I got robbed

So, my house was broken into while I was at work.  Needless to say in the past few weeks I've gone overboard on home security and surveillance.  A raccoon can't walk across my property now without me getting an alert on my phone, and it would take a battering ram to get through my doors.  Should have done all that years ago, but hindsight and all that.

Anyway, to the point of this post.  Among other things, one of my guns was stolen.  Although there's basically a zero percent chance I'll ever see it again, I figured I should post it anyway in case anyone ever does come across it.  It was a scratch built 1911.  It was the first scratch built gun I ever made.  All the small parts are from a Sarco kit, and the frame, slide, and barrel were all made by me.  It's a straight blowback in 22LR, and the frame and slide are aluminum.  The frame was made in two pieces as left/right halves.  Some of the pins were replaced with screws, and I added in some additional screws to hold the halves together.

Unfortunately, because it's a scratch build there are no serial numbers or brand marks on it.  The only thing really distinctive about it is the two piece frame and it's all aluminum construction.  I barely even have any pictures of it.  These are the only two pictures I have of the finished product: 

Just getting a grip on things

A seemingly minor, but very important part of my 1911-ish project are the grips.  It's the grips that will hold the 3D printed lower onto the machined upper frame.  As such, they needed to be made out of something more substantial than plastic, so I made them out of aluminum.  I had trouble deciding on what kind of pattern I wanted, so I decided to stick with the classic double diamond.  Tedious to draw on my old slow machine, but it turned out well.  I spaced the checkering far enough apart so that most of it could be reached with a 1/16" ball mill, then basically did a constant stepover across the whole thing with the cutter stepping over .005" at a time.

Unlike regular 1911 grips which are just sort of there, these ones are machined to as tight a tolerance as I can reasonably hold so that they locate accurately and repeatable on the grip screw bushings.  All the critical tolerance features were machined in one setup on the back side, so to machine the top side instead of using a fancy jig or fixture, I stole an idea from work and bolted them to a subplate.  I have a plate with 1/4" holes spaced every 1/2" so that for the 2nd side operations, I can simply bolt the block of aluminum down with 1/4" bolts.  I added some tabs to my CAD file for the bolt hole bosses to attach to.  Here's how it looked fresh off the machine:

The leftover tabs are only .050" thick, and it was quick work to trim them off and file the edges flat:

Here's a closeup of the checkering. The diamonds are spaced .100" peak to peak, and each diamond has a .019"x.040" flat at the top so that it's textured without feeling sharp.

Here's how it looks in Solidworks.  Everything is spaced as far apart as it is because I planned from the get go to cut it with a 1/16" ball end mill, and there are no fillets drawn at the bottom of the checker diamonds though I knew they would end up filleted anyway because of the cutter radius.  The gap between the diamonds is just enough so that the tip of the ball mill hits the bottom surface.  The finish machined part doesn't exactly match the CAD drawing because of that, but with my old slow computer it was easier to let the cutter do the work instead of trying to draw exactly what I wanted.

I'll keep this brief

I need a case for the Uzi.  Most normal people would just go out and get a normal gun case.  I am not normal(which I will freely admit to anyone who asks).  Since this is a Uzi, I decided it needed more than a plain, boring gun case.  Back when the Secret Service used Uzis, they carried them in briefcases, so I decided that mine should have a briefcase too.  $25 later on e-bay, and I had myself a nice, used briefcase.  It's not a quickly deployable hardshell Samsonite like the SS used, but I like the leather look better(and I shouldn't have to say this, but just to be clear it is NOT an operational briefcase, just a storage case).  For padding, I used Harbor Freight foam floor mats.  Since thick EVA foam like this is a pain to cut with a blade, I used my electric turkey carving knife.  It made quick work of things.  It's made to securely hold the gun, two mags, the barrel and shroud, and a mag loader that I 3D printed.

Ordinary looking nondescript briefcase:

Uzi all safe and secure inside:

Done and done.

Well, I got my Uzi done.  After baking, I hit everything very lightly with 0000 steel wool to make it slightly less flat and feel a bit smoother, then soaked it in CLP.  I way over oiled it so the CLP could soak in between all the spot welded sheetmetal bits. The only new piece that I haven't shown before is the barrel shroud.  I don't like the anteater look that the bare 16" barrels have, and fake suppressors aren't my thing, so a US Barrel Shrouds vented barrel shroud was just the ticket.  It's a very nicely made part and it simply replaces the barrel nut on the front of the receiver.  Since I built this as a "pistol" receiver, if I ever get a 10.5" barrel for it I can remove the stock and use the original barrel nut for the short barrel. Anyway, here it is set up as a carbine.

