Scratch made single action revolver

[4v50 Gary]

Here's the first of a series of videos of a woman who makes her own single action revolver. BTW, her name means armouress or weapon makeress.

https://youtu.be/80wm9GY7IwI

 

[mr wack]

Wow, just watched the whole series,,, amazing.
she mentions she isn't a barrel maker or a gunsmith,,, well she's got it going on right there,
Awesome thanks for posting I enjoyed it ..

 

[Jim K]

Very interesting. The tricky part is getting the alignment right for the chambers, locking slots and cylinder ratchet. Once the machines are set up to do that, everything else is pretty straight machining.

BTW, I don't think "waffenschmiedin" is her name; it just means "weaponsmith" with the "in" suffix indicating the feminine gender. The "x" is for her name - she evidently wants to remain anonymous. IIRC, the more common term for "gunsmith" is "büchsenmacher" which literally means "rifle maker."

Jim

 

[rcmodel]

That was simply the most amazing You-Tube series I have ever seen!!

If I was a young man and single again, I would track her down and marry her.

Just to get access to her equipment.

No, not that.
(Her shorts probably have steel shavings in them anyway.)

Seriously though, she demonstrated machining methods used to make those parts on simple machinery I always wondered how they did back in the old days.

Simply Amazing!!!

THANKS VERY MUCH for posting that!!!

rc

 

[VINTAGE-SLOTCARS]

Wow, I thought a woman who owned guns was amazing, but can make one !!!!

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

Seriously though, she demonstrated machining methods used to make those parts on simple machinery I always wondered how they did back in the old days.

Howdy

Not to belittle this extremely talented woman's skills, but that is not quite exactly how they did it 'back in the old days'.

Frames were not hogged out of one large block of steel. They were first hammer forged to what we call today near net shape. After hammer forging, the part had the rough shape of the finished part. This was more efficient than machining so much metal away from a large rectangular block.

But hammer forges are huge pieces of equipment, and no one is going to have one in a modern machine shop, so she did the next best thing by machining away all of the metal that did not look like a SAA frame.

Also, 'back in the old days' parts were mass produced, rather than being made one at a time as she is doing. Mass producing parts introduced efficiencies into the manufacturing process.

To facilitate mass production of parts, some pieces of equipment were designed to do one operation only. Many of these machines were pattern following machines. A master pattern part was clamped onto the machine, then the operator manipulated handles on a pantograph so the cutter would duplicate the shape of the master pattern. Operators of these machines did not have to be highly skilled machinists, they only needed to know how to operate the machine. Parts would be made by moving them progressively from one machine to the next until the lot of parts were completed.

But I say again, this young lady is an extremely talented machinist and I am very impressed with what she produced.

I did get a kick out of her saying she did not like the 'straight' trigger from the original Colt she used so she made an offset trigger to keep the trigger centered in the frame. If you look at the trigger of a Colt or Italian replica, they are always offset to one side.

 

[CraigC]

Amazing!

 

[4v50 Gary]

Driftwood Johnson is right. Parts were machined from forgings and not from billets. The superiority of forged billets is that the grain is more aligned. Helping the production process were jigs that held the workpiece for the machining operations. Different milling machines and shapers were dedicated to perform different tasks and the part moved from station to station until it was finished (including bluing and color case hardening). This saved time in having to set up a machine and adjust it so that it can make that one part. Anyone who has operated a mill or a lathe knows it takes time to set the machine up before you can do the actual machine operation.

(BTW, when I was in school, I'd show up for night machine one hour early just to set up a mill and a lathe for myself. I'd then wait for the dayshift class to end and for the night class machine teacher to show up before I could start cutting. This saved me one hour of set up time and gave me more machine time.)

The parts were then sent to the assembly department and the assemblers put them together, timed them. Final step was inspection and packaging.

Everyone should visit the S&W or Remington factory. Both offered free factory tours and see the process in which a firearm is made. Ruger (and PineTree Casting) has a great tour, but it's open only to attendees of their armourer school). Older machinery may be seen at Springfield Armory and at Harper's Ferry.

BTW, I never understood why the Blanchard Lathe required such a huge pattern for stock making. It became clear when we took stock duplicating class at school. It takes only pressure from a pencil to move a pattern .0001" and thereby throw off the routing on the blank. The heftier pattern is less susceptible to external pressure.

Waffenschmiedin deserves a lot of credit for her work. It takes a lot of set up, skill and knoweldge before what sees to be a simple operation can be performed. I wish her well in all her endeavors. I hope she is a member of the American Custom Pistol Maker Guild. She is very worthy of it.

 

[mr wack]

Indeed,,

 

[Driftwood Johnson]

4v50 Gary:

Not to hijack this thread, but if you are ever in Vermont, you should visit the Precision Museum in Windsor Vt. It is in the old Robbins and Lawrence Armory building. Pretty much the birthplace of the mass produced firearms industry. Equipment designed there for mass producing parts was later adopted by the Springfield Armory and many other firearms producers. A couple of illustrious names who worked at Robbins and Lawrence at one time before moving onto other enterprises were Horace Smith and Benjamin Tyler Henry. They even have Bridgeport Serial Number 1 on display, although it is much newer than most of the other pieces of equipment displayed there.

They are only open in the summer, they close down in the winter months.

https://www.americanprecision.org/2011-12-09-21-27-05#prettyPhoto

P.S. I have visited the Springfield Armory twice, S&W once, and I took the tour at Remington a number of years ago, but I do not think Remington is still conducting factory tours.

 

[Panzerschwein]

I wonder if she is cute? But what would it matter with those machining skills! Just think of the gun parts she could make you!!

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

Her hair looked nice in the videos. And her hands looked very feminine and well formed. But like you said what does matter if she can make gun parts. There are very few women with her skills, she may very well be the only one.

 

[whughett]

Her hair looked nice in the videos. And her hands looked very feminine and well formed. But like you said what does matter if she can make gun parts. There are very few women with her skills, she may very well be the only one.

Nothing about nothing. she is beyond cute she's pretty, real pretty, take home to meet mommy pretty. Now with all the chauvinistic crap done, not being a machinist so having no preconceived ideas about how it's done, I sat astounded through the whole series on the skill and craftsmanship needed to do that in a home work shop on machines less than top of the line. Don't know squat on milling machines but don't think Grizzles are at the top of the heap.

Some of the techniques she used could only be gained through a lot if experence or some lengthy training. IMO. Then again I spent 30 years splicing telephone wires.

 

[Gaucho Gringo]

I watched all the videos and all I can say is WOW. She not only made the gun,springs,screws and grips but also made a lot of the tooling used to make the gun. Something you definitely don't acquire by watching a U-tube video or two. She did some custom gun features like line boring the cylinders. My hat is off to the lady.

 

[Panzerschwein]

Does anyone have a picture of here face or no which video of hers shows her face?

 

[whughett]

The episode that shows the wood to be used for the grips. She apears on view and speaks about selecting the material. The vid falls between 10 and 11 in the sequence.

In the last vid she is shown firing the finished piece.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Driftwood Johnson, I was not aware of that museum. It wasn't around when this child was galavanting about in New England back in the nineties. Thanks.