A Wooden "Tommy-Gun"!

[johnpipe108]

I may have posted something about this a while back, but I've been ill for about the past year with medical-"treatment" side-effects, so have only just been recovering and becoming productive again. Got a large amount of work done on the tommy-gun project, 2/3 of full scale, virtually all wood. Will try to get some detail photos put up soon, but it's getting late now, and I wanted to get this post started.



The display-stand is a piece of old oak dresser-drawer side, with turned mahogany standards.

Since taking the above this afternoon, I have cut-down the display-stand edges and squared them up, given a slight bevel to the top edge, and finished off with Cabot's water-borne walnut PolyStain all-in-one finish. "Metal-Work" is wood, of course, painted with a mixture of black, ocean-blue, and metallic-platinum acrylic artist colors. More pix to come, I'm in the home stretch with only the trigger and elevator rear-sight to complete. The walnut has the same Cabot finish.

Regards, John

 

[Bill Clemmons]

Beautiful piece, as usual, John. And glad to see you're back working again. Hope the medical treatment has been a huge success.

Bill

 

[Sealeveler]

Awesome work,the detail is great.
Tony

 

[bluedawg76]

very nice. any photos of the process of making the gun. Thanks!

Sam

 

[johnpipe108]

Begining the pine receiver, nose and channel formed on router table, but chipping was encountered; this piece was replaced with another after practice runs:



More practice -- boring for bolt and barrel:



Drilling the ejection port; I don't have an adjustable angle vise, so the 30degree angle is compromised for 45degrees:



Shaped and sanded port:



Christmas ribbon spool, 4-1/2 x 1, that started the project!"



New pine receiver and ash barrel:



Tool on left ground for narrow grooves of barrel, compared with old Holtzapfel tool I made ages ago:



New barrel and receiver try-fit:



Oops! broke the front end, and repaired same:



Key built up in model airplane style, 1/16in basswood:



Key in process laid out on drum:



Underside of key:



Key painted, rivets not done yet:



Front end drilled for foregrip support:



Cutting away excess matter before clean-up on router-table:



Foregrip mount, 3/8 x 3/16 rectangular tube with wood block"




Wood block partially shaped:



Rear sight base worked up in basswood:





Trigger frame rouged-down in walnut:



Frame with grip and top THB ("old brown clipboard"):



close-up on pistol-grip:



Sub-assemblies:



View of buttplate, 1/16in hobby brass, with temporary screws during fit-up:



Thats basically it, a little work on the trigger and sight components should finish it up. Plans were Ordnance plans for the 1928 (virtually identical except a few assemblies) available from The un-official tommy-gun page

Note that the 1928 does not use the vertical foregrip nor adjustable elevator rear sight, so no plans were available for those; the foregrip came out a little under-scale, and the rear sight is un-certain in that regard.

Regards, John

 

[Trent Mason]

Cool project John! Thanks for the WIP pictures too. I'm glad to hear that you're making sawdust again. :icon_thum