Day 8 - Wednesday 28th, March
We began work on the tappet plate and also the rear of the gun where we'd sit the piston. We'd already agreed that we'd have to "warp" the design of the M2 a little in order for it to all work the way we wanted with the bits we had.
We drilled out the back and welded the pipe from the inside to the body. Then welded a plate on the end of the pipe.
The "pipe" out the back should be about half the length but now accomodates a lot of the piston. Still needs cleaning up with the angle grinder to make it look pretty. The cosmetic work can wait ;)
After some planning and fun with the angle grinder the 3 parts of the tappet plate get welded together:
After all that welding, it was a little hot. I refuse MadDog's offer of a cup of tea.
Piston goes in with the tappet plate in front of it (it's all sitting loose):
We need to do some more work on the tappet plate so we can fix it to the outer barrel. We're waiting on the nuts for the piston to arrive - typically they're of awkard not-easy-to-get-in-small-numbers type size box of 1000 no problem... you want 1 or 10? bleh. By the time we get the nut that'll hold the tappet plate to the piston we'll be ready to do a proper recoil test.
Say hello to ma little friend (sorry I had such an awful look on my face I couldn't bare for it to be seen :P)
it's already getting a bit heavy to hold. With the ammo box that'll go on the side housing the gas cans and ammo; it'll definately need to be mounted :D