xtriggerman

You really only need a good solar panel charge controller sized for the 300 watt panel. Heres some basic info http://www.solar-electric.com/solar-charge-controller-basics.html/ If you can figure out that water pump......

A too tight extractor can cause a non lock up issue. With the slide off, push a casing up onto the in battery position on the bolt face. You should have just a very slight resistance from the extractor. If its tight, they can be bent back slightly in some cases or you can relieve the claw slightly where the rim touches it with a needle file. Also its not uncommon for the barrel shroud over the chamber to rub hard on one side or the other of the slide on lock up. If that's the case, make sure the barrel link pin is flush in the barrel. take the recoil spring out and chamber a round by hand (take FP out if you like to be safe) work the slide with the round in it back and forth during the in battery movement. If its dragging on the shroud, you will feel it and normally see a hard rub if fired enough. Here again as you have been doing, stone it little by little until you have a smooth "by hand" lock up. Some times the barrel lugs are short with the link pin hole. Here again, with the recoil spring out, point the gun straight down and move cycle the slide by hand slowly. if you get a hard rub with the slide moving forward or a complete stoping of the slide, you would have too much barrel / slide out of battery "slop" creating lock up resistance. To see the slop, pull the slide back so there is about an 8th of an inch gap or so between the barrel chamber shroud and bolt face. and then push in and pull out on the tip of the barrel. There should be only a little in and out movement there. If the barrel moves back and forth a lot, only a new barrel or new slide can fix that. That "slop" condition is alluding to such a poor barrel/slide fit that the barrel wants the cam up into battery before the slide is in position over the barrel lugs. A well fit 1911 should work flawlessly with an 18 lb spring. But your right, a 24 lb spring may just be the fix.....but if not, you now have plan B!

Fine little gun you have there. Too bad they didn't roll those edges in a bit. Is that a sand blasted finish or finer like glass beads? I haven't seen any of the new ones in years. If its polished, you need to find someone who can replicate the finished grit cut to match what is on there. A small job if you have the wheels and right grit rouge. Best thing about stainless, if they don't get the finish right, it can always be gone over again.

Looks like a DBL hammer shotgun FP retaining screw in the hole. That hole would normaly be a blind hole except for a small firing pin hole in the receiver, not the tip of that screw. Is there another lateral screw that touches that FP screw laterally from the side?

Iv done a number of front sights on the basic 1911. I supervised the assembly and test fired the first 4600 Auto Ordnance 1911A1's back in 81-83. And your right, it can be butchered or you can have the sight fly off if not properly peened in place. If you don't find any one near by, you could always mail me the slide or ride out and watch it go on.

I have a schematic for the center fire only action and it looks like the rim fire firing pin is home made. It should have a round notch to match that half moon cut above it. But the round cut notch would be a bit oblong for proper pin movement. There should be an action screw that bottoms out in the round cut above the rim fire firing pin. that screw is what retains the pin. That's how the center fire only action's firing pin is held in place. I cant venture a guess as to what the center fire pin would look like without having a look at the entire assembly. Interesting gun for sure.

what gets my eye is the ability to correlate the dimensional variations so accurately in what appears to be free hand fashion. I bet you shoot open sights well, don't you?

As noted in last month's posting, this is rain or shine. We did the walk about yesterday. It was very informative. Way more info there than I could possibly remember. Like a few other folks who were there, I just may have to do a repeat. Thanks Highwalker for sharing your time with us!

In a better world, you would be able to make serious money with a talent like that! That is an absolutely outstanding rendition of an AK folder.

Its a bit tougher to build than it looks. Welding the barrel trunion in must be very precise. There are enough century Cetme's floating around in the 5 hundred range that I personally would pass on this particular challenge. The HK 91 was the "cheaper" alternative to the FAL. The price is reflective of that fact. If you have a hankering for a 7.62 battle rifle, save the extra cash for a FAL build. In the long run, you wont regret your efforts with the FAL. Besides the stock HK 91/94 series have about the suckiest triggers you will ever find on a rifle!

Yeah, that SMLE is a solid old rifle. If it's a #4 Longbranch, its the last and best run of the SMLE's. What does it say on the side of the receiver?

That looks a bit like like a French Chassepot Bayonet. If it is, he place and date of man is on the top edge of the blade just forward of the cross guard. Too bad its so pitted but you can clean it up with 0000 steel wool with out harming the original surface. And yeah, Sidecarist is right, what a great rebarrel project on the Ballard.

I have an 1986 Massy 1010 4X4. 16hp 3cylinder diesel and its been a super reliable tractor. Wish it was a 1020 for a few extra HP but it has done everything I want with nearly 8K hours. This is the entry level HP for a small tractor for most chores. Not sure if its heavy enough for any kind of serious post hole digging. Depends on the diameter hole you need to dig. Some of the best uses for the PTO is a pressure washer and a generator.

This Gov web page can give about a one day heads up on mass coronal ejections. I believe they are the culprit that will test the efectivness of your Faraday cage in that likely event. I liked the old web page much better since they scaled it on a grid. A quick glance told you if there was an alert level issue hour by hour. http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/alerts-watches-and-warnings

Sorry my cell phone kept cutting out there at the end. My wife & I are looking forward to the hike. THANKS Walt L.

