It looks like it's wide open to all models right now,
didn't see any guidelines when I checked in.
That R9 is some rifle. I'm waiting for my new HW97MkIII
to show up. It's on the boat right now. Docks on the 12th
and should be in my hot little hands a couple weeks later.
with Macarri parts or your home brew stuff. I'd interested to see what others have come up with on their 9s. I made a couple of guides and used stock and Macarri springs with surprising good results. I can share those results as well if anyone is interested.
Best regards,
Zeke
Kai Tomaka (Login 91stABGD) Forum Owner 66.153.10.56
This forum is for any airgun.
July 8 2004, 12:26 AM
You can post about any airgun you've worked on. Spring, Co2, Precharged Air, Pumpers... you name it! As long as it an airgun that shoots Pellets or BB's, this forum is for you.
Thanks for the welcome, just what I wanted to hear!
July 8 2004, 12:40 PM
I'm sure that a few here are familiar with my "o-ring sealed R9 mods" but "in the beginning" I made all my tune parts with just a drill press, a Dremel tool, drills, files, emery cloth, hammer and a home made "flaring tool".
For the spring guide I would use a 1/4" sch 40 x 5" long steel pipe nipple (it was shortened to 4" long after shaping) that I bought at a local hardware store, then I would drill out the ID for the R9 piston stem, then I would spin the pipe in the drill press and "file & sand" the outside for a snug fit with a Maccari spring. Since the factory spring guide flange was a thick steel washer with a c-sunk hole I would use it for the flange. To join the guide to the flange I would file a step 1/8" long on one end of the "fabricated from pipe" guide to form a shoulder while spinning in the drill press, making the step large enough for tight press fit to the hole in the guide washer. After pressing the sucker together (guide with factory flange c-sink facing out) with a big c-clamp I would flare the end of the guide with a homemade flaring tool to hold everything together. Back to the drill press the assembly went and I flattened the flared end of the guide flush with the flange using a Dremel tool and I would guarantee that the flange was perpendicular to the guide by spinning the flange end on a steel plate clamped to the drill press table.
Anywhoo, while LABOR INTENSIVE the guides worked well and I made several before I got my Chinese Nerf lathe that I use now.
By the way, the pipe nipple wouldn't work for any spring larger than .540 inside, so for the factory R9 springs I would order some 3/8"ID X 5/8"OD DOM tubing and do the same thing.
I hope this was of interest to those that have an "itchin" to try making a snug spring guide but don't have a lathe. You also CAN'T have a life because it did take me a few hours to do one that fit the spring nicely by constantly stopping the drill press, checking the fit, starting the drill press again for more filing/sanding, etc. Another difficulty I had was getting the drill to stay in the middle of the guide while drilling it out. For the drilling procedure I used a cheap cross slide (from Grizzly tools) to hold the drill bit perfectly vertical (in a verticle "locating hole" that was drilled in the cross slide jaws) when clamped to the drill press table. Then I would lube the drill & inside of the pipe with cutting oil and commence drilling the guide as it was rotating in the drill press. Even with the "drilling guide" I found it best to drill half the length of the guide, then flip the guide and drill the other half.
One was made from a piece of brass pipe. I pulled the orginal guide from a 9 and cut it a bit longer and went to it in a fashion very similar to WVED. The other I used Deldrin. Both were done without a lathe and while it was labor intensive... the drill press method works. I bought a cheapo lathe at Harbor Freight and have been making all sorts of things with it.. mostly wood stuff, but have managed a few nice guides. I took pictures of the process and as soon as I find the disc... I'll post 'em...
Best regards to all,
Zeke
PS: Great forum!
harbor freight on sale for $330 a couple years ago (free shipping even) also, and later I extended the bed to 14" with a new bed from The Little Machine Shop. Works fine for my purposes and I bought the bed extension in anticipation of making some custom R9 pistons that will be better for some o-ring sealed piston schemes I have.
Here are a couple pics including a spring with a home made spring kit and an aluminium piston cap that uses an o-ring for a seal.
I was cleaning up my "lathe area" in the basement (yep, it's dehumidified) and I thought that maybe some of y'all would be interested in my "Nerf lathe on a bench".
In the pic you'll see (well, I hope you'll see) lengths of W2 drill rod, a piece of 1 1/8" dia T6 alum rod, packets of various o-rings for my "reinventin tha wheel" o-ring sealed piston schemes, a 4 jaw 3" chuck, a 3 jaw 4" chuck, a couple steel spring guides and a Delrin guide, a set of counter sinks, a Maccari "T" spring with homemade guide, a dial caliper, a steady rest, a couple red handled tools for removing R9 breech plugs and dowel pins, a can of Kasenit, some cuttin' oil, a tub of Maccari Velocity Tar, some allen wrenches, some thread locker, the lathe shows the 14" long bed I bought, a piece of of T6 I'm turning to diameter, a drill chuck with a small center drill, some Beeman Ultralube & M2M molly paste and other curious & sundry bits & pieces. Hope you're entertained and amused by lookin' for my "junk"
buy a cheap lathe and screw up parts till somethin' come out you can use! Hummm, lets see now, how many times did I try to "sneak up" on a nice tight fit between a spring guide and the flange it's pressed into, only to find out that instead of havin' a "tight press fit" I have a sloppy fit. Well, I really don't know but I've done that a LOT!
I've also found that the Chinese lathe is pretty handy for fabricating other parts if needed. For example, my brothers semi-auto Ruger 10/22 had a steel dowel "stop pin" that the action hits against as it chambers another round. Welll, I took an old 1/8" drill bit and adhered it inside a piece of 90 duro urethane rod, then "machined" the urethane to the diameter of a factory "stop pin", cut it to length and gave it back to my brother. Now his Ruger 10/22 rimfire shoots smoother because the metal action is now impacting 90 duro urethane instead of a hard steel pin.
