Inside Doc's Shop 2026

[DocsMachine]

Mystery solved! Yep, it was almost certainly moisture from pores in the cast iron- and presumably a little "dirty", still, from the removed chemically-stripped paint.

Turns out this stuff is an acrylic enamel- water based- whereas the stuff I've used on almost every other machine in the shop, has been an alkyd enamel, or oil-based. So yeah, the moisture in the pores simply seeped into the paint, making the teeny spots.

But, today the part and paint was well dried, and the spots just as dry- they didn't "wipe off" even with a touch of mild solvent, so they're IN the paint. Two more quick coats over the top, however, covered things nicely.



Tomorrow or later this week, I'll scrape the drips and runs off the machined surfaces, and dust off the flash-rust, and she'll be ready to install.

That, however, is going to be a task- I'm going to need some help and an engine lift, and to do a heavy cleaning of the machine first. There's still a small mountain of alloy-steel turnings back there from those big rings I cut back over the Holidays. That needs to go, I'll have to get the drip tray out of the way so I can stand back there... and heck, I ought to have that sheetmetal cut and finally put up that backsplash while I'm at it.

If it's not one thing, it's two- as they say.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

Wasn't planning to spend a lot of time on the taper attachment today, I had plenty of other things that needed to get done.

But, I also needed to do a major trash run, so I figured I'd at least clean out the chip tray.

Before:



And after-ish:



The two trash cans ended up totalling about 78 pounds- mostly steel, but there was aluminum, brass and plastic in there too.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

The problem with Rainmakers...

I have a Rainmaker- the famous "Monsoon"- on my bench, and one of the last fixes I needed to do was basically tweak the wire detent to work with today's smaller paint. The problem is, that's easier said than done... Because Rainmakers have a breech geometry problem, one that was all too common back in the day:



Like the first several generations of the WDP Angel, the combination of bolt and breech dimensions lets the chambered ball roll backwards, and by a lot. This allows the next ball in the stack to drop partway into the breech, like so:



Again, similar to the early Angels. The Rainmaker, thankfully, doesn't have as badly-oversized a breech as those Angels (I measured one at .710"!) but that's still not a great setup.

Now, part of that issue- just as it was in the Angels, is the concave bolt. Those early WDP guns had a "venturi" style bolt with a cupped face, and most aftermarket bolts had a huge, open bore for "more flow".



(Some aftermarket "high flow" bolt on the right, my custom-fitted bolt on the left- and in this case, a bolt worth over 30FPS all by itself.) I've ranted before that flow has nothing to do with it- the trick is to try and keep the gas charge from expanding, at least as little as possible, before it hits the ball. Those wide-open bolts are just empty space for the gas to expand into, and thus expend some of its energy before it ever hits the ball.

Throw in the fact it also lets the ball roll even further back in the breech...



And it just makes bad geometry worse.

(Oh, and unlike the cheap aftermarket thing, I added finger notches to mine, like the factory bolt, so you don't have to keep prying the damn thing out of there with a spoon. )



With my bolt in place... well, it's still bad, but at least less bad.





The next step was to tweak the wire detent to work with smaller paint. The detent that was in the gun when I received it, had already been tweaked slightly in a similar attempt, and I picked up some stainless music wire to try and make my own.



I'd also picked up some wire-bending pliers, which worked fine, but sometimes it was hard getting the spacing right.



After a few tries, I got a final version down...



And installed and tested.



Well, I haven't tested the gun extensively yet, as I'm still not happy with that breech geometry. I haven't had a chop or break in it yet, thankfully, but I have an idea to make an improved bolt, kind of like I made for the Angel, above, that may help a little. If that works, I'll need a slightly different bend to the detent, since the factory shape and location is actually too far back, and there's no easy room to move it forward to where it should be.

Stand by.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

Once again I needed a tool that either wasn't made or I couldn't find. In this case, a 5/8" shank profiling tool for my CNC turning center, that holds a small DCMT 55 degree diamond (shaped) carbide insert. I had one that takes a 3/8" sized insert, but I wanted one that took the smaller 1/4" size, for smaller details. (And I already had a boxful of inserts- why not use 'em?)

