What's new
What's new

Water Cooled Machine Gun Repair

cc2417

Plastic
Joined
Jul 17, 2020
Hello,

Recently I purchased a registered Vickers Machine Gun at auction. Unfortunately, the water jacket of the weapon was severely damaged when it was shipped. It will likely need to be replaced to restore the original appearance of the gun.

Not being a machinist myself, I was hoping some of the pros on Pratical Machinist can weight in on the logistics and cost of such a project.

The water jacket is a basically a piece of thin-walled 4140 steel tubing, with external threading on both ends of the tube. Thin, 1mm grooves are machined into the jacket down its entire length. I've attached a picture for reference.

Any guidance/insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!


20200716_145751.jpg
 
are you talking about he slight dent? Is there a hole and or is it leaking? If not then that may be something an old school body man can fix or possibly someone that does musical instrument repair. If there is a hole, Id find a tig welder or laser welder that does instrument/gauge welding as a start. Have you contacted Turnbull restorations? IDK if they do class3 stuff though.
AS far as cost, you just bought a transferable Vickers, It aint gonna be cheap, 1-2k$ at least.
 
You might find a deal if the person that repairs it gets to test fire it :drool5:
 
When you say severely damaged it is not obvious from that photo. More pictures might help.

Dents can be raised/heat shrunk and gouges could be carefully TIG welded and perhaps even filed to restore the grooves. You would be amazed what a skilled craftsman can do.

A skilled body man might use a "pick" to push the dent most of the way and then raise it further by careful spot heating with a torch and then cooling with a wet rag. The process makes the metal shrink back to its pre-stretched condition. I've seen dents on very high end cars removed that way with no filler added.
 
It sure looks like a push from the inside will do it. More pics to be sure. Can you get a picture looking through the tube and also of the outside of the dent taken from the end of the tube?
 
QT: It sure looks like a push from the inside will do it.
A musical instrument guy might use a roller device to roll out the dent.

Given the size of those water jackets I'd bet a screw jack and two semi-circular segments cut to fit the ID would do it. Might still need to shrink because just as with auto body repair the metal is first stretched by being dented and then stretched more when pushed out.
 
Hey guys,

Thanks for the suggestions! To provide a bit of back story, the auction house shipped the gun to my dealer in the same crate as its 45 lbs tripod, and both items were packed loose. While in transit, the tripod banged into the gun, presumably several times. There are scratches to the left sideplate, the fusee cover has a couple of big dents, and doesn't quite fit anymore. There are some noteworthy scratches to the water jacket that appear new. But most of that can be addressed by a good gunsmith. The jacket dent is the tough part.

The white area in the pictures is the creased center of the dent, where the grooves in the water jacket have been mashed and displaced. The rest of the dent is larger, but it's shallow. I can feel it with my hand, but it was difficult to get a good picture of it. The damage to the water jacket is cosmetic - there is no hole or anything like that. That said, the gun was purchased because it was in such good shape - it had great curb appeal, and the purchase price reflected that. Now it is more of scratch-n-dent. In that sense, the damage is pretty severe, even if the weapon is still functional.

Unfortunately, I have contacted a number of gunsmiths who work on machine guns with no luck.

I will definitinly give OOW a call tomorrow, and I'll ask around for body shops that may have the tools to do something like this.

I don't have many more pictures (the gun is still at my dealers) but I'll post what I can next time I am infront of a computer.

Thanks again for the help!
 
If you turn a piece of round bar to the largest diameter that will fit through and a few inches longer you can slide it through, support the bar but not the tube with a pair of v-blocks then tap the affected area with a hard rubber or soft plastic mallet you can raise the dents most of the way, use some heat, set it in the sun for a couple hours so all the metal is hotter than you want to handle before striking it. Once it becomes loose fitting tape a piece of posterboard in the aprx shape and slightly smaller size of the dent to the area of the dent on the turned bar then tap some more, this should raise it the rest of the way. Have several types of mallets to try.
 
Hi Karl,

Dennis was one of my first calls. He is a great guy, but this is beyond his scope of service unfortunately. He turned it down.

If you have a moment, can you describe how you've done these repairs in the past? How did they turn out?
 
I am not surprised dennis turned it down. He is so good that he gets more work than he can handle. He is doing an MG08/15 for me right now.

This is auto body work. lots of you tubes on pounding dents out of precious antique autos. In general get the correct rounded surface on the side the dent needs to go and tap on the other side till it gets there. Lots of tools for this are available with the auto body repair crowd. heat will anneal and expand the metal helping to push it out and making it easier to tap some more. if you got a painted finish like on the water jacket, there is nothing wrong with a bit of body filler.
 
Please tell us the auction house will pay for the work! That was simply dumb shipping it that way, and it's not like it was just an old kids bike or a beat up end table they were shipping. Seriously, before any work I hope you talk with a good lawyer about it, as he'll want lots of photos and an assessment I bet. It might be funny trying to find a sympathetic judge though huh?
 








 
Back
Top