Hi all, I'm makeing a single shot pistol and I'm haveing a hard time getting any springs to turn out right. What is the proper procedure for makeing springs? I picked up some black tie wire and some Guitar springs. I couldn't find any piano springs in town without ordering them. I wound the tie wire to shape, then heated to cherry red, then quenchedin a bucket of ice water. They didn't hold their shape too well. I tried the guitar strings. They seem to be pretty hard already. I couldn't get them to behave while bending. I thought about heating to aneal, but they turned out real hard and broke with any bending. Would quenching the tie wire in salt water help? I wonder if I baked the tie wire in charcoal if it would take on enough carbon to make a difference?
Thoughts?

I'm going to chamber it for the 30-38spcl and load the Lee soup cans in it. I've got most of it roughed out. Now I'm working on the finishing details. I still have to make the reamers though.

I'll take some pics and post them.

Lar45, Brownell's sells a package of spring wire you can wind into anything. Model airplane stores also sell piano wire in different sizes. Brownells also has packages of wound springs you can cut to length. The wire and springs come in assorted sizes in each package or you can buy specific springs. Go to their web site. Great people and they will help you.
You are not doing the right thing by heating and quenching. As soon as you heated it you ruined it. Coil springs have to be wound from spring temper wire. When I make flat springs, I use oil hardening tool steel. After shaping, I harden them by heating cherry red and holding them red for a while, then quench in transmission oil. If you try to bend these, they will snap, so they have to be annealed to spring temper. I set my lead pot to 600 degrees and toss the spring in the lead for an hour. Then fish it out and set on the edge of the pot, unplug the pot and let it cool off. The spring has to heat soak and cool slowly. I never have one break.
You don't want to add carbon, just makes the metal brittle.

See if this helps..

http://home.earthlink.net/~bazillion/intro.html

I've not made coil springs, but have considerable experience with flat springs in muzzleloaders. For them, once the spring is formed and polished, you stick them on a magnet. Heat the spring evenly, and when it reaches the proper temperature, it looses it's magnetic properties, and will drop immediately into your quench.

I use the Brownells stock. Never tried any coil springs since it is easier to buy prewound and cut to length, but I have made some really strange mousetrap/clothespin type springs. Have also replaced some light flat springs by bending wire into a horseshoe and soldering the ends into holes in a steel block.

Here's some pics of my (work?) so far




With the thread at aimoo cast boolits about the 30cal plinker, I got to thinking about doing something totally home made.
I started with some 3/4" x 1 1/2" rectangle tube. I used a mill for most of the metal removal, but I'm sure it could be done with a saw and files. I picked up a 30-30 bbl on ebay for $10 awhile back, so I cut it off to 10". I don't know how much detail the pics will show, but I have a seperate breach block with a rebounding fireing pin to try and keep it safe. It would have been much easier to just put a fireing pin on the hammer. I tried to keep the grip angle close to the 1911. I plan on useing low pressure loads in this, so I think the structural steel tubeing should hold up fine.
I'll let you know when it goes bang.

Don't you have to get a manufacturing permit from BATFE to build a breechloader, and mark the receiver with a serial number?

That had also just come to my mind. You may wish to cease and desist, or at least keep it off line.

Lar,

for gawd's sake, forget you ever made that Rube because if the bastards from Alphabet 'B' agency get wind of it, they'll be on you like stink on dawg shit. And I am afraid to say, you've done announced it to the whole world that you got it. Now, I am all for you, but Uncle ain't. The first thing is the manufacture business...they get you 'tax evasion', secondly, it is illegal to cut a rifle barrel down for pistol purposes......be just fine if it started out as a pistol barrel (makes lots of sense, heh?) but now you have created a 'short barrel firearm barrel less than 16" long'. The next thing is the photo of that fine looking boy there next to that 'dangerous device', the damned pinko bitches would just love to make you look like a child abuser and fostering 'endangerment' by exposure to a dangerous weapon of mass destruction (pun intended).

Take some well tendered advice and get rid of your toy. Nothing the government stooges would like better than to send you to Veral's old cell, they get their rocks off doing shit like that.

I suppose one should read all the pertinent Revised Statutes ad nauseum before commenting and I didn't.

I am aware that the production of a firearm requires some kind of damned tax be paid to the Feds......but evidently this only applies if you intend to SELL it. I know folks put together muzzleloaders all the time but Uncle doesn't give a tinkers damn about a charcoal burner.