I've also made other gun parts and the most recent thing I made was a new barrel pivot bolt lock nut because I had stripped the threads out of the factory one. Also, a call to Beeman revieled that I'd have to buy the whole pivot bolt assembly to get the lock nut and that was over $10 PLUS shipping and handling! I made the locknut out of a socket head cap screw on the lathe by first turning the OD of the socket head to fit the c-bore in the stock, then after turning the bolt around in the lathe chuck I parted off the threaded part leaving only the socket head in the lathe. Then I drilled out the center of the socket head for a 7x.75mm tap (a metric fine thread). After the drillin' & tappin' I heated the new lock nut till it was a nice blue color and then quenched it in water. Worked a treat and now instead of using 2 opposing screw drivers to adjust my R9 barrel tension I use an allen wrench in the lock nut and screw driver in the pivot bolt. A couple things I've noticed about the R9 pivot bolt is that there are only a few lock nut threads engaged when the required lock washers are installed. Also, the barrel pivot block hole only bears on the unthreaded portion of the pivot bolt about half way through the block and the rest os bearing on the threaded portion of the pivot bolt. Now I do realize the the threads in the pivot block do provide a "reservoir" for grease (by design or accident, I don't know), but I'm thinking of fabricating a pivot bolt long enough to get a couple more threads to engage the lock nut and to only thread the pivot bolt enough to get the needed "barrel adjustment squeeze" plus an extra thread or two.
Lots of possibilities with a lathe, even a Chinese "Nerf lathe"! :c(=)
to leave off some work for the machist at the lab where I work. Those guys have a ton of skill! I tell them what I want, give them the diagram on the back of a napkin and two days later they call me to come pick up my new gizmo.. It's always a work of art! Without all that skill to back me up, my stuff would look like junk from radio shack!
If you can make your own gun parts, you are ahead 98% of the rest of us
There is a fellow at the church I attend that is a machinist and he's offered to mill the cocking shoe slots in my "piston tubing" when I start working on my custom piston, but first I want to try making a "milling fixture" for the lathe.
I know in aircraft & racing car they can not use a bolt that has threads in contact with the mating pieces. I don't now the actual tolerance on this. Anyway they use bolts that are sized to specific lengths. They are available commercial market. I think they are called AN bolts but it's been a while since I needed any.
Of course you can make them on your lathe and harden them, I don't think airgun is that fuzzy about hardness. On the other hand do you want bolt to wear or the barrel latch? might want to use soft bolt, much cheaper to replace.
I checked my R9 and found that a LOT of the length of the barrel pivot block is actually riding on the bolt threads. I don't know if this is by design (maybe to form a "lube reservoir") or just "happenstance", but it's a fact either way. I've stripped out several pivot bolt lock nuts over the years and the replacement has always been a pricey "buy the whole bolt assy or nuthin'" so I'm working up an alternative. The R9 pivot bolt threads are a rather odd (to me) 7x.75mm and I had to look around a lot to even find a 7mm fine thread tap & die. Funny thing is that I found the tap & die in a cheap Chinese metric tap & die set I bought from Harbor Freight!
To make the bolt I'm planning to use a socket head cap screw, turn & thread the shank and cut to length so I can get at least a 4 thread engagement in the lock nut. Socket head cap screws are high strength hardware to begin with so I don't think I'll need any further hardening. If I did need to harden then I could "Casenit" the sucker very easily.
Concerning "sacrificial parts", when my brother bought my R9 years ago he got RAPID wear of the barrel latching lug, and an investigation reveiled that the spring loaded detent had a sharp burr on the edge that literally wore a visible groove in the "locking lug" that was a part of the receiver. I was really surprised that HW would make a replacable part harder than a non replacable part, but still a call went in to Beeman for a replacement receiver. To Beeman's credit, when they received the worn receiver and saw that the bluing wasn't even worn off the "receiver fork" by the barrel shims yet, they replaced it under warranty. They didn't have to do the replacement since my opening up the gun to ship the worn part to them for inspection had voided the warranty, but they kindly replaced it anyway.
Anywhoo, after a little judicious "Dremel work" to deburr the spring loaded detent and reassembly all has worked well since. I do still think it was pretty shortsighted to harden the "cheap" detent and not the expensive receiver lug, but I haven't had the same problem with any other R9 so I guess the burred detent was just a fluke.
I like the way you did that. Similar to what I had in mind. Beats trying to find or make a replacement seal if all you need to do is replace a standard o-ring.
POI shifts I was getting with the standard factory seal and my overlubing (at least that's what I'm theorizing), and the fact that the last R9 seal I bought from Beeman was so tight in my brothers R9 that the pellet literally stuck IN the barrel. After considering the cost ($10 for seal plus almost as much in shipping) I started looking for a cheap & easy solution to my R9 piston sealing which used the standard piston without modifying.
I'm not real savvy when it comes to airgun construction (except a couple HW springers) so I thought I was doing something novel with the o-ring deal. Well, it was pointed out to me (with no explaination I might add) by one of the airgun gurus that I was only "reinventin' the wheel" and what I was doin' wasn't anything new.
Since then helpful folks have posted a pic of a Crow Magnum piston which had (2) o-rings for a seal, Tim of Mac1, LD and Russ Best have posted helpful info. Recently I've learned THAT SOME "Wizzers", older BSAs and other manufacturers have used o-rings, so I felt that I wasn't going too far astray.
