Today I had my first simultaneous “Eureka!” and “Duh!” moment. I’m trying to make a sort of adjustable bipod thing for my rifle, so I cut some steel tubing. It’s going to have a steel tube as the primary structural frame of the bipod but the adjustable part that slides in and out of the steel tube will be aluminum. I’m looking at the steel tubing and thinking to myself “man, it’s going to be such a pain finding a piece of aluminum tubing that has the EXACT same inner diameter as this steel tube. I wish I had a lathe….godammit.” and then it dawns on me. Duh, I have the ability to melt aluminum now, why not just plop the steel tube into some casting sand and pour some aluminum right into the tube? Eureka! That’s perfect! So that’s what I did and it worked out pretty well.
The Mosin-Nagant M44 is unique among the Mosin variants due to the fact that it has an attached, folding bayonet. It’s a really cool feature and a clever piece of engineering, but it didn’t quite fit the aesthetic of my scout mod.
Now, there are a few quirks with the M44 barrel and drawbacks to removing the bayonet. First, the actual process of removing the bayonet “lug” (seen painted red in above pic) attached to the barrel is usually a hellish experience, requiring you to bang out rusty pins that were put in place by a 5-ton press and then given about 70 years to get comfortable there. 4 Broken chisels and 2 sledgehammers later, you’ll have to go look for a gunsmith to finish it for you, which can be pricey. Second, even if you get it off, the front steel sight is attached to it, so you lose that as well and have to find a way to put some aftermarket sights on the barrel again, calibrate and tweak them for accuracy, etc. Third, when you remove the bayonet lug, it leaves a 3-4 inch long, skinny, “stepped” area on the end of the barrel which looks goofy. You can chop the barrel short where the step starts, but then you have to get the barrel recrowned (rifles aren’t like shotguns where you can just lop them off and call it done. You have to get the tip of the barrel cut at very specific angles to control the gas escape from around the base of the bullet as it first “pops” out of the barrel). Most people end up just leaving the lug shaft attached but grind off the legs of the lug, but that usually leaves you with either a ring around your barrel for no reason, or if you want to get the entire lug smooth again, it takes a LOT of grinding and finish sanding. For what started out as a $100 rifle, it’s usually not worth it.
Aaaaaanywho, that’s the really long way of telling you that removing it sucks, so I figured I’d try and do something cool with it, so I turned it into a bracket that holds a red laser targeting sight.
Click “Read More” for in-progress pics and more details Read more »
Here’s a pic of the original bolt on my Mosin-Nagant M44.
It’s a stubby little thing, and although it’s fun to slam with an upward strike of your palm after the bolt sticks after 30 rounds or so, I decided to replace it with something that gives me a bit more leverage and fits the more modern look of the aftermarket stock.
I’ve been looking for a small project lately with which to test my new metal casting tools so I decided to make a sturdier aluminum reproduction of the flimsy, plastic handle endcap on my Mosin-Nagant M44 Scout Project rifle. It came out pretty well for my first attempt, if I do say so myself.
Finished product (still needs to be painted black though)
Click “Read More” for more pics of the process… Read more »
Recently I purchased a Mosin-Nagant 91/30 with the intention of “sporterizing” it (modernizing), but when I got it home and looked more closely at the rifle, I realized that it was in way too nice of a condition to modify, so I decided to sport my M44 instead. From a collector standpoint, my 91/30 has actual WW2 pedigree, being made in 1942, all of the major parts have matching serial numbers, and the stock is in very good condition, whereas my M44 was made in 1946, has mismatched bolt, receiver and internal magazine cover plate numbers and the stock is beat to hell. I have some big plans for this M44 sporterization but the first step was disassembly of the rifle and checking the fit of the aftermarket stock. The stock is a black “Monte Carlo” style stock made by ATI and available at most online firearms accessory stores. I prefer J & G Sales out of Arizona (www.jgsales.com) because they’ve always been very good to me, have great customer service, good prices (especially on milsurp stuff), and fast shipping to Southern California.