Wow, talk about over engineering! Decades ago an old timer who had shot more rounds than I would in 3 life times told me how to anneal brass. Take the biggest fry pan you own, put about 1/2 to an inch of cold water in it depending on the length of your cartridges. stand up your brass in the water. heat one at a time with the torch tip and knock it over once its hot. done. Its impossible to ruin a casing this way since the last thing you want to do is anneal the bottom half of the brass. This works for $0 spent. I use MAP gas for a lot of things and I just bought the new Benzomatic (Lowes) auto light tip with an adjustable flame. My old non adjuster one craped out a few days ago. The new one is fantastic. I even use it to start a fire in the fireplace and MAP will go past 2000F so you can even silver solder with it.

I sure would like to see that adapter of yours! It would have saved me a bunch of machine work on the pictured AK mag-ed SKS in my user name icon. Yeah, a picture of it would go a long way to understand just what it is.

I have a number of Grizzly tools and they are not bad. Heres the 3 compound vises they carry http://www.grizzly.com/search?q=(category:Vises)+AND+(category:%22Cross+Sliding+Vises%22)&rankBy=price:ascending Personaly I would consider a compound table as a better way to go because you can bolt down a huge variety of vises and Griz has them from small to tall, and numerous angle pivot types. Check them out under vises. Put "compound slide table" in their search they have 3 that may work out for you.

WD40 can be a good cleaning agent and a lot of folks use it for that as Dolomite pointed out. I'v used it to clean off SKS cosmo after a heat gun more than a time or 2. But what you do not want is any WD40 residue within a critical part on part movement inside an action. WD40 will dry out over time and leave behind a fine waxy type film. In Gunsmithing school, WD40 was used exclusively in washing down freshly blued parts out of the water displacement oil dip tank. In that application, nothing works better than WD40 for rubbing off residual surface oxidation from a fresh blue job. But, that WD40 was also rubbed off any internal moving parts and lubed with an appropriate gun lube. Its a gun bench standard......when used appropriately.

If your SKS was originally made for a 10 round fixed magazine, please don't keep the myth alive that there is a simple adapter part that will allow a steel AK mag that is 1.015" wide at the top into a SKS receiver mag well that is only .970" wide. Now if you have a SKS M or SKS D model, both of those models have their mag wells machined to accept the thicker AK magazines from the factory. Maybe that is what you have.

Obviously, a lot of very nice machine work went into that rifle. The only issues you might have is noise and kick. If the muzzle break holes are drilled with a rear ward angle, the kick will be lightened but the noise will be significant. Even without reward pitch of the holes, those side blasters increase noise and in some cases you can even feel the muzzle blast on your face. If you don't already have a good pair of electronic ear plugs, get some before you head for the woods. Other than that, I love the fact they use a M70 safety. my all time favorite and you cant fault a 308 for a great game caliber. With that slung on a walk, I'd be touching it regularly for fear I left it on the ground at the last pit stop! Good luck with it!

The first thing to check is the single action sear. It is #27 on the schematic. Visually, you can see it mounted at the trigger guard/frame junction behind the trigger. Take a small screw driver and push it back into the face of the trigger guard and quickly slip the driver off. The little bit off reward movement back, should "snap" back freely from the sear spring #28. As you thumb cock the hammer back, you should see this sear move back toward the guard and jump forward slightly once the hammer obtains single action position. Holding the hammer back, get a tiny screw driver behind the sear and force it forward and then let the hammer up. The hammer should hang or stall in the single action position while you put a little forward pressure on that sear. If in fact the sear is working freely with noticeable spring tension and the hammer is still not holding back, either the sear tip where it engages the hammer is worn and/or the hammer single action sear cut is wore out. It is possible that enough dirt filled oil could hamper the action of the sear spring and make the sear sluggish enough as to where it is just not engaging the hammer. That is why I described how to over come the dirt by putting slight pressure with a screw driver while you put the hammer into single action position and see if the hammer will hold back on its own while pressure is applied behind the sear. As far as you taking it apart, You would need to have knowledge on how to make and use slave pins to reinstall the trigger assembly. If you know how to do that, your probably going to be OK replacing the hammer or sear.

First of all, those are not AK mags. They are aftermarket "duck bill" magazines used in place of the original fixed 10 round mag. I have no idea of what pin he is talking about. It looks like the mag catch is in place. If it has spring tension holding it in a forward position, the mags "should" lock in place. These are rugged guns and easy to replace parts for the most part. The thing I would look at is remove the hand guard and look at the forward part of the piston cylinder tube for pitting. If the tube is pitted, you can get poor ejection of the cases. A good rust free bore is a huge consideration also.

Amen! I used to do hot bluing for years and the biggest issue with it was how to get rid of the dead salts that float to the top. Brownell's has a neutralizing process that's more intensive than the bluing its self! If any of you guys remember an outfit called Numrich Arms, they had to dissolve the company on paper and open it by a new name The Gun Parts store because they polluted about 7 homes water wells with dead bluing salts that were located near the store. It was a legal maneuver to shake the damage law suit. That nitre blue reminds me of the perfect nitre blue you used to find on those Swedish 96 Mauser rear sights. You can do the same thing with a oxy/accet torch on small parts. Just remember if the part is hardened, going over 500 deg F will start to degrade the hardness. Generaly, 500F is the stress relief heat treat number on hardened parts that require it. You can slightly harden soft metal parts by bringing them up to gold and cold quench.