Noob checking in. 45-70 Build

Hey all,

Got an invite and head\'s up to the site and figured it sounded like a damned good place to frequent.

I\'ve been a Gatling freak since childhood. But coming from a very unwealthy family I soon realized the only gun I would ever have I would have to make. A few years ago I built a full scale 12 gauge Gatling. I made an oak carriage for it wheels and all. I\'ll try to post some pictures.

Jim

I\'m also in the progress of making a Gatling in .45 auto cal. I designed a gun with 8 barrels, a lot like my 6 barrreled 12 gauge Gatling. I couldn\'t figure out the mechanical intricacies of the original Gat. so I designed my own. Pretty simple design. Not to dish this site but if you go to uzitalk.com to the heading \"home gunsmithing and kit building\" and look under the title \"building a Gatling\" you can see the last month\'s worth of work. I will post the latest stuff I do here as I go now that I have found this site. There\'s just too much stuff to repost from uzitalk and I just don\'t have the patience or time.

Again, no offence to this site.

Here are a few pictures of some of the gun work so far. I am using a 1911 LeBlonde 16\" by 42\" lathe to do the lathe work and a huge old Southbend mill.

The barrels are going to be 1\" blanks of 5-1/2\" length, turned down on the bore end 3\" and sweat fitted inside of some .624 by 1.00 DOM tube. The tube is just for looks. The reason behind this is the cost of 8 regular length barrels that was out of my reach financially.

Jim

A few more.

Jim

4th pic. Where the 2 gears for the crank mechanism will come from.

3rd pic. Part of the bolt carrier barrel with barrel plate.

2nd pic. The crank gear with the bull gear along side of the bolt cam.
 
1st pic. My own designed firing pins. One apart, one complete.

Jim

[Dave]

Here is the thread Jim is talking about.... http://www.uzitalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50993

I looked thru all of it, nice work and very creative!!!!

I\'m heading off to check your thread on another board.  Outstanding work you just posted here.

Clutch

USMC 75-79 MOS 6657

Thanks guys.

Here\'s tonite\'s progress.

1st pic I have the bolt guide sitting on top of the bolt awaiting welding.

2nd pic is another angle of the same.

3rd pic I have the barrel cut away at the top to allow the extractor to grab the case. The bottom of the breach has been shaped with a sand disc to allow the cartridge to slip into the breach easily.

Jim

Here\'s tonite\'s work. I\'m making one of the side supports. nothing fancy. I need to get this part of the gun finished so I can concentrate on the firing mechanism plus have a support for the gun instead of a damned stool and drawer.

I\'m marking the spots for the gull wing bolt and crankshaft bushing. Plus where it will eventually be mounted to the gun at the rear. The trunnion shaft is yet to be marked cause I still need to figure out the approx. center ballance area.

Jim

Here\'s some more work. I welded the grade 8 piece to the top and rear of the bolt. This piece will ride the cam when the handle is cranked. It is also the piece that will take the recoil from the discharge of the cartridge. I\'ve welded the bolt carrier to the carrier drum, just spot welded for now. I had to fine tune the barrel to get the correct headspacing. It fired just fine with blanks so I loaded a couple of live rounds in it and give it a go. All is well. now I get to do the same to the other 7 groups.

Some more progress. I welded a grade 8 piece of shaped steel to the top of the bolt where it follows the cam and acts as the recoil taker when the round is fired. I headspaced the (A) barrel and test fired it. It works great. Now I am putting the barrels together. I want to get the barrels done first and will then work on the individual bolt/bolt carriers.

Jim

The barrel making proccess. I turn down the short rifled barrel to just fit inside of a drilled out DOM tube. Add some JB Weld and using a brass mallet, hammer the 2 together and put in a vice with a 75 pound swage block on top to set up the weld compound.

Jim

Thats a pretty neat build you have there! I cant wait to see more progress! Zed

Thanks. Yeh, it\'s taking a lot of time for all of the intricasies. I\'m milling slots on my lunch breaks and finishing the other 3 barrels in the evenings. I\'m hoping to have the whole thing done by the middle of May.

Jim

A few more pictures. Here are 5 of the 8 bolts complete and headspaced. I broke my end mill bits and will have to wait on the new ones to continue work.

Jim

This is starting to look exciting...

Here\'s this weekend\'s progress.

I have marked the slot for the extracting/return mechanism and then have slotted it and cut out another little piece for the area of the extracted case to fall out of. This is the bottom view.

Here I have a piece of polished file that will be the return/extracting mechanism. It is smooth and hard so as not to wear with continuous use.

Next I have the piece cut out and formed.

Next I have the piece attached with screws. I put the rest of the gun together and operated the crank and it works great. I had issues with 2 or the 5 bolts that weren\'t setting off rounds that were loaded. I took the bolts apart and did some trouble shooting and found that the firing pins had to be tweaked. All 5 of the completed assemblies are functioning great now. I am waiting for some end mill bits to come in the mail so I can finish the other 3 bolt/carrier groups.

Jim

Little bro turned out an oak handle for me so I got the handle attached finally. Here I also included before and after pictures of the bolt carrier drum with and without the metal plates that were welded in between the bolt carriers allowing bullets to slide along the welded in pieces to fall into the carrier grooves. I also finished welding and sanding down the magazine well. The top picture is the cam and cam cover I designed with the return mechanism bolted onto it.

Jim

Here I am marking the spot for the mag well. Then I have a before picture of the bolts and carriers. Then we have the mag well and top cover that I am starting to sand down smooth for the brass plating shop to do it\'s work. Lastly a picture of the finished mag well. I didn\'t get a good picture of the hinge setup on the left side but will post it when I get the gun back together. I have it apart at the moment designing and attaching ejectors. I test fired it with about 100 rounds and it works great though I will have to mount the mag solid cause the action of the rotation of the action will raise it up just enough to double feed at times. I had to manually eject each round as it reached the bottom. Most of them ejected them themselves but some didn\'t so they will all get one to be safe. I\'ll be designing the tripod next.

Jim

Jim,

I am lovin\' this thread!    Keep the pics comin\'.

I\'ve been looking for your welder in the background somewhere, pretty nice welding there!
I\'ve used the JB Weld too with good success, there is a high temp/high compression version Industro 8280.

btw, that wood crank handle \'makes it\'!

Thanks readyman. The welder I have is a cheapy Century 400 dollar 220 volt that uses the tiny .023 wire. I need a better helmet. The lense is so bad that I can hardly see what I\'m welding. I end up doing a lot more grinding than I should.

Here\'s the cam shroud top and suround piece together after I finished shining them up to get brass plated.

Jim