Standard disclaimer: DO NOT begin a suppressor project without first obtaining approval from any and all state and Federal agencies: ATF Form 1 is required from the feds.
It was a success!! Nothing blew up!!!
I did get video of the first live fire testing but have not been able to transferr the vid over to digital format yet. Hoping to upgrade the puter soon in order to do vid editing. When I get that done I will edit and update this thread.
The stock is not yet finished but everything else was ready for a live fire test so I cut down the mauser stock to clear the giant tube. That being said here are some pics.
The next picture is kind of a cool pic. You can see that the new bolt handle is not just a straight weld on hack job. As I'm not very skilled at TIG welding I did farm out the welding. I set up how I wanted it welded in a JIG from brownells and had the guy do it while I waited. Took it home and did a bunch of grinding and fileing and came upon a void in the weld. Not that much of a supprise as I've read that this is fairly common. Back to the welder for a touch up then more grinding, filing, and some sanding. Then took the good old blue flame wrench to it and put the nice little curve you can see in the pic. NOTE: use lots of care when welding and heating bolts and bolt handles. Brownells offers heat sinks and heat paste to help control things here. USE THEM.
You can also see that the original Mauser safety shroud has been replaced with a Gentry side-swing 3 position safety.
Alright, after getting things set up to shoot I wanted to shoot some low power loads during the first shots just in case things didn't go quite right. After some advice from the folks at gunsnet I had my components and a start load. A big thank you to
shutzenman and all the others that had great info on this, needs to go out here. I had no idea that reduced rifle loads were such an art form as they are.
The eventual components I went with were standard .308 cases, standard rifle primers, AA 5744 powder, and Grand Slam 200gr flat base bullets. My starting load was to be 17 grains of powder.
See those little hash marks on the left of the balance beem pivot point? Each one marks 10 grains. Now let me be clear here, each hash mark denotes
10 grains. I've been reloading for years and have used this very balance scale for years and know that each mark is 10 grains. For some crazy reason I read them on this special occasion as 5 grains. This of course made round number one a little hotter than I had wanted with 22 grains of AA 5744 behind a 200gr bullet.
OK, ready for test shot number one on this project that has been over a year in the making.
Set up: I have a little target set up at 25 meters for playing with the 25 meter AQT. I use this a lot with suppressed .22s. The target is nothing more than a sawhorse that has some wood (usually a combined mix of scrap plywood and two by sixes) on the frontside with targets stapled to them. A 3/8 inch sheet of plate steele is leaned up against it from the back side, this angles bullets down into the ground should they penetrate all the wood on the front side. Sorry I don't have pics of this - it's in the video though.
Sighting down the tube as there are no sights, but hay, it's only 25 meters away. My father asks "do you want some hearing protection?" I chuckle and say "no thank you". Was that arrogance? A little anxiety here as I have no idea what will happen, not knowing I have 5 extra grains of powder in the case. Target is in sight and I move the side swing safety to the forward position and feel the preasure increase on the trigger, did I mention that I have installed a Timney Featherweight trigger. . . BANG!!! or rather I should say PHSSSHHUUUUOOOOOTTTT, SSSHHHEEEEOOOUUUUWWW, CLANG.
The recoil was a little more than I expected but really nothing to mention. I rise up with my forhead furrowed and look over at my father. The report, while deffinatly much less than needing any kind of hearing protection, was a little more than either of us expected. We look at one another a while and he says what I was thinking, "that went supersonic". "Yea, I think it did" I respond, and pull the case to examin it. No signs of blow back around the case and the primer shows signs of flattening out. Looks good! Back to the reloading bench I go to try a little less powder.
Here is where it dawns on me what the hash marks means and I have many choice words to say to myself over it. In the interest of brevity I'll say that over the next 15 rounds I try a number of different powder weights and finnally settle on 17 grains of 5744. The sub sonic rounds sound like a phnumatic rifle being fired. I'm very pleased with it. I cannot say what the FPS really is as I do not have a chronograph, (will be getting one soon) this test was more of a function test rather than a load or accuracy test. (those will come later)
Here are some pics of recovered bullet fragments I dug up. They were about 3 inches down in loose caletche(sp?)
OK, the test was a success. No bullet strickes, cases look good, primers are showing slight flattening with no sighns of leakage. Time to break the suppressor down and see what things look like on the inside.
The barrel on my .22 is wrapped very similar to the Mauser and has held up just fine. I was shocked at the destructive force that is apparent on the Mauser's barrel wrap.
The real dustructive force seems to be limited to the first couple of ports on the barrel.
The expansion chambers held up much better than I expected. The polyurething had almost no distortion on them at all. The first two chambers had no unburned powder in them at all, only soot and some scorring. The third had some unburned powder and the fourth chamber had a supprising amount of unburned powder in it. Sorry I don't have photos of the powder residue as I was more interested in testing if it was really unburned powder I was seeing. To test it I took a lighter to it, it burned. Here are a couple of pics of the chambers.
Well alright then. The test was an unquestionable success. There are some adjustments that need to be made though.
First: Unburned powder in the expansion chambers in unsafe and not exceptable. I will next try some magnum primers and test the results of that.
Second: The distructive force in the first 3 inches of the barrel wrap may have been from the first supersonic round but it shows improvement needs to be made here. I'm thinking of setting up a seperate chamber here very similar to the primary chamber of a MAC-10 suppressor.
And of course the project needs to be finished out. Need all the metal to be refinised in guncoat flat black, and I need to get the Elkridge stock set up.
I will be updating this thread in the next couple of weeks when I can post the video. Hope ya'll enjoyed the series.
OK here is the Video. Hope it works. Please take note on shot number 4. The "click" before the shot is the sound of the safety being swithched to fire.