I also know damned good and well that I read the shortening of a rifle barrel to less than 16" constitutes a violation and it never said ANYTHING about said barrel being attached to a receiver..of any kind. Fellers, it's the fine print that those bastards at ATF corner most folks with. As in, "Ah ha! when the document said to sign your complete name, you forgot to dot your i and therefore the signature is not complete!, Therefore you are in violation of section 6, part B, subcategory 2, sentence 4a!" Okay, that is a bit assinine, but then again, so is the ATF.

Go ahead and make all the pistols you can get by with. I appreciate your hard work and ingenuity and have often wanted to do the same myself, but I like living where I do and coming and going on my own free will, enough that I'd just as soon buy a pistol and avoid the ATF Gestapo stooges altogether.

Lar45:
Ihad clicked on the link above "more powder Bigger Bullet" got a question on Lube test on 454 casull seems as though RCBS Lube seems to hold tighter group, and FWFL least, was the FWFL from master batch MOAS or was it made up at home via receipe on castpic. Also was the FWFL lube sticky or hard. Thank for info..>>>>Don
PS the research done on that sight made for good reading

Exactly why I never got a dealer's license, back when it was common and affordable and I bought guns more often than I do lately. Don't want any more contact with those folks than necessary. And I certainly didn't want them dropping in at midnight to inspect my "place of business" (i.e., home) unannounced.

OLPDon, the felix lube I used was a home made batch. Don't know if it was right or not. I intend to redo the test with the MOAS lube to see how it does. I made the consistency about the same as the RCBS lube. I should do a test now in the winter and another in the summer for comparison.

I could buy another pistol if I "needed one", but I wanted to see if I could build all the parts from scratch. I ordered some 4130 tube from a local steel place. I'd like to see if I can grind some rifleing buttons and make my own barrel also.

Lar45, How can I get your E-mail? I can send some target pictures with Felix and maybe you can post them. I do not make the lube hard. No paraffin. LBT super Blue and LBT magnum lube always outshot RCBS for me and Felix outshoots all of them. My Felix is the consistancy of LBT magnum which is a very good lube too. I have a grease ring at my muzzle and boolits I pick up downrange have no lube left in the grooves which is what you want. It should spin off when leaving the muzzle. Leftover lube in a boolit will throw it out of balance. For a fast boolit in a rifle, the lube should be harder for the longer barrel. For my Marlin .44 mag, the soft lube is best.

BFR idahobronco@aol.com is my home email. Send the pics and I'll add them to the topic on my webpage.

cool, thanks. I found a hobby/ RC model shop in town that has a whole selection of Piano wire ranging in size from, can you still see it to 1/4". I picked up some of each. I did everything but the temering after quenching and it broke in several places, but I had to put lots of pressure on it. I'll try another and temer afterwards. The stuff was cheap also, the small stuff was about$.40 and the 1/4" about $1.30 per 3' stick.

Lar, you should not have to do anything to piano wire but wind it. If you heat it and quench it, it will be so brittle it is useless. In fact just heating it red and letting it cool can sometimes make it brittle. I have had to make sharp bends in the stuff so I heated it at the bend point, bent it and let it cool. It snapped at the bend. I thought it would be soft at that point. It was brittle. It acts like air hardening steel.
I would not use the burning oil method on small wound springs. This will bring hardened steel to spring temper ok, but if the oil burns down and the little spring is touched with flame, the spring will get red hot. Using oil demands the spring be covered with something to allow it to heat soak after the oil is burned away.
Just wind your stock around the proper size mandril so when it springs back it is the right diameter. Do not heat it in any way. The stuff is already a spring.

For flat springs I use Brownell's spring stock. Bend and shape at red heat. Re heat to cherry red and quench in salt water. Polish aqnd re heat or burn off in oil and let set till cool. For Piano wire just bend if you try to heat and quench you will just make it brittle. Home Shop Machinists had plans for w piano wire spring bender last year and it works super.

Thanks bart, we have to pry that torch out of lar's smudgy little fingers. Hey Lar, are you reading us?

Okay Okay, I'll quit with the torch. I was trying to wind a spring, but found it very difficult to do by hand so I thought I could soften it, then reheattreat it. I may have to make a jig for winding and bending. I'm thinking for flat springs, that I could just use this 1/4" round and grind flat. I messed up the chamber on my 30 Erin barrel trying to adjust it a little. It now has scored rings in it. I must have picked up a chip or something. I bought a couple of Garand barrels on ebay, as soon as they come in, I'll have to do another one. Maybe I'll have to do a selection of calibers as time allows.