Danger Glitter

 I have no idea what kind of steel P38s are made from, so machining and welding are going to be guesswork.  I had the raw forging and the original frame piece XRF tested to see if I could narrow down the alloy used, and the results were fairly inconclusive.  The manganese content was in the range of 4130, spark testing looked similar to the 4140 I compared it to and when I heated and quenched a chunk, it got hard-ish so it's got some carbon in it. For lack of better options, I decided to treat it like 4130 for machining and welding.

I hate machining steel.  There is nothing I like about it.  It's not very forgiving if you do a dumb, it's hard on tooling, and worst of all, unlike aluminum the danger glitter is more than happy to stab itself into your fingers like tiny little needles.  Machining from a raw forging like this presents it's own challenge too because I know there is a lot of extra material there, but I don't know where.  After whacking off the chunk of forging that I needed, I decked the top and cut the overall width so I would have some straight, square surfaces to work with.  I decided to start my CNC work with the inside of the trigger guard because its the area with the least amount of extra material on it.  I tried to centerfind the pocket with the proper tools....and promptly broke a cutter on the first pass because it was too far off.  So I eyeballed it instead and didn't break the next one.  Since the trigger guard is a weird shape, I also decided to drill the trigger pin hole to use as my program center so that I had an easy to find reference point.

Slow and steady is how my little mill mills, and with mildly hard steel it's even slower.  My feed rate was pretty average for the material, but my depth of cuts were very shallow.  A whole day of machining got me this far:

After a whole lot more painfully slow machining the first side was done.

New Project Time: the Megatron P38

 If you've been following this blog long enough, you know that Transformers is one of my favorite things(the real Transformers, not the smashed Coke can looking Michael Bay stuff).  I also like guns(which is why most of you are here at this point), so I decided to combine the two.  While he's a plane or a tank or something now, the original G1 design for Megatron was a Walther P38.  

I don't mind toys that look like guns, but I'm generally opposed to guns that look like toys(looking at you Lego and Nintendo Light Zapper themed Glocks).  I'm making an exception here because the original Megatron design still looks very much like a real gun and is not brightly colored in a way that would attract a curious toddler(cough Lego themed Glock cough).  Here's the look I'm going for, although I probably won't add the scope(pictures stolen from the internet).

I've been thinking about this project for the better part of a decade, but never got around to it.  Another thing you know if you've been following long enough is that doing things on the cheap is kinda my thing.  At this point in history, real P38s are fairly expensive.  More than I want to spend anyway(plus, I fully intend to engrave the Decepticon logo on the slide and I'd feel bad doing it to a nice gun).  I found a CAD file, but the frame is pretty complicated.  I think I have the skill to machine one from scratch, but I definitely don't have the patience for it.  Then, as luck would have it, I happened across part of an original P38 frame for cheap.  Some WG members pointed out that there were a few raw frame forgings available too, so I picked one up.  I also picked up a P38 parts kit on sale at EGP, and we're off.  Here's what I'm starting with.  I 3D printed the missing frame chunk and now I have to machine the forging to match.

Some Lo-Point Love

I have a confession to make.  This might cost me some followers, but here goes.  I like Hi-Points.  There, I said it.  I especially like 3D printed Lo-Points because they're dirt cheap to put together from a Hi-Point parts kit.  I have a whopping $50 in this gun(and $20 of that was the magazine, and $10 was shipping).  Also, in a bit of irony, of all the 3D printed pistols I've made, this one has the nicest trigger by far.

I decided to dress up my Lo-Point a bit, because I can.  It is purely a cosmetic dress-up piece for an already printed frame. My frame is a Freeman1337 V2, it may fit original Hi-Point frames too, but I can't confirm since I don't have one to test. It fits my frame with my C9 parts kit, but YMMV. The inside of the "barrel" is sized for 3/4" copper plumbing tube(available at any hardware store). It may be fine without the copper tube installed, but the muzzle blast will probably erode the plastic fairly quickly. You may need to file the magwell to get drop free mags. The handguard piece gets glued to the bottom of the magwell and the nose piece attaches to the Pic rail on the frame with 6-32 screws so that the nose is still removable(I've heard rumors of people who actually clean their Hi-Points and it needs to be removable to get the slide off the frame).

