Gunsmithing From Scratch

Hello all,

I've been toying around with this idea for years, but I've finally started to actually work on getting the tooling, but I want to know if I'm crazy. Is it possible to machine a firearm from scratch in the home shop? So far I have a sinker EDM, a universal mill and will be buying a lathe before I start my project. The kind of firearms I am looking to manufacture are earls 1900s pistols such as the Luger and the Mauser. I have the original blueprints for the luger that I've modeled into Autodesk Fusion and I've re-printed all the drawings to make them easier to read (no I don't sprekenze da deutsch).

Not looking for the legal aspect of it, but the actual manufacturing aspect. Are there any hidden traps that I will find or is it as simple as make the model and machine it to the required accuracy?

KevinPartner said:

Hello all,

I've been toying around with this idea for years, but I've finally started to actually work on getting the tooling, but I want to know if I'm crazy. Is it possible to machine a firearm from scratch in the home shop? So far I have a sinker EDM, a universal mill and will be buying a lathe before I start my project. The kind of firearms I am looking to manufacture are earls 1900s pistols such as the Luger and the Mauser. I have the original blueprints for the luger that I've modeled into Autodesk Fusion and I've re-printed all the drawings to make them easier to read (no I don't sprekenze da deutsch).

Not looking for the legal aspect of it, but the actual manufacturing aspect. Are there any hidden traps that I will find or is it as simple as make the model and machine it to the required accuracy?

Click to expand...

Your manufacturing methodology will largely depend on the equipment available to you. Machine step sequence and work holding will be challenges which will very likely require special jigs and fixtures. So, in short, of course you can. Once you do the planning required, you can then estimate the end cost in both time and money. I think you will be surprised at the result though.

I suggest you try something a little less complicated for your first effort. Maybe make a Glock slide for a commercial 80% frame to get an idea of what is involved. Making a Luger from scratch without CNC would be roughly what the original makers did with over 100 single operation machine tools. Essentially, you would have to do several hundred machine operations assuming the tools and fixtures were already made. Not saying it could not be done, but it would take exceptional dedication, time, and money to make an exact copy. Please post photos when you finish.

RWO

If you want a real flavor of what was involved, get your self a copy of Manufacture of the 1903 Springfield Service Rifle.

Hundreds and hundreds of fixtures and special cutting tools - all designed and built by the appropriate departments

And put these on hundreds and hundreds of one operation machine tools

And heat treat

And finishing

And assembly

And inspection

They had been developing this doing this for about a hundred years by then, so had a clue of how things got done - in useful volumes - in functional conditions

Read up on a gent by the name of Montgomery C. Meigs - who was the make-it-happen party during the Civil War for the U.S. Army - when ALL machining was done without the benefit of ELECTRICITY

A different viewpoint.

Complex firearms are made every year by asian craftsmen near the beeka valley. By hand, file.
And elsewhere.
And have been made for over 200 years.

One at a time, around one gun / person / year afaik.

Endless people here on PM and elsewhere have made functional/good/excellent firearms with some 60-80% bases.

The right response imho is that You can technically make any firearm You want ..
but You cannot at all be commercially successful unless you do do some part vastly better than all the rest of the worlds top craftsmen.

Sorry to cause confusion by my wording. I'm looking to make myself one, not making hundreds. A lot of the tooling that would be required (which I can see in the design) will be replaced with a more time consuming method like using a boring bar etc. I am also hoping that my EDM will save me a lot of effort compared to the original way, as I can drill square holes haha

I assume you are doing this for the same reasons that people build model airplanes or whatever, not to make money but just to do it. You don't value the time in dollars but in enjoyment to be accomplishing something. These guns were not made by some sort of superheros but ordinary people, admittedly skilled, but no more that you should be able to achieve with sufficient application and they had to work on the machines of the times which have been superceded by far more accurate ones. You may have to learn new skills such as heat treating, but that is part of the fun.

I am reminded of the time I made a propane-oxygen torch that would deliver a needle point flame with a much higher flow rate that conventional torches. I made the whole thing, including the valves that were included in the torch body. When I showed it to some glass blowers, the first comment was "Did you have it machined?", the implication being that this ordinary person could not have done what that mystical "they" could do.

