OK, obligatory disclaimer here: DO NOT start a suppressor project without FIRST obtaining your approved Form 1 in hand, PLUS any state paperwork that may be necessary in your state.

Ok, it's been a while. Sorry folks, there was a death in the family. My grandmother passed and there were, and still are, a lot of estate things to take care of. I was actually in the middle of threading one end of the tube when we got the call. The tube was in the lathe partly threaded for three weeks before I cold get back to it. Let me also apologize for not having as many pictures as I should have. I was in a hurry and forgot to take some pictures of stuff I should have. Now on to the good stuff.



Alright, the next step was to thread the main tube. The tube is stainless steelone inch O.D. with a thickness of .45 (IIRC). The threads are cut 32 threads per inch.




Someone was mentioning having problems with internal threading so I included a couple of pictures of one of the cool things I use to keep things on track. It's a plunger activated dial measuring device mounted to a magnetic base. This is used so you know when to stop threading inside the tube. In this picture you'll also notice a couple of red circles. The top one shows that my boring bar has some tape on it. That is used to "rough in" where the threads are supposed to stop. Run the boring bar down to the tape then set up the magnetic base. I like to set it up so that it makes one full rotation then stop the threading when it comes back to zero.




And here is a close up of it.




What next. . . .OH! the new sites. This pistol had fixed sites on it when purchased. I ordered an adjustable rear site and one of the Ruger front sites for the one inch bull barrel.





Now with the tube threaded here is a look at tube in relation to some of the components.




And a trial fit:




Next I made the cutters for the bafels. The baffels will be cut out of a 1/4 inch polyurathane sheet. I used a plain old piece of water pipe here of the proper size. Here is a picture of cutting the threads off.





Then it was tapered and sharpened. Sorry I should have had another picture here. The final steps were filing, sanding, then wet stoning.




Now that I have a way to punch out the baffels I need a way to put a hole right in the center of it. I make a cup to hold the baffels that has a guide hole on the other side of it. The baffels are placed into the cup, then turned upside down and taken to the drill press. Then i simple drill the hole through the baffels using the guide hole.

putting the center guide first:


Then I bored out the cup. (sorry, no pics) and cut off the piece.



Again I mush apologize that I failed to take pictures of drilling the center holes in the baffels, or cutting out the baffels.

The next step was to make the expansion chambers. If you've never seen an automatic hack saw here is a picture of one. It really saves a lot of time and elbow greese.


(I doubt it meets current OSHA regs of today LOL)


Alright, this is a very straight forward process. Turn down the O.D. so the barstock fits inside the tube. Then bore it out until the desired I.D. is achieved and cut off at the desired lengths. Again I'm sorry I did not take any pics of the boring process or cutting the chambers.





And that completes fabrication of all the parts.




I have not done the finale fitting yet. The next step will be to assemble it all together and put the final finish on the outside.

I did come to realize a miner screw up I made. I cut the threads too deep in the tube. I cut these threads at 32 TPI. I SHOULD have cut them 36 TPI to keep them a little more shallow. I had intended to turn the tube down to be the exact O.D. as the reciever but I will not do that now. My calculations show that if I do that I risk weakening the tube too much. As such I'm only going to sand down the tube and try to match up the finish as much as possible. That, putting on the front site, and a shooting demonstration will be the next and final installment of this project.

All comments and suggestions welcome.

question.

whats this i hear about atf requirements for having "user serviceable" parts in it??

I'm not sure about ATF requirements but if you're asking about what ATF considers "user serviceable" I think I can help.

There's a long and a short answer to that. The short answer is the polyurethane baffles ware out and are replaceable by the owner. I get about 300 - 500 rounds before needing replacing. The next time I replace one I'll get a picture of it to show you how they look after service life is gone. I don't have any as I destroy mine immediatly per ATF regs. I have a letter somewhere in my files from the ATF on what can and cannot be replased and how to destroy the old stuff.

The long answer:

Back in the 80's some company was making a fortune by selling "fake" silencer tubes. They were also selling a "parts kit" that had expansion chambers and rubber baffles that would slip right into their "fake" silencer can. So congress changed the law and that gave us the stupid irrational and subjuctive rule that any part of a silencer IS a silencer crap that we have to deal with today. Suddenly any internal part of a silencer laying on a workbench became a 10 conviction (and it happened).

So this led to the sealed cans that we see today. What we saw was a big change in how suppressers were designed. Nobody would purchase a suppressor that would be no good in 500 rounds so the rubber baffles were out and M and K baffels were in. They were perminate type baffels that never needed replacement, only cleaning. So you could then seal up the suppressor and not worry about someone taking it apart. It also had the result of shrinking the size of suppressors and the race was on. All and all this wound up being a good thing for the end user of suppressors because designs made huge advances.

Well, in the late 90s (I think my timeline is correct but I could be wrong) ATF finally did recognize that there are in fact "some" parts that could be replaced in a suppressor. Now these parts ARE still considered a suppressor by themselves if ATF ever finds them laying around, so you MUST destroy them immediatly. (You cannot have a role of baffles ready to go for replaceing the worn ones.) ATF has determined that a rubber/polyeurathine baffle is a user servisable item and does not have to be sent to a title II manufacture for replacement. You can do it yourself, just destroy the old one per ATF regs. A "K" or "M" baffle (and similar) are not considered user serviceable and must be taken care of by a Title II manufacturer. So if you have a bullet strike that takes out the end cap you have to send it off for repair.

Now me, as the original manufacture on a Form 1 and as I understand the ATF letters on the subject, I am allowed to do repairs myself.

I hope this answeres your question.