life would not be fun if you were not going in 12 different directions.
Project 1. Involves working with some āmuffler pipeā to manufacture a STEN MKll
Milling out the sear hole
Milling out the locking lugs, then some hand file work to square it up. Sand all the openings to get rid of the sharp edges. So far so good I have not made any blood sacrifices to the gunsmithing gods.
After the hand work, time for some abrasive blasting so it look professional?
Next will be to disassemble and start fitting the MKll original parts kits to the new receiver.
Life project 2. Go back to school
Saw an ad in Facebook that was offering Adult education night classes to get your welding certification. And it was Free (thank you for paying taxes) part of getting people into the trades.
First look the part: Check
From day two, and quickly realizing this free class is costing me thousands. Bought a multi process welder and continue to find new tools I need.
My office this is where we will learn how to properly weld, so I can remanufacture some machine gun parts kits
This was super sketch: looks beyond great and is impressive. The whole verse is in 4 sections on both sides of the octagonal barrel. The hard part was making damn sure the plane was exactly perpendicular to the laser lens.
itās pretty scary buying a brand new expensive gun and then hitting it with lasers.
These are for the current and last years Potentateās (fancy word for club President)
Customer: my 300 blk AR wont cycle. I had it custom built for me.
Me: ok let me take a look
The best way to align or check if a gas block is aligned is to use a bore scope, it wont lie and shows you exactly whats going on. Yeah thats not remotely lines up. Which sucks because the barrel has a machined flat for the set screw to go into. When you tighten the gas block into the flats it pulls it out of alignment. Half your gas port is being restricted. You are not supposed to see any half moons, booth holes should line up like a full eclipse.
Back to lasers, a closer angle look at the engraving.
The lasering takes time, but is not hard. The hard part is the artwork and being in the mood to do something artistic. This looks simple enough but your talking multiple layers in Adobe Illustrator to make the artwork that will actually work with the laser.
Some more behind the scenes, you have to have a good template to make sure that what you design actually fits in the boundaries you set in the firearm.
Customer: my S&W revolver wonāt work the trigger sucks and feels crunchy.
Me: lets just have a look
Ok thatās interesting.
Me: when was the last time you cleaned or oiled this?
Customer: itās a revolver you donāt have to do any of that. S&W used to be a reputable company, now they just make junk. Can you fix it?
Me: sure let me get in my workwear
She just needed some time in the blast cabinet to clean her all up.
Followed up with a trip to the glass bead cabinet. And she is good as new for the customer to abuse it and bring her back in a couple years again.
Decided that I needed to go ahead and build my carport shed garage thing. Bought a used carport on Facebook marketplace a year ago for really cheap. I needed someplace to put this equipment itās crazy how fast it filled up. Decided to go with a clear roof like I did on my chicken coop since it lets in the natural light. Iām gonna end up enclosing the whole thing so itās more like a garage but thatās for future me to figure out.
Back to the personal fun gun projects, found me an original Cobray Mac11 9mm flat that I am going to build using my amazing welding skillsā¦.as soon as I have them.
That flat looks rough. but thereās no pitting couple minutes in the blast cabinet and it will look brand new. then throw it under the laser engraver to add the full auto markings. Then parkerize it and it will look factory fresh.
Oh damn thats a lot of numbers and chicken scratches, any machinists know what all that gibberish means?
Doh, was getting my hurricane preps in order and ole dum dum decided to put a brand new can right next to the exhaust oh well, I guess I have some cool art now.
professional? 
