The Home Machinist!

Good that its working out for you...May I make a suggestion? You might like the finished gun better if you make it as near a copy of John Moses's very rare and valuable 1 of 600 original Brownings...I have spent some time online looking for pictures of the original guns JMB and his brothers made before Winchester bought the manufacturing rights to the 1885...The obvious differences include the shape of the lever and top of the breechblock is more rounded plus the rear of the reciever is socketed onto the buttstock in slight different profile.....Likely there other differences as well...anyway , anyway, Its on my wish list, if ever I build another it will look like this first Browning--These are pictures of original Brownings. I didnt build them.

Hey again--..Know any forums with guys building full sized engines from barstock and castings?

If you back up to the higher level indexes here, you will find a couple of forums dealing with that kind of material.

I have read fair amount of past posts in the forums above.. I don't think there is even one thread in the above forums that has a guy building a full sized gas engine from barstock and castings...Maybe there is one or two but certainly its an extremely narrow subset of the hobby and not well represented here- nor anywhere else that I have found............But I think there is small chance one of those gentlemen on this group knows of a forum where lot of guys are building full sized gas engines from barstock, which is why I asked......Not a big deal . Likely too few folks into it to keep a forum going..

Alpha,

I know it may not be the size requirement you asking for.. But have you tied the HMEM site?
Home Model Engine machinist.. http://www.homemodelenginemachinist.com/

while they deal in small scale, maybe one of them can point you int the direction of the "Big Boys"

Respect Always
Metalshaper/Jonathan

Yeah but how 'bout my gun builds? I rather talk guns than where there might be a cluster of guys scratch building full sized engines.
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In following up the previous talk about Highwalls....I have several more Highwalls about 1/4 done.. I had made some extra parts when I was cutting parts...I may someday build another Highwall in .22 long rifle..I collect gun pictures I find on the internet..Comparing those pictures to the guns I have built shows me that my guns suck as compared to what I would like to be able to do..I need another 20 years practice to get where I would like to be. I have only about 6 years experience with the hobby gunsmithing..Just getting a good start at it.
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I have the Frank DeHaas book "Single Shot Rifles and Actions" ..There are drawings and some text describing 75 different classic single shot rifles.... I find I can scan the drawings into my computer and import to Autocad where I scale it and trace it and work it over well enough to build any of those antique firearms...Well honestly a couple of them in the book would be rough for me to build..The drawings only show one side so you must use good guess-timations for the depth measurements.....But theres dozens of fantastic gun projects to choose from and some are particularly easy..
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Here is the first rifle I ever built. Its a Stevens Marksman .22 that I cast the frame in brass..This is easily one of the simplest gun designs ever manufactured. Easy build .Fast project..I also built a couple with steel frames ..Really neat old gun design in my opinion.

In my humble opinion, your work does not have to take a backseat to anyone's.

Al

_________________
Al Messer

"One nation, under God"

Thankyou, thats a generous comment.... I enjoy seeing what others are building..Some guys are building beautiful guns..Fantastic hobby... I am not in competition with anybody but myself..I would like to be able to build a replica of a manufactured firearm that could fool the experts ..but I cant quite force myself to worry over the details to that degree...Takes a VERY long time to build projects in steel so I tend to want to hurry along where I can...... If I did it for a living and customer was paying for perfection then I could find motivation to do a bit better but just for myself, I dont much care..I just build to suit my modest standards.....
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The guys who build for customers and use the best of materials invariably produce the purtiest guns... And their work pays for their tools....Hobbiest like myself has to pay for everything himself- that has an effect on the outcome as well...I am satisfied I do as well as I do but I see plenty room for improvement..Keeps it interesting learning new tricks..and there still a few more tools I would like to have.
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Just curious , did you do the color case hardening on those receivers ?

Steve S

Do you like it? I did the color case hardening...I have done several that turned out quite nice in my opinion and I have several I did years ago that turned out not nearly so good and will be re-colorcasehardened someday...I dont know how it will turn out till I retrieve the piece from the quench tank... I enjoy trying new tweeks in the process , trying to improve... I cook the parts in steel pipe with a mix of wood and bone charcoal then dump into barrel of water....

The important thing in my opinion is that I get a good hard skin on the parts so that the parts wont scratch easily, secondarily I hope it looks good....You might go back to start of this thread and look at the Winchester Highwall..That one come out of the quench tank looking bright and garish..ugly bright....I then used steel wool on it to knock it down to what I consider to be a handsome appearance... I really like it now..
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Very Nice work Steven! Thanks for trying to stir up interest in the full scale IC engines too. I found a good model engine that would scale up to a vintage style bike engine. Google " The Hoglet" and check out the youtube videos.

Bruce
I like the Hoglet , I have seen it before, but feel it would be better by a good margin if a guy could get his hands on scaled drawings for an authentic twin Harley of about 1915 vintage..

.I am reasonably good with Autocad and think I could -almost- make up set of workable drawings from photographs and reprinted Harley parts manuals.......I am just a bit lame with gas engine design and construction.. I may venture into trying a bike build after I finish the boat engine build....It been on my wish list since 2005...Would dearly love to watch somebody else build a whole motorcycle..Likely I'll never get there myself..
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Well...okay here is picture of pattern I made for casting the cylinder for the boat engine..It is 117 cubic inches in a one cylinder engine..IF I can build this engine and get it to run ,I may well then believe I can build an entire motorcycle next... .

Building the gas engine is project ONE...But gotta take time to work other projects too...I got all inspired seeing Metalshapers muzzle loader rifle so have decided to bust one out myself.C-Stol gave picture of the guts of an Allen Boxlock action..I'll build one of them because I like the two pieces of wood stocks- dont want to carve a full length stock.. See the picture from Colin that I am using as 'plans'.....Then see what little I have done so far.. I roughed out the frame yesterday using 3/8" carbide endmill in the cnc mill. Thats a piece of 1.5" thick low carbon steel salvaged from a sawmill... ..I still have the 5 Winchester 1873s to finish .. I jump around and work on what sounds like fun on that day.....Excellent hobby.. Wood, steel and barrel altogether I'll only have a couple hundred dollars into the build and will derive weeks of satisfaction doing the work and years of pleasure owning the fruits of my own labor...