I used Testors model paint for the safety selector.  Because the black Gun Kote is very solvent resistant, I could paint the red and white in kind of sloppy, then use a paper towel damp with mineral spirits to wipe off the excess.  Since the safety selector won't go all the way forward, I just left the FA lettering black.

The color is a bit off in the other pics because of the lighting, but this one is a pretty accurate representation of it's true color.

I need a new filing system.

Less words, more pictures this time.  Every custom 1911 build needs a lot of hand fitting to make it all work, and this one is certainly no exception.  This one will probably take more than most, partly because I left extra stock in a few spots so that I could hand fit critical areas, partly because my Sarco parts kit doesn't include the wold's highest quality parts, and mostly because of how I chose to machine it.  Most of the finish work was done with a 1/8" ball end mill because my smaller end mills have limited reach.  This left me with radiused corners in areas where there shouldn't be radii.  So, out come the files...

Also, I learned that if you take very close up pictures of small objects, machine marks tend to look terrible when blown up to full screen.  Anyway, the first place to get attention was the mag well.   I got what I could with a 1/16" end mill, but had to finish most of it with the 1/8", so I had to file the corners out to get magazine to slide freely.

The next bit to fit was the safety lever.  It was very close to dropping right in, but not quite.  This time, I removed material from the back side of the safety.  Given a choice, it's always better to remove material from an easily replaceable part instead of something hard to replace like the frame.

Then I had to make the hammer and sear fit.  Miraculously, the pin holes lined up, but like the magazine, these parts didn't fit because of the radius left in the corners.  It's an awkward spot to file with standard shaped files, so I used my riffler files.  If you don't have a set of riffler files, you should get one.  They're like needle files, but with curved tips that make areas like this much easier to get into.

Next up is the ejector.  It was very close to fitting too, but not quite.  There were burrs on the ejector legs and I probably could have pressed it in, but it never would have come out again.  Some light cleanup is all it took to get it it fit.

Another handy tip for when you have to work on small parts.  Get yourself a ring clamp.  They're cheap and they're great for holding small things securely while you work on them.

On to the grip section.  I printed my "final" version in black, using 100% infill and a .08mm(.003") layer height.  It didn't take much fitting at all to get the parts in.  The one problem I did have is that the trigger bow it's self was to narrow for the magazine to slide through(did I mention that these are all pretty cheap parts?).  I tweaked it out just lightly and now everything works like it should.

With that done, I could test fit all the bits I have fitted so far.

I can't decide what pattern I want for my grips get, so I printed a temporary blank set for now.  Eventually they'll be made from aluminum to hold the upper and lower sections together.  I also decided that I'd run with this 3D printed thing a bit more and use it for the grip safety too.  I found a file online for a beavertail safety and printed it out.  The file isn't perfect and I'll have to rework it a bit so that it functions the way it should, but this one works as a proof of concept.

A Gripping Development

The last piece of the Uzi puzzle is the grips.  All of the grips that came with my parts kit were pretty beat up, and I didn't want to put well used grips on my practically new gun.  You'll remember a while back, I 3D scanned and printed the front grips because I couldn't find new ones for a price I wanted to pay.  After a few more tweaks I reprinted them in black to use as my final parts.  I also hit them with scotch-brite to knock just a little bit of the shine off. I'm still not completely satisfied with the right grip and may rescan and reprint when I have the time/motivation.

The pistol grips are a different matter though, and are easy to find.  I got a pair of genuine IMI grips still in the package from 1965.  According to the tag, these were from the German market.  I still find it incredibly ironic that the Germans of all people adopted a Jewish weapon for their defense forced.

The most exciting thing to happen in a long time...

It's a very exciting day here in Jeff's basement.  This day has been a long time coming, and days like this don't happen often.  What's so special about this day you ask?  Well, I'll tell you.  It's new cardboard on the workbench day!  Every now and then, the old cardboard gets dirty and chewed up enough that it needs to be replaced, and that day is today.  Oh, and I finished machining my 1911-ish upper frame too.

These are very tedious guns to machine in general, and especially so on a mill without a tool changer.  Practically every hole on the thing is a different size so there are a lot of tools needed for single operations.  The first operation from my last post was from the top down.  The second operation was all the machining on the right side.  I chose to leave as much of the bottom solid as I could to help keep as much rigidity in the part as I could.  The boss that I left on the front of the dust cover gives that thin area a bit more support while machining, and gives the vice something solid to clamp against.

The third operation was all the features that needed to be done on the left side, and it's really starting to look like something now.

Just one setup left, machining all the extra material off the bottom.  I made the dust cover extra long so that I can cut the boss off the front, and trim the dust cover to match my slide just how I want it.  Anyway straight to the money shots: