Video The Ultimate in Gun Building

[no4mk1t]

On the NFATalk forum, we have an individual who is a machining wizard.
He can make anything out of metal...including entire pistols.

This thread will highlight a pistol he fabricated entirely from scratch with only a blurry copy of the original WW2 blueprints. In several instances, he had to fab the tooling before he could make the part. If memory serves, it took him the better part of a year to make it after hours and weekends. (He was still working at the time)
The end result is an exact duplicate of a WW2 Welrod that BSA made for the British military. If you've never heard of a Welrod, it has the distinction of being the quietest suppressed pistol ever. I have fired it and the only noise you hear is the striker click.

Here is the Wiki link if you want to read more.

Welrod - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In a confusing bit of the story there were two versions, Mk. I and Mk. II. The Mk. II was made first in 32ACP and the Mk. I later in 9X19. The topic of this thread is the Mk. II

By today's standards, the pistol is very simple and basic, and the suppressor is equally simple with flat baffles and spacers, with a neoprene wipe at the muzzle.
Here's the disassembled suppressor with barreled action in the background.
The magazine, with an overmold piece to form a grip for the pistol is not pictured. This made the pistol both easier to conceal up a sleeve, and easily mistaken for something like a bicycle pump with the mag removed.

Stan posted a build thread on NFATalk when he built the pistol. If there is interest, I can ask him for permission to post some of the build pics here.

Here is the wizard during the dB test. The pistol tested 123dB @ 1m and 120 @ the ear. For reference, this is on par with a suppressed 22LR rifle with a good suppressor and subsonic ammo.

In suppressor testing, there is the instrumental reading, and the perception at the ear. In other words, the instrumental reading is the pressure spike the noise makes in the air. Those pressure waves are what is picked up by the mic.
The human ear perceives sound by tone. Low tones are perceived as quieter than those at a higher pitch even when the numbers are equal.

With the Welrod, the loudest part of the firing event is the metallic click made by the striker. The actual report is quieter than that and is therefore not recorded by the mic.

So, yesterday, we had the first of two suppressor test days this year. This where NFATalk brings the testing equipment, and individuals bring their own weapons and suppressors to test. This provides independent third party test results under real world conditions. The database now spans 14 years worth of test results.

In an old school vs. new school side by side comparison, we shot the currently produced Brugger & Thomet VP9 pistol (which is basically an updated Welrod in 9X19 marketed as a veterinary pistol to dispatch large animals) against Stan's Welrod. Since suppressors can't be imported, and the VP9 is made in Switzerland, it is sold to take thread on suppressors.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78cZ8__cwp0&t=11s

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6G8Me4tmM

Stan also bought his Universal Receiver that he made for load development. He has test barrels for a few different pistol calibers each fitted with a strain gage to record pressures on a laptop.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDW7Va3MPLc

When I did the makeover on my SKS, Stan machined the front and rear sight bases I needed to put a 1903A3 rear sight, and M14 front sight on the rifle. This and the other mods made the SKS much more shooter friendly and elevated the ergos from those suitable for a SE Asian teenager to those of a North American adult male.
Here's a link to that thread.

A Rifleman's SKS

Saw a pic on another forum where a chap modded a SKS in an attempt to improve some of the rifles more glaring deficiencies and make it more user friendly. I liked what he had done and being I have an SKS that has been languishing in the back of the safe for 30 years, I thought I'd emulate what...

www.patriotgunbuilders.com

Old vs. new front sights.

And if all that wasn't enough, we have another member who is a licensed manufacturer. As such, he can do cool stuff the rest of us mere mortals only dream of...like restore MG's to full functionality.
Here's his latest build. If you've never witnessed an M2HB being fired, it's impressive. You feel the concussion of each shot in your chest. There was a video of him shooting it. When he posts it up, I'll link it here.

As soon as I posted this, the video was put up on NFATalk.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3VTGR-qU-c&t=12s

 

[serger]

Any build information he will let you put up would be greatly appreciated.

I really like that type of stuff because it is very good to know. Keeps them
wondering and that makes me happy.

 

[Racer88]

If you've never witnessed an M2HB being fired, it's impressive. You feel the concussion of each shot in your chest.

I don't know what the "HB" is, but I have fired a deck-mounted full-auto "Ma-Deuce" (Browning M2) on the aircraft carrier. It was very very cool. And while I had to wear goggles, helmet, and "flak jacket," I could feel the concussions.

