Inside Doc's Shop 2026

[Ecapnation]

I always liked that sl68

[DocsMachine]

More pics!

Here's a shot I set up on a then-neighbor's back-lot junkpile, of the three 'Cockers I had on hand at the time.



On the right is the Green Cannon again, though in a slightly earlier iteration- note the regulator is still brass. Between this pic and the above one, I nickel-plated it.

The middle one is kind of a junk-box 'Cocker, something I put together one day on a whim, out of spare parts I had laying about. I liked it so much I eventually bought a buffing wheel for my bench grinder, and polished the bejeebers out of it.

It was never as mirror-shiny as I was able to get later stuff, as I learned more about polishing, but it was cool nonetheless. Keeping in mind a lot of play back then was still in the woods- so a polished chrome marker wasn't considered the best idea. Kind of like a sniper putting a hi-viz vest over his ghillie suit. But I rocked it anyway.

The lefthand one is the semi-famous PyroCocker, made for a friend who was one of our field regulars at the time.

Pretty basic gun, even for the time, but he wanted it personalized, as his screen name was PyroFiend.

Anyway, I was pretty happy with the hot-rod flames milled into the shroud.

Speaking of milling, here's another 'Cocker body I was pretty proud of:



The owner, as I recall, sent me some photos of a couple other 'Cockers, and sort of "mixed and matched"- he wanted this feature from this gun, that other feature from the other. I recall one was an early Brad Nestle gun, the photos of which had been all over the internet- such as it was- even before I got an account.

Which, as a further aside, itself proves that no, the internet is NOT forever. Back in the day you couldn't swing a badger without hitting one of those Nestle pictures- everyone had a copy on their Angelfire or Geocities page, as their forum avatar, in any one of a thousand galleries... And today, none of them can be found.

There's one Nestle gun from back then- The Autococker Formerly Known as Prince but those are new pics, from a gun that resurfaced a number of years ago. (I think it was auctioned to help pay some medical bills.)

Anyway, this body eventually got polished and assembled into the Lava Cocker- the grip and barrel were mine, put on to mock it up for a good pic. That's another paper photo I'm hoping to find, to rescan into a higher resolution image.

I also want to duplicate the milling, and if I can, find somebody that can dupe that anno. That was PK Selective work, and they've been out of the biz for a pretty long time now.

And finally, the infamous DOC9000!



A hopper-left Automag on top of a fairly normal 68 Carbine. The action of the Carbine fired the 'Mag, with just a smidge of separation between the shots.

That trigger on the Carbine was one of my welded and shaped stock Tippmann triggers, in this case MolyKoted- kind of like today's Cerakote- as is the 'Mag itself and the adapter unit that holds the two together.

A Guild regular from back in the day, called Bror Jace, took it to a Castle Conquest one year, and reportedly had a blast with it. I actually sold a few of those over the years, the most famous one being a version with a Model 98- the Doc9098- that made it into a center spread of Paintball Magazine.

More pics on the way!

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

For the past couple of days, I've been running several baskets of parts on the Logan, my little CNC-converted lathe. As I've complained before, said lathe is slooooo-oow. With a max spindle speed of only 1,400 RPM, the shorter of the two types of parts I was running took just under six minutes, and the longer, just hair over eight.

Because of needing to keep "birds nests" of swarf off the work, and since the machine has no flood coolant, needing to periodically manually squirt it with a little WD-40, I can't just press the button and go do something else for six to eight minutes. So, I did what I could while I had to babysit. I cleaned off the Nichols horizontal, which was still set up for a part I last ran a year ago. And there have been times I wanted to use it, but didn't have or want to spend the time to break down that setup.

It's back to a regular vise, and once again usable at the drop of a proverbial hat.

One other thing that had bugged me for literal years, was the Exacto mill, which is just adjacent to the Logan. I'd pretty fully rebuilt that about a decade ago, but one thing that annoyed me and eluded an easy fix, was there was some slop in the manual quill downfeed handle. Basically what you yank on to use it as a drill press.

And that was the issue- the pressure of drilling took up that slop, but as soon as the drill "broke through", it jumped down a little due to the slop, and the drill could grab. I've broken drills that way, and one of those damaged the part.

So, while I was standing there twiddling my thumbs (the doctor said I should get more exercise) I cracked open the downfeed mechanism.



Now, it wasn't as easy as that- it was the same process as repairing the clockspring on the green mill a couple months back, but in this case, the spring holder didn't actually have any holes for that 'spanner' wrench. Initially, I held it with a big pair of Channeloks, but of course I wanted something better for the reinstallation.

So I drilled a pair of holes in the spring housing....



... So I could use that same ad-hoc spanner wrench from the other mill. Worked a treat.



After some diagnosis- not helped by having to attend to the lathe every 2-1/2 minutes- I determined that the pinion gear was loose on the shaft. Both the gear and the key had worn.



So I got out some key stock, and milled down a fresh, but slightly oversize key:







Since the gear had some wear too, but the hardened shaft was fine, I had to make a slight step in the key, being very careful to keep the tolerances tight. I wanted a light-to-moderate press fit, for zero slop.



And it worked great. I used the smooth face of the mill vise to press the key into the shaft, and it held well enough that, since it was a teense too tall, I was able to mill it down a few thou with no issue.



The gear itself had to be lightly tapped into place with a padded hammer...



Then cleaned, regreased and reinstalled.



And, while no picture can show you the lack of slop, the whole process was worth it- almost all the extraneous movement is gone.



Much better drilling action- well worth the effort. The kind of thing I wish I'd done years ago.

Doc.