new member from overseas

[TRX]

dromia suggested I introduce myself here. I'm TRX, wannabee gun geek. I used to be a gearhead, but after 30 years of supporting a hot rod and race car addiction, I got burned out and found a cheaper hobby.

Gun laws are sparse where I live, so I've taken advantage of that as much as I can. I have a few pistols and rifles, mostly military-surplus stuff.

Back in the early 1980s I got seriously into guns and shooting, but after being run down by a drunk driver and spending a couple of years in recovery and rehab, I never got back into it. A few years ago I was rooting through some junk and noticed the Pattern 17 Enfield rifle I'd bought in 1986 or so with the intention of rebarreling into a .300 H&H sniper rifle. I thought, "well, why not use this as a pattern and build a rifle from scratch." I had a basic hobby machine shop I'd accumulated over the years, and building a rifle from scratch would let me test and extend my skills.

I decided to change the caliber from .300 H&H to .45-70. Realizing this had likely been done before, I typed "Enfield .45-70" into Google and it returned a link to a forum where a guy was documenting his build of an AK-47 in .45-70. Google is weird that way; I'm reasonably sure the word "Enfield" doesn't occur anywhere in the thread. But that turned me on to the AK-47, and I became a major fan of the platform. I made it just in time.

Due to some peculiarities in US ATF regulations, it was possible to buy (literally) tons of surplus Commie AK-47s, field strip them, cut the receivers in two or three places, staple the parts into a plastic bag, and then sell them as "kits" in the US market. For most of a decade they'd been selling for $50 to $60, no restrictions whatsoever. And any person could cobble up a new receiver and restore the rifle to functionality, as long as fully-automatic fire wasn't possible. Various forums and a whole industry grew up supporting "build your own AK." Supplies were drying up and prices were rising when I discovered it, but I was hooked anyway.

For a long time AKs were so cheap that people did crazy things with them; caliber conversions, pistols, even table lamps. There are a lot of weird people on the intarwebz, and it seemed that a lot of them built AK-47s. Alas, that day has passed. I'm still quite fond of the platform, but it's cheaper to build an AR-15 nowadays. So I was getting back to my original "building a gun from scratch" plan. My eventual goal was to sharpen my gunsmithing skills until I can build an entire firearm; springs, rifling, all of it. Assembling AK kits was big fun, but an AK is sort of like a Mr. Potato Head toy; other than squeezing rivets, it's not particularly difficult. This is just a hobby there's no pressing hurry, but I do like to show some progress now and then.

I like rifles, but they take up a lot of space. And since my wife likes rifles too, they take up even more space. I decided to build a pistol. It turns out that revolvers are way more complex than autoloaders, plus blueprints are available for the 1911, and I had one to use as a pattern.

I had a rational and reasonable plan. While I was collecting tooling, I would put together a 1911 from purchased pieces to get the feel of how it all worked. I camped out on the 1911 builder forums, found some threads from other people who had built guns from bar stock, and things were looking reasonably good. (step Number One for building a 1911 from scratch: first buy a tool grinder, because you'll need a box full of custom cutters you can't buy anywhere)

You can probably guess where the 1911 project is. (ooh! Something new and bright and shiny!) All the parts are in a box, of course. With all the rest of the unfinished gun projects. Well, I don't *have* to finish them to any schedule, you know. The point is having fun building them, at least until - ooh, donuts!

Back around 1982 or 1983 I bought one of those thick gun annuals that had an article, "Whatever Happened to the Auto Mag?", half a dozen pages that described the AMT Auto Mag. Grainy black and white images on coarse newsprint, basically... but such images! A BIG stainless steel automatic, chambered for .357 and .44 caliber cartridges pumped up to psychotic pressures and velocities. Hubba-hubba!

Alas, far too expensive for me, and rare. 30 years later I've still never even SEEN an Auto Mag other than in pictures. During the dot-com boom of the '90s I was making enough money to buy one, though they were seriously expensive collectors' items by then, but the three or four I'd found in Shotgun News' classifieds were broken or had other problems. No parts available, manufacturer long out of business. I passed, which was probably best, all things considered. But I still wanted one, in that way you still want things you'll probably never have.

A year ago I encountered the original designer of the Auto Mag on a forum dedicated to Auto Mags. He was offering to sell a partial set of blueprints - frame, barrel, receiver, bolt, some other stuff. I PM'd him, met his price, and eventually a cardboard mailing tube showed up with nine D and E sized photocopies of blueprints dated mostly 1971 and 1972. Autographed, too.

A few weeks later my wife caught me bent over the unrolled prints.

"Go on, you know you want to."

"What?"

"Go ahead and build it. You should do it now, while you can still talk to those guys. They're not going to be around forever." (some of the Auto Mag principals are getting right on up there...)

"I don't have the kind of equipment I'd need to go most of this. Plus, these are just the big parts; I don't have drawings for all the fiddly bits."

"Can you buy them somewhere?"

"Most of them, but they're crazy expensive. And the tooling wouldn't be cheap, either."

"That's okay, I'll help pay for it."

Every now and then, I'm reminded of why I love my wife...

So, officially all the other gun projects are parked while I build the Auto Mag. I've spent an entirely indefensible amount of money - enough to buy a couple of Auto Mags off Gunbroker - and discovered my machining skills aren't as extensive as I thought. At least one part is probably going to have to be investment cast like the original. And all that I'm learning about heat treating is, frankly, making my brain hurt. But I'm plugging along steadily, working on making a functioning copy of a gun I've still never actually seen...

Hey, it could be worse, like the guys who spend ten or twenty years building working scale models of steam locomotives. At least I'll be able to shoot the Auto Mag when I get done!

[Christel]

Lovely introduction, thank you for that, it made me smile. I did spot your post in the wildcat thread.

We on this forum, of course, need pictures, so whenever you feel like showing us whatever you are doing, please post.

...welcome to the forum

[dromia]

Hello again!

[20series]

Great introduction :goodjob: welcome to the forum and as Christel said we like pictures sign92

Alan :cheers:

[dromia]

TRX I've moved your Auto Mag build to here: http://www.full-bore.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10829

It is not appropriate for the new members forum.

[rjn]

Great intro welcome rjn

[ovenpaa]

The Auto Mag is a truly iconic and inoperative firearm, good luck with the build and welcome to the forum.