Bill

The project is, of course, doable...given enough time and metalworking skill and experience. After all it is just a bunch of precision metal parts. As hanermo indicated, even hand tools alone can be enough. But why copy an existing design? Can hardly be better than original.

KevinPartner said:

Hello all,

I've been toying around with this idea for years, but I've finally started to actually work on getting the tooling, but I want to know if I'm crazy. Is it possible to machine a firearm from scratch in the home shop? So far I have a sinker EDM, a universal mill and will be buying a lathe before I start my project. The kind of firearms I am looking to manufacture are earls 1900s pistols such as the Luger and the Mauser. I have the original blueprints for the luger that I've modeled into Autodesk Fusion and I've re-printed all the drawings to make them easier to read (no I don't sprekenze da deutsch).

Not looking for the legal aspect of it, but the actual manufacturing aspect. Are there any hidden traps that I will find or is it as simple as make the model and machine it to the required accuracy?

Click to expand...

You've picked two of history's MOST complex to manufacture pistols, realize it or not. Not the absolute most-challenging, but rather high up on the pyramid.

The original makers had a rough go of it, their production costs eventually pricing them out of major contract military procurement, and merit or lack thereof of the firearm itself no longer relevant.

"Merit", as battlefield weapons, BTW was dodgy.

China's large scale adoption of the "broomhandle" Mauser actually had a lot to do WITH that "broom" handle NOT having to hold a magazine nor be of any particular shape or size.

With centuries of sparse nutrition back of them, the average Chinese of the era coun't get his HAND around the grip of a 1911A1 style pistol!

North Korea stayed on that nutritional downslope and has become a Hobbit Kingdom as much as a Hermit Kingdom. Dirty pool would be to issue them Garand rifles and .30-06 ammunition to lug about. They are determined enough. But each Garand would class as a "crew served weapon", cutting the force headcount by 50% in one go.

With adequate nutrition, more recent eras, the Chinese are about the same size as any other human. Hong Kong had to move the SEATS in motor buses further apart about a generation back. Younger folks legs were no longer short enough to even sit down.

So.. not really a lot of "magic" in those old pistols. More of it was simple circumstance.

As hanermo cites, to make ONE of anything, a person needs nought but hand tools, patience, and an eye for it. Mill, lathe, drillpress, etc each in turn shorten the time, but still fall far short of a tooled and fixtured production line staffed by hundreds, if not thousands of worker-bees, each doing one specialized task. A CNC critter can do any and all of those? Perhaps it can. But how many hundreds of them can it do in parallel?

As onesies and fewsies, one also needs a great deal of time to apply all that expertise.

Add also the independent means to support his basic needs and any family obligations all the while.

"Manufacturer" rather than "artist" wants a bit more research, yah?

Um, might I suggest something a bit less challenging than a frickin' Luger?

If I were going to do this (and I am), I would think about designing and executing what is essentially a highly refined zip gun, with tight tolerances, appropriate steels and/or aluminum alloys, and proper heat treatment. Make the design out of known-good materials, maintain good tolerancing where it really counts, and use an extremely conservative design philosophy. I think you will find this approach more than challenging enough.

Thing is, you really, REALLY need to understand how firearms and ammunition work together and are made, toleranced and stressed, because if you screw this up you could quite possibly lose a finger, an eye, or a life.

So, think .22 single-shot rifle and not a Luger or such...That is like rolling out of bed one day after a lifetime of subsisting on a diet of Cheetos and beer and planning to run an Olympic marathon that afternoon. Which, come to think of it, could also be quite fatal...

Good luck, and READ your ASS off!

Anyone with a lathe ,mill,drill,and a selection of hand tools is quite capable of making any simple mechanical device to a detailed set of plans.And any pistol is a simple mechanical device....I say ,the sooner you start ,the sooner you finish.