Files are available for download here:  https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5264553

SCR-ish update

It's funny how fast time gets away from you.  It's been almost two years since I stared my 3D printed SCR style bolt action AR project.  It seemed like I was always waiting for something and time kept creeping by.  In that time I've had a lot of people asking me for the files but I didn't have them ready yet.  None of the people that I gave the files to for beta testing followed through.  I also wasn't super happy with how the safety detent worked, so I wanted to do some more work on it.  I had enough parts to put together a 2nd one of my own, but didn't have the motivation. 

I've also been shopping around for another 22lr to plink with lately.  Then I saw Bear Creek's Black Friday ad advertising their new dedicated 22lr upper.  The lightbulb went off and I bought one.  My SCR style rifle was designed to be a bolt action because there was no room for an AR recoil system, and I wasn't super keen on replicating the real SCR's setup on a 3D printed receiver.  But, 22lr ARs don't need the stock recoil system, it's self contained in the upper.  So, I printed out the receiver and buttstock parts, and pinned on my brand new Bear Creek 22lr upper.  I've gotta say, this thing is great and a lot of fun to shoot.  The bolt/barrel setup is proprietary to Bear Creek, but the mags are CMMG and RTB compatible so mags are easy to get.  The optic is a $30 Amazon red/green dot because I love cheap optics on cheap guns.  I don't have a whole lot of rounds through it yet, and so far it's functioned flawlessly.  I hope to actually get the files posted on Weapons Guild by New Years.

PSG-Done

It happened again, I fell off the face of the internet.  Life, work, and whatnot.  Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled program.

I actually finished the my PSG-1 clone, the PSG-None(because there are no actual PSG-1 parts on it), back in April.  I took the pictures, and then left them to stare at me from my desktop for the next 8 months.  To recap, this is an Apex CETME C kit and barrel on an RTG G3 receiver flat bent on the 3D printed jig I designed, PSG-1 style reinforcement rails made by me, with 3D printed PSG-1 style furniture designed and 3D printed by me.  This is a low dollar build and I've had good results with cheap optics before, so the scope is a $35 CV Life from Amazon with a 3D Printed TPU eye bellows.  I also converted a G3 UB training bolt to use with the DAG blue plastic training ammo(see details a few posts ago).  Without wasting any more words here's how it turned out(clamp on bi-pod just for pictures):

Years ago, I 3D printed a costume prop PSG-1 for a friend.  It wasn't overly accurate, but at the time I didn't really know any better.  Just for kicks here's a picture of the original print I did along with my actual rifle.

Still falling...block

Just an update on my 3D printed falling block rifle.  I had a question on how strong the 3D printed barrel threads will be, or how much force it would take to blow the barrel forward out of the receiver.  Someone much smarter than me did the math on the thread shear strength using the rough numbers for PLA, and came up with a minimum of 6,815 lbf, with "ideal" threads giving me 13,583 lbf.  That's well over the amount of force that the DAG training ammo can generate.

I think I've got my design far enough along that I can make a test print.  I'm not sure what I want to do with the top of the handguard.  I don't really want a top handguard, but it looks like it's missing something without it.  I can't make the front of the receiver smaller or longer because of the barrel nut.  I like the Space Cowboy look, so I might end up with some sort of optic mount(my Savage Axis barrel doesn't have a front sight on it anyway).  

La Llama XV esta completa

I'm done with my little Llama XV 22lr.  After test firing, I cleaned the frame and painted it.  I tried something new with the paint, and I'm not really happy with how it turned out, but it will do for now.  I tried to replicate the nickel plating on the metal as best I could.  I use Rustolium Chrome spray paint and topped it with a matte clear.  It looks ok, but it didn't seem to stick to the print well and it chips super easy.  Next time I'll try a base coat of SEM Color Coat under the top coats because that stuff sticks to prints great.  The entire frame as well as the grip panels are 3D printed and here's how it turned out.  It's easy to forget just how small the Llama XV is when you see it alone in pics, so I included my partially printed full size 1911-ish in some of the pics for scale.