So I dug out a chunk of 5/8" cold-rolled, lopped off a section that looked about long enough, faced one end, and put what I thought was a 55 degree point on the end.



Over to the mill for an alignment flat on what was now the "top" of the bar...



And then I milled half the point off.



In retrospect, I should have turned the bar 90 degrees and milled it that way, but hey, I've only been doin' this half my life, I can't be expected to remember everything.

After that, I swapped out the vise for the rotary table, and set the rod up in a couple of V-blocks. This would allow me to machine precise angles in the insert pocket, easily and quickly.



Line it up square to the table travel, zero the table pointer, find the center of the rod...



Crank it over 27.5 degrees, and start milling a pocket, very gingerly with some itty-bitty endmills.



Like so. It's also at this point I realized I might have been off on the compound setting when turning the point.



I think what happened was, the compound has degree marks, but after 90 degrees- parallel to the bed- they're not numbered. I think I miscounted and went 22.5 degrees (past 90) rather than 27.5.

No big, I can fix it, and the tool will still work.

I located and drilled the mounting screw hole for the insert...



And of course realized too late I didn't have a tap for the correct M2.5-0.45 Torx insert screw, so I tapped it to 2-56, which I did have, and is, by blind luck, not only very close to the same thread pitch, but slightly smaller too. At some point I'll make another McMaster order and get the proper tap, lightly retap the hole, and swap to the right screw.

Then, while it was still on the table, I simply turned it to the same angle as I'd milled the insert pocket, and shaved down the sides to match.



A little careful stoning to break the sharp edges a bit, a little gentle beltsanding to smooth some of the machining...



And just because, a good hot scrub and a wipe of Casey's Gun Blue so it kind of matches the other machine tooling.



Maybe not quite perfect, but 100% functional. Next up, I guess now I gotta make another whole tool block...

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

So I just finished my third day of therapy, and I must say, it's done wonders for me.

Wednesday afternoon, I told the world to take a hike, raised the drawbridge, set the autoturrets to "pink mist", and took a pile of drawings I've been working on for a couple of weeks out to the shop, and started making chips.

I'd settled on finally doing a "totally just for fun" build a couple of weeks ago, and ordered a double-fistful of tooling and materials specifically for it.

Not to brag too loudly, but when I can focus- single mindedly focus- on a single task... I can work small miracles. I spent half of Wednesday, almost all of Thursday, and chunk of Friday, finally working on an idea I've had rolling around in my skull for literally 20 years. Not an exaggeration, I found a post on my board, the Tinker's Guild, referencing the idea from back in 2007.

Now don't get me wrong- it's a dirt-simple and very basic idea. I'm not reinventing the wheel here, I'm more... putting car tires on an old stagecoach. This is all stuff you've seen before, just... not quite this way.

What is it? Stand by on that one, I'm hoping to do a short video series for it. Suffice to say I have the bits right here beside me, and picking them up puts a great big smile on my face.

In the meantime, here's a sampler of the 120+ photos I've taken of the build so far, carefully selected to not give the wizard behind the curtain away.

A bit of reaming...



Turning what is probably some 12L14, scrap from an old copier...



Then threading same, in a nonstandard pitch...



A little heavy but shallow drilling...



Some light but deep drilling (nothin' beats a big Turret lathe for drilling)...



Turnin' down some black Delrin...



And some 303 stainless...



And then threading some small rod- too small to single-point, so I had to use a small die.



I wasn't joking about the therapy- that's been the most fun I've had in the shop in a fair while. I had the tooling I needed, I had the material I needed, I had the drawings and dimensions I needed, it's a project I've had gnawing at the back of my head for years, and best of all, everything was working smoothly. I was amazed more than a few times just how neatly a few things fell into place.

I'll have a better, and more detailed write up soon, but for now... man I needed that.

Doc.