Air Guns

Last weekend I lapped the barrels.  This consists of making a close negative of the barrel bore and rifling in pure, soft lead, coating with an abrasive paste and pushing and pulling it through the barrel repeatedly.   This  smooths out machining marks and irregularities.  Also one can determine if there...

Today I tapered the two octagonal barrels.   A jig was made from a 4 inch square by 3 foot long block of 6061 Al.   A slot with a 45 degree undercut was cut.  Allen head bolts were inserted to tighten against a steel bar to clamp the barrels. Three round...

  Built a new rifling head and cutter for the Girardoni rifle barrels.   The design is modified from “The Modern Gunsmith” by James Virgil Howe.  His design is based on a scraper rather than cutter as used on the 1902 Springfield rifle barrels.  It operates/cuts in both directions.  I’ve made...

Unable to get the rifling I wanted from other sources,  I designed and built my own sine-bar rifling machine. A rack and pinion are affixed to a diagonal track (adjustable) and a linear carriage.  The carriage houses the pinion gear and is rotated by the rack as they move up...

Greetings,  I’ve finally gotten around to adding comments to the previous photos.  Here are some pix of the 3 completed Lukens air rifles.

Hank and I have been making 2 Girardoni rifle replicas.  This gallery shows some progress to date.

Hank Elwood and I collaborate on replicas of antique air guns.   The following are photos from our 4 year complete build of a Lukens Air Rifle.

AIRGUNS -  The BB gun was not the first!  Airguns have been around for at least 500 years.  Probably descended from the blowgun,  airguns have been made with bellows, high pressure air reservoirs and spring driven pistons to drive the ball or pellet down the barrel.  I’ve been playing with...