 

[no4mk1t]

I don't know what the "HB" is, but I have fired a deck-mounted full-auto "Ma-Deuce" (Browning M2) on the aircraft carrier. It was very very cool. And while I had to wear goggles, helmet, and "flak jacket," I could feel the concussions.

The ground version has a heavy barrel, hence "HB". There was/is also an aircraft version that had its rate of fire increased to about 900-950 rpm from the ground version of about 550 rpm and had a shorter, lighter barrel. Probably other versions with differing characteristics.

 

[no4mk1t]

Fun facts:

The venerable 50 BMG cartridge was created by scaling up the 30-06 cartridge in all dimensions. Hold the two of them up and the family resemblance is clear.
I recently saw an article which said the oldest piece of US ordnance still in service is a M2 machine gun made in 1933.

 

[no4mk1t]

OK, Stan has granted permission to post his build photos. I was mistaken. The build took 2 years. The thread is over 30 pages long. I will endeavor to shift through it and cherry pick some good photos.

 

[Bobster]

Is .32ACP subsonic?

 

[no4mk1t]

Is .32ACP subsonic?

All but the lightest bullets in the caliber are. Even then the light bullet load is transsonic.
But the Welrod design features a vented barrel nonetheless. And Stan made it true to the original barrel.

 

[no4mk1t]

So, at first, Stan was going to make his Welrod take a factory can. This was his initial concept.

FWIW the receiver started as this, a 1 3/4" x 30something" piece of rusty round stock. Hence the mystery metal designation. The receiver OD is rough turned to 1.269, scientifically chosen because that's where I stopped. I wanted to leave enough to clean up at the end. The last operation will be to make a mandrel and turn and (maybe) grind the OD to the final 1.250 diameter.

Got the bolt locking recess roughed. I left a little material available to allow for truing up after the bolt is finished.
It's tough to get a good picture w/o playing with the lighting, but you get the idea. As it sits it's a 0.125" deep recess in a 0.625" bore.

The bolt lug ways are going to be interesting. I guess I'll set it up vertically in the mill, drill and mill most of it away, and then start wishing I had a shaper. That or a stack of broaches.

The bolt ways are roughed out. Here is the setup on the rotary table on the mill.

The red is layout fluid (OK, it's a red Magic Marker, but it works about as well). Ignore that tiny mistake at about 5 o'clock in the bolt way closest to the camera. That's why I'm doing a test piece. I think I may cut the real receiver a little long so if that happens I'll have some to trim off when cleaning up.

Better view of the roughed bolt ways.

The corners have a 0.0625" radius. Normally those would be broached to be more squared off. Leaving the corners of the ways rounded seems like less of a stress riser. I have to do the math, but you really have to wonder if the tiny loss of metal on the corners of the bolt lugs that would fit this shape makes it worth all the trouble of squaring off the corners in the receiver.

I did the math and this thing is so overbuilt I probably won't worry about the corners of the ways and bolt lugs. I'm going to continue as is, and when the real steel arrives next week I may revisit making a broach of some kind to square the corners.

Back to the next steps. I'm drawing the bolt now and hope to have that one done in a day or so. New Year's day may get in the way of that plan. Then I can finish truing up the locking lugs and finish off the lathe work on the receiver.

It looks like the barrel will come in at 2.040" to keep the OAL from suppressor to the bolt handle around 13.25". I hope to get about 800 FPS out of it. My NAA .32 Auto with a 2.18" barrel gets 803 FPS avg. from WW Silvertips so it's a reasonable expectation. I'm going to make a dummy barrel to use as a gauge for the 0.700-18 barrel threads. It's a whole lot easier to measure external threads than internal, so that will be my thread gauge for the real receiver.

Progress. It's starting to look like a Welrod. All of the top cuts and one side are done. The bottom may be done. I'll get to the other side and start on the mag well soon.

Here is everything we have so far.

I finally cut out the ejection port on top.

Yes, I made a takedown screw. For the real one I’ll slot it to fit an English coin…

The bolt body has a bunch of cuts and holes. I've worked out several mill setups to make life easier next time around.

I got the magazine well done today. I spent several hours reworking the die from before and making a new round nose tool that matches the Kel-Tec magazine. After a couple of test bends...

