tormach. We then cut the top and bottom to insure they were flat in case the piece warped during milling.
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We then drilled and bored for the bolt, bushing and bearing. We will be adding top covers and hinges as separate pieces.
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In the video, are you conventional cutting on the CNC with a left hand cutter?
Don
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Hi Don,
We are actually climb cutting which is more the norm for cnc machines. The reason is climb milling gives a nicer finish and since cnc mills have ball screws you can climb mill without the danger of the endmill grabbing the work. I often made a very light finish cut on my manual mill climb milling.
Dennis
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Hi,
We are climb cutting. For some reason the video makes it look like the cutter is going backwards. Saw the same thing you did. :?
Brian
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I looked at the video again and see now why you ask the question. It does look like it is turning backward. :oops:
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Brian decided to make a wood pattern to get the correct proportions for the rest of the tripod. We then made the yoke mounting plate. We laid it out, drilled the center hole and then put double sided tape on the chuck jaw face and used a live center to hold the piece against the tape to turn the OD.
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The leg support was rough sawed on the band saw with a center hole drilled for bolting to a jig plate with a dowel pin hole to hold the part in alignment. The outside was then milled on the Tormach.
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We decided to make our legs fixed rather than swiveling so we set up and bored the leg support. Next we drilled and tapped the holes and inserted Heli-Coil thread inserts into the aluminum and threaded studs. The final operation was to fly cut the bevel.
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Looking good. Can\'t wait to see the finished product.
Don
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We decided to make tapered aluminum legs for the tripod. We cut blanks, turned, bored and reamed the end that goes into the leg support. We then turned the taper on the CNC lathe.
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As you may have noticed in the previous picture the bottom of the legs don\'t match the bench top so we are going to mill them at an angle and put swivels on the legs. Added a large washer for looks.
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Very nice. That should compliment the gun very nicely.
Don
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I hope you can get these pictures back up.
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I dont have pics to this thread.... If anyone does, let me know, and I will put them up... I pm\'ed the OP and he never responded.
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Might have a few. I\'ll check after work tonight.
Later 42rocker