Here’s a “before” shot…
Mostly disassembled…
And after the installation in the new stock…
The ATI stock actually has a pretty nice fit, considering that it’s a generic, mold-injected, “drop-in” stock that will accept every Mosin variant. I had to just barely file one or two small areas for clearance, but then I was able to get it to pop right in by squeezing it gently with my vise (and rubber vise jaws, of course). With the Monte Carlo handgrip and integrated cheekrest, it certainly makes the Mosin a more comfortable and ergonomic rifle. The most drastic change is actually to the overall “personality” of the rifle. It feels completely different- less chunky and utilitarian, more sleek and mean…or as my fiancee Kim said, “it looks like some kind of badass cyberninja gun or something now!”
OK, that’s all for now. More soon.
-~D~-
Japanese Arisaka Type 99 (pictured below Russian Mosin-Nagant M-44 for size comparison)
These characters, “kyuu-kyuu, shiki”, or “Type 99″ which means that it takes the larger 7.7×58mm round as opposed to the Type 38’s smaller 6.5×50mm round. The Type99 is noted as being one of the most powerful bolt-action rifles ever made. This rifle has the ground-off Chrysanthemum on the receiver but you can still see the faint outline of it. The “mum” was the symbol of the Japanese Imperial Army and most of the mums were ground off so that the symbol of the empire would not be made to suffer falling into enemy hands. Intact mums are somewhat rare and usually imply that it was a captured rifle taken from a dead Japanese combatant. According to the serial number on the left side of the receiver, this gun was made in the Nagoya arsenal (which dates it between 1923 and 1945 and is a Series 6 (which refines the date down to between 1939 to 1945). One interesting thing is that it is missing the top and bottom wood on the barrel but I’m not certain if that was a “last ditch” (late-war production) exception or a later customization. If anyone out there has more information about this rifle, or can help me date it a little more accurately, I’d love to hear your input.
Thanks,
-~D~-
A little while back, I asked my friend, Jacob, if he would make me a crucible and some tongs for my metal casting setup. His Snap-On welder is far superior to my Home Depot Special (which claims that it can weld up to 3/16th” steel, but I think that must be in a perfect laboratory setting because it struggles with anything over 1/8″) and I didn’t want to take any chances where flesh and phalanges are at stake. He not only made me a crucible and tongs, but actually surprised me with another, taller crucible as well. These things are made from 3″ OD, 1/4″ thick pipe and are built like brick ScheißHäuser! He really did a great job on them and smoothed out all of the welds and sandblasted them so you can barely tell there is even a seam on the bottom endcaps. Here are some pics of the crucibles, tongs and my casting supply cart with my propane tank, Petro-bond sand, and the cool, heavy-duty flask I scored recently that was built in 1965 (it’s overkill for most things I’ll be casting, but I got a good deal on it)!
Thanks, Jacob!
Here’s some engraving I did recently on the LCD border for The Clacker PC I’m sure any “real” engraver would laugh at this method, but I think it’s a great trick for the hobbyist to add some eye-candy to a piece of polished metal.
(The brass still needs to be repolished in these photos)
All you do is lay a piece of sign vinyl or clear, thick packing tape onto a piece of polished metal, draw out a design, cut it with an Exacto knife, weed out the tape from any areas you want etched, then run over it with a sandblaster (I just use a Harbor Freight handheld sandblaster gun, no cabinet. Grit goes everywhere but it works).
Here’s an interview I did a little while ago for the Copper Development Association that I never got around to publicizing all that much, so I thought I’d share it here. Jake vonSlatt and his etched Ada Lovelace Altoid tins are featured as well.
Here’s something I stumbled across the other day while setting up my Youtube membership. Camille Villagonza used one of my keyboards and monitors as the inspiration for a school midterm project in 3D Studio Max. Very cool!
