Inside Doc's Machine Shop

[DocsMachine]

A month of brass!

This one'll be a bit scattershot, it's a project I've been working on basically just as time permits, for a little over a month now. I didn't always get pics, so bear with me.

Back in March, an MCB'er asked if anyone had made a brass 'Freak' barrel back. To the best of my knowledge no one had, but I had already been thinking about trying it. There's no reason to, other than just to have brass on your marker.

I looked around, four some ideally suitable material, and, because I have all the business acumen of a potato, I bought some.

Brass, in case you haven't looked recently, is really friggin' expensive. This...



... is six hundred dollars worth.

Anyway, after taking a few preorders just to make sure I wasn't flushing all that money down the loo, and after setting up a fresh array of tooling in the Omni (another forthcoming tale) I wrote a fresh program and started cutting some chips.





Typical 'Freak' threading- an internal 16 pitch, 32 TPI double-lead thread. I used to cut these by hand.

A quick test-fit...



And then a fresh program to cut the breech threads. A quick scuff with some 800 grit, and we had some ready to go, for those of you that wanted a classic straight-sided back.



I offered the option of profiling the back, both for looks and a touch of weight reduction, so we moved over to the CNC Logan, and cut even more chips.



These too got scuffed, using a cheap wood lathe as a "spinner", to make sanding batches of parts easier and quicker. A little WD-40, some 800 grit wet-or-dry paper, and a chunk of stiff foam sanding pad.



Wiped down and washed in hot soap & water, and ready to go! (The right-hand-most is polished.)



Now, because I'm a custom shop, I was asked for threading to fit Phantoms. Kind of an odd request, I thought, but hey, I've made my living off of odd requests.

So, cut down slightly and threaded- 14 TPI "stub" ACME, by the way...



Then the rest of the body profiled down...



Sanded, as usual...





And done!



(Not shown is an hour spent grinding an ACME point in a chunk of HSS so I can cut the dang threads in the first place. )

And, both of those ready to ship out in the morning!



Kind of a fun little side project, brass is always fun to machine. I've had some other brass projects on the list for some time, maybe I ought to move those up...

Doc.

[Cal440]

They look great Doc 👍

[XEMON]

Now you have an ACME thread cutter, could you do a batch of tanto for the phantom? 😁

[DocsMachine]

I've always been able to do ACME, it's just been so long since I last did some, that I probably re-ground the cutter for something else.

The issue with the Tantos has been the drilling, not the threading.

But I'm workin' on it.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

By request: Making a super-minimalist paintball barrel.

We start by bandsawing off some heavywall aluminum tubing:



This gets faced square at one end, and both IDs deburred:



Boot up the homebrew CNC, which was already configured for a straight OD turn between centers, and cut the OD down to 1" even:



This also makes the ID concentric to the OD, which will become important in a moment.

The turned blank then gets squished in my recently-made crimping die:



That squeezes the end down, reducing the ID to about .665" or so.



That then goes into the soft jaws on the Sheldon, and the crimped end faced back to square, and bored out to about .700".



With the OD and ID concentric, that new short ID section is still concentric to the rest of the bore.

To finish it off, the ID is reamed back to size, leaving a short "step" at the end to retain the insert.



Then, as I'd miscalculated how long the blank needed to be, I parted off about an inch, and carefully faced it a touch past that to get the insert depth correct.



Switching back to the regular 3-jaw, I chucked up a chunk of 7/8" round stock from the junk bins, and turned a short cone on the end.



That becomes a new center, so the piece of tubing can be turned between centers again, to reduce the OD even further.



Switching back- again- to the soft jaws (they're bored-in-place, and thus more exactly concentric to the spindle axis than the typical 3-jaw) I turned a short step...



And then threaded it to 14 TPI stub ACME.



A little deburring and a quick test- and it fits!



And there we have it- three of pretty much the absolute most minimalist paintball gun barrels possible.



Doc.

[Cal440]

Thanks for the show and tell Doc, that just shows how much is involved in a job like that. Keep them coming.

[Impactfour]

I reread this post trying to follow the procedure the best I could about 3 times before deciding this was one of the better reminders that you don't just pay for materials and time, but for knowledge and experience as well. Awesome stuff as always!

[DocsMachine]

As they say, "The gunfighter doesn't charge by the bullet".

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

Finally got that insert caddy/tray thingie from a month and a half ago done!

Buddy of mine helped me with the woodworking- he has actual woodworking tools- and was kind enough to... er, critique some of my design choices. Suffice it to say that I am not conversant in how a wood project like this is supposed be designed and assembled, and so there was some conflict between "how I thought it should go" and "doing it the right way".

Doing a few mid-project but thankfully minor design changes didn't help much, either.

Anyway, he attempted to recycle some of my parts and my general concept, and came up with this:



And yes, every glitch and weehaw on there is because I didn't know how to do it the 'right' way.

But, it's 100% functional, and just a tool-drawer organizer, not a friggin' heirloom armoire, okay? Anyway, that got slathered with stain, without bothering to try and remove or sand off some of the excess glue- see previous statement- and left to dry.



And hey, it's just cheap craft ply anyway.

Once dry, I gave it two thick and kinda runny coats of clear poly, and set that aside to cure for several days. And finally, earlier today I slipped it into the drawer and did a kind of preliminary load of the goodies:



Seven rows of insert boxes, potentially three deep on each, and then seven pockets for whatever else- allen keys, Torx keys, some drills, some still-packaged taps, a small handful of used inserts (most of which still have at least one good edge- the actual scrap-carbide tin is in the other room) and the baggie of spare insert screws.

It may not look like it, but that's actually a pretty good improvement in the old drawer, and between it and the pegboard, has notably improved storage and ease-of-use here at the Machine.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

The Thing begins!

Alaska's absurdly short summer has started, and I have several projects I've been wanting to get done. Unfortunately, jamming the shop full of machine tools means that some things need to be done outside, whether for reasons of space, or dirtiness (welding, grinding) or whatever (painting, cutting wood, etc.)

This particular one I've been wanting to do for at least three years now, for reasons of storage and organization. Best I'll be able to do is the usual- sneak in a few minutes here and there, but this won't be a very complex build so hopefully it won't take long.

I started by getting out some bits and remnants of some 1" square tubing, 1/8" wall, and bandsawing the bejeebers out of it.



Each one of those, I ran through the mill, to give them a perfect miter and uniform lengths.



Like so:



Those get clamped, one pair at a time, to the welding table...



And, this is the tricky part that will stun and amaze you, I welded them together!



Repeat as necessary, and we all of a sudden, we have two... rectangular frame thingies.



That was, unfortunately, all the time I had for this project today. Everything else was 'bulk' work, drilling a basketful of parts, deburring a different basket, etc.

More to come!

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

Today's bite at the elephant:

Cut two more pieces of square tubing, and milled the ends flat n' square:



And those got TIG'd into what will become the bottom frame:



Which was pretty much the sum total of what I could do for the frame, until I can get more material. The only other thing I could do, is get out the chunk of plywood I'd been saving for this exact project, since I'd bought it in '22 or '23, and now that I had the frame dimensions, I was able to cut one of the decks to size:



And that, too, became the end of what I could do on this job, today. I need a second chunk of ply for the other deck, and I need to get a job off the drill press first, then use that to drill a bunch more holes.

But, time was limited anyway, and I had other tasks to do. More to come!

Doc.