As much as I hate single shot breech loaders, it does look pretty sharp. It's got kind of a Glock thing going on now. Much happier !
As much as I hate single shot breech loaders, it does look pretty sharp. It's got kind of a Glock thing going on now. Much happier !
As far to my knowlege, to make it magazine-feed you would have to give it a new breech and bolt sled, cut the bottom of the blaster and add a magazine lock, in the end, you'll get a mini-retaliator.
Chris Cartaya's MauserFire (modded, mag-fed Sharpfire)
Yes. If you stretch a spring, you can re-temper it with a little heat. It helps it retain its new shape. But it only works for very small increases in length.
It's true. We have a paragraph on it here. Not sure if it works, but since ElliottW is way more experienced than me I'll just take his word for it.
Are you guys really talking about metallurgy without calling me? :^(
Darn it, I'm sorry Pedroh. What is your take on this mod?
FLATtheFISH wrote:
Darn it, I'm sorry Pedroh. What is your take on mod?
Doing a homemade temper on the spring does work, but not as best as it could if done with proper tools. There are a lot of tables and charts you have to follow to ensure the procedure has been done correctly. Elliott and Mojo are right by using the retemper procedure only to readapt the lenght of the spring by small amounts, because if you do it with longer springs, homemade tools aren't able to reach the necessary temperature for the procedure to work. And a half-tempered spring is worse than any other spring, because the elastic energy is not transmitted equally through the metallic structure, which can result in spring break(no pun intended) and consequently blaster break. Me, personally, as a mechanical technician which has been trained to do this sort of thing, would first quench the spring for it to retain the new shape, then temper it to reduce internal tensions, then do stress relieving to increase how much the spring can retain energy.
In a oven, you're just heating the metal a little, and that's why it retains the shape. But temper is something different, and the spring has been already tempered before even leaving the factory. I have my doubts of how benefitial this procedure is for the spring when done in such a improvised way. Like, it works, I just did it to test the procedure, but... I can feel some brittleness macroscopically, imagine microscopically? Again, it works and can be done, but don't go putting 40kg plunger springs on a homemade heat treated catch spring, ok? :^P
Yup, I think I got it.
PedroH brings up a very good point. I believe I am using the word re-temper incorrectly. Heating a stretched spring does not re-temper it. I believe the process is actually called "relaxation". In order for a stretched spring to retain its new length, a little heat helps the metal relax and settle into its new shape. Too much heat and you start to destroy the crystaline structure created by the tempering process. PedroH is absolutely correct, in this case the spring was tempered at the factory. We're not trying to duplicate that process.
Having unscientifically played around with springs since I was a kid, I can tell you that a spring can't be stretched very much. Maybe 5% to 7% at the outside. Beyond that you're actually disrupting the crystaline structure of the metal created during the tempering process.
Think of it like the glass on your smartphone. It can bend. It can twist. It can absorb shocks. To a point. When you bend or flex it too much it breaks. The same principles apply to springs.