Who Here Could Make A Gun?

[BullfrogKen]

rcmodel,

Anyone who's ever worked in a machine shop can manage to mill steel stock into the parts necessary. Or turn a lathe. Or work a grinder or a brake press. You just need the blueprints and the knowledge of how to work the machine.


The real trick is the final fit. If you want the gun to work when you're done, that takes more than generic machine shop skills.

 

[Lonest@r]

there is a distinction between "building" a gun on a factory frame or receiver, with purchased parts, and ....... "build a gun" from raw materials, to include machineing the frame, slide, receiver, bolt, make the springs, and drill & rifle the barrel, chop down a tree and make the stock, etc..

Bullfrog, so how did you build your gun?

 

[BullfrogKen]

With a lot of blood and elbowgrease.

Read the thread I linked. If you don't know who Jim Garthwaite is, do a search and you'll find out more about him than I can type.

 

[Claymore1500]

I have built several black powder cannons, I suppose that if I were to put a grip frame on a barrel and came up with an acceptable ignition system, I could make it work.

 

[Jim K]

I assume "from scratch" doesn't mean digging out iron ore. Given simple material, like bar steel, sheet metal and tubing, the easiest gun to make is an SMG.

The hardest part to make is the magazine, even when sheet steel of the proper thickness is available.

Jim

 

[TRX]

The simplest thing would be to copy an existing design. For minimal tool investment, I'd look at one of the "grease gun" SMG layouts for a carbine, and maybe the Ingram for a pistol.

I've spent the last few months learning more than I ever dreamed about locking lug area, ramps, materials, extraction cams, heat treat, lock times, etc. I'm sketching out a simple bolt-action rifle and the tooling it will need to make it. It's actually simpler and easier to duplicate an AK47 than to duplicate a 98 Mauser - the Mauser was designed to be made with big, dedicated equipment, while the AK was designed to be made on ordinary general-purpose machine tools.

 

[lefteyedom]

I built a 22 zip gun at the age of 12. I am sure I could do better today....

 

[mgregg85]

The only gun i've made was an air powered cannon that I built from PVC pipe.

A buddy and I did make some pretty fun little rockets with cigar tubes, model rocket engines and black powder(for the 'warhead'). We put fins on them but they weren't well balanced and didn't fly very straight. The launchers were PVC tubing open on both ends with a plywood blast shield.

 

[Macmac]

My top limits so far have been to build the brass barrel flinter pistol, from the items listed at the first post. The barrel was solid round stock brass. The wood grip was part of a plank about 16 feet long.

The ram rod was a birch dowel, and the ferruls were brass solid round stock.

I carved the lock copying a Siler lock with jewler saw baldes and files. I drilled and threaded and hardened any and all parts needing to be. That little 'fly' in the lock was hard to do, and I broke (3) 4-40 taps in a blind hole which was making life tuff.

The barrel is swamped, and the flats are filed by hand.

There are just 2 store bought parts. The trigger guard and the pommel end. Both are castings and I have no tooling to cast.

This took all my spare time for 90 days.. I spent 51 dollars on a siler lock to first copy, and then used that on another gun.

I cheated using blocks of steel as my forging skills are not nearly good enough to forge lock parts.


On edit: I forgot to mention the other 2 guns are kit guns.. Both were fairly rough. With out having done those two and more I would never have figured out the pistol.

 

[KD5NRH]

you do realize that even just a 40S&W generates in excess of 40,000 psi. hell a .22lr averages about 23,000 psi. the lowest pressure pistol cartridge I know of is the 45acp at 17,000 psi.

Where are you getting those numbers? SAAMI max for the 40S&W is 35k, and 21k for the .45ACP. .38Spl is 17k, but the fact remains that the question was "Who here can build a gun?" not "Who here can build a commercially viable firearm to current standards?" Single-shot zip guns and SMGs have been made from plumbing and they do work to the extent that they were intended to.

Would I build one that way to plink at the range? No, but if it was a choice between defending my family by throwing rocks or building and using a gun made quick-and-dirty from field-expedient materials, I'd take that chance.