I have a “Mountain Village” Broomhandle. Not one stinking Mauser part in it. Some industrious individual took whatever Metal was available and built a fully functioning copy of the pre-war C96. Hand contoured and fit parts in the fire control group are just as smoothly functional as my real Mauser Model 1930.
Backwards stamped letters and mis-spelled words lead me to believe China. I think the British influence in Pakistan would prevent the kind of errors seen on mine. I have to believe that someone with machine shop exposure would have to forget convention and adopt a completely different mindset when approaching a project like this. Just making a bolt stop, from a piece of a 2 inch nut, for my 1930 was a fun but time consuming effort.
The rewards would be more than just a finished firearm. The skill set gained would be priceless.
I sure wish I had a sinker in my home shop.

There's a young lady on youtube who has made several firearms with what appear to me to be minimal machines. She has one essential characteristic most people don't, she doesn't seem to give a rats patooty that others say she shouldn't be able to do it.
I greatly respect her for her independence, although I wish she'd ditch the gloves.
video #13;
188's single action revolver built from scratch (part13) - YouTube

partsproduction said:

There's a young lady on youtube who has made several firearms with what appear to me to be minimal machines. She has one essential characteristic most people don't, she doesn't seem to give a rats patooty that others say she shouldn't be able to do it.
I greatly respect her for her independence, although I wish she'd ditch the gloves.
video #13;
188's single action revolver built from scratch (part13) - YouTube

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Those gloves look like they would tear before dragging her into a cutter, but they still make me a bit nervous. She does know what she is doing.

Bill

BTW, as I watched the video, I had an 1880 Colt SAA on the table beside the computer along with all the junk that accumulates there. It is serial 59152, probably an army gun, but it has been through various indignities like a nickel plated frame that was subsequently stripped and a few initials carved in it. I have owned it for 64 years, most of the time converted to .44 Special, but I recently replaced the .45 Colt barrel and cylinder.

Gloves always bothered me because the sense of touch is so important in so much machine shop work, especially measurements. I even hate to wear gloves tig welding but hate the shocks worse.
It always seemed like something beginners want, although women may be more concerned with the appearance of their hands.
She's a lovely young thing and her folks must be proud of her, very few men would bother what she has done, and it does make sense to just buy one. OTH having one's own scratch made SAA would be pretty nice.

partsproduction said:

She has one essential characteristic most people don't, she doesn't seem to give a rats patooty that others say she shouldn't be able to do it.
I greatly respect her for her independence,

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Huh? That's "wired-in" wimmin's Union, standard-issue globally.

The other part is they can't be bothered to deal with the "overhead" of even discussing what they chose to get up to. The old saw as to "Women and cats will do as they please, dogs and men will adapt." etc.

That could be why you've missed it?

thermite said:

Huh? That's "wired-in" wimmin's Union, standard-issue globally.

The other part is they can't be bothered to deal with the "overhead" of even discussing what they chose to get up to. The old saw as to "Women and cats will do as they please, dogs and men will adapt." etc.

That could be why you've missed it?

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George Bernard Shaw said "The reasonable man adapts to his surroundings. The unreasonable man adapts his surroundings to him. Therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable men."

Bill

9100 said:

George Bernard Shaw said "The reasonable man adapts to his surroundings. The unreasonable man adapts his surroundings to him. Therefore, all progress depends on unreasonable men."

Bill

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GBS or Chesterfield. Take yer pick, the "expense is damnable", either way!

Ever read any of Vick Leon's "Uppity Women of..", or "Outrageous Women of .." series?

"https://www.amazon.com/Vicki-Leon/e/B000APTCBS/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_book_1"

Talk about "unreasonable" MEN!

" Hong Kong had to move the SEATS in motor buses further apart about a generation back. Younger folks legs were no longer short enough to even sit down."

I call bullshit on that.

EVERYONE knows that when members of the the population get bigger, you move the seats closer together.
Dozens of airline companies can't *possibly* be wrong!

"The reasonable man adapts to his surroundings. The unreasonable man adapts his surroundings to him.

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When I was still a child my brother made a comment about being resourceful. With my limited education I had to chew on the meanings a while. A resourceful person can accomplish much with little, because he is determined to use what is available.