... I used the new tooling and made this:

I'm really happy with the way it came out overall and the snug fit. I was wondering if using the magazine as a handle was going to be too sloppy. It looks like it will be fine. (I know, don't use hollow points in a wipe can...)

In the original Welrods the mag well was silver soldered into the receiver. Since the real version will use pre-hardened steel I'm going to try pinning, screwing, and loc-tite'ing it in place and see what happens. I really want to avoid heating up the receiver and potentially messing with the heat treatment if possible.

Next up, cutting the receiver to fit the mag well, making an extractor, and making it feed. That will leave the fire control parts and a couple of odds and ends like sights, etc.

Last night I made the extractor, stuck it in the bolt, held the mag well and magazine in place, and cycled five rounds of Fed Hydra-Shok through the action. It worked. No ejector yet but the next round kicked out the rounds well enough for a test. I'll put up a video when it's all put together.

Got some more done. I think it takes as long or longer to find a decent picture or two of the parts and work up a drawing than it takes to make the pieces.

Finished the trigger bar and the trigger guide plates. I'll radius the top edges of the guides later. I also need to pick up some fillister head screws to look a bit more authentic.

Edit - Adding a picture instead of 1000 words.

Sear.

I dry fired a Welrod clone today... It's going to work. It's a lot of fun seeing the drawings turn into metal parts and then into a working mechanism.

First up is the striker, striker spring, and spring guide. The striker could use a little more polishing.

I got the grip safety drawn last night, and the tooling and process figured out tonight. The tooling is made and a test piece is complete. The test part is a little rough, but compared to the originals it may be better finished. The test part has that WWII "Will you quit screwing with that and ship it?" look.

The tooling is just another cut on the same piece of bar stock as was used for the magazine well. That and a scrap of round stock finished the 'paddle' of the safety. Some more scrap and a 1/4" drill bit formed the "V" shape.

Don't make fun of the tool marks. There will be another small block silver soldered into the hook on the right so those dints won't show, assuming the 'real' part has the dents.

I cleaned up the safety with a file, tossed everything in the soda blaster cabinet, and hit everything except the trigger bar with some Oxpho-Blue. There is no way to ever recreate the effect of all the torch work and all, but it turned out to look like a real WWII artifact. I couldn't be happier with the effect of the finish.

Here's the trigger.

Here are the new trigger components. Side note - Little stuff with odd details like the 'stand' for the trigger take as long to figure out how to hold and make as the big stuff. Example - There's a curve facing you on the front edge of the stand that matches the radius in the trigger bar above. The middle scallop is only 0.030" thick at the bottom while the outside edges are around 0.004". I may have overthought that part.

Assembled

Magazine catch.

Grip halves made from wood. These will be the pattern for the mold to make the grips from resin.

So, after the prototype was finished, Stan started over and made the real firing pistol from 4140 steel.
Here's the barrel.

The new stainless barrel is roughed out. It's about 0.050-0.080" oversize so it can be finished between centers. 1.25" down to 0.50" is a lot of chips.

Barrel porting.

This finishes off all of the machining on the receiver and the whole top end outside of the ejector. I'll fit the ejector after I get the feeding working.

Exploded view

A pic of the bottom end parts. I threw in the striker and takedown screw since they came back from the heat treater. BTW, I dropped them off at 3PM yesterday, and got a call at 10AM today telling me they were ready. And the best part is nothing warped. They grew a little, as tool steel will, but I didn't get a bag of parts that looked like potato chips.

Tonight has been declared Date Night, so I plan to braze and silver solder everything together tomorrow after work. It's about done.

And the finished firing version.

Another member on NFATalk is an art professor at a university. He made a mold and cast some grips for the project that are a dead ringer for the original Ebonite material used in the 40's.

 

[Racer88]

 

[no4mk1t]

The Welrod needs to be heard to be believed. It really is no louder than snapping your fingers. Doesn't sound like a shot at all.
I would love to see Stan build the Mk. I version in 9mm.

Fun fact:
The US Navy had a US version built.

 

[Michele]

That work is amazing. Makes me wish I chose to be a machinist in the navy instead of a hull tech. Appreciate the share

Here’s a how it works video.

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M6i_ZBTlINg

 

[Bobster]

So, at first, Stan was going to make his Welrod take a factory can. This was his initial concept.

OUTSTANDING POST!!! I've got a serious chub going on right now!