Anvil 038: Chauchat repair and run

the shape that changed the face of warfare hmm what will we do with this and why is it in here i don't know parts of it are broken i honestly believe that the difference between a gunsmith and an armor is an armorer can put stuff together but a gunsmith can make the parts let's get down to rabbit hole and find out why i'm smiling this equipment is actually kind of unusual in that it was the best thing available at the time and yet in hindsight we hated it so we have here are two assembly bars action bars one of which has a complete assembly stud and one of which has a broken assembly stud and what we're going to do today is make a replacement for the broken assembly stud and then be able to use this assembly stud in this equipment and put this one back in the other one that i'm working on i have one of a piece of equipment like this in this shop that when i'm done 40 to 45 percent of it is going to be handmade by me so i've made i was allowed to take another dna complete system examine it look at it mike it spec it and fix the one thing that was wrong with it in that this particular piece this is called an assembly stud and the assembly stud will plug into the bolt right there and this is how when you put this whole thing back together again the bolt is moved forward and backward and yet when you take the action tube off the top of it it separates however years and years and years of dry firing an open bolt long recoil weapon causes this whole thing to stop and it put an enormous amount of force on this and we'll i'll drag all that out here and show it to you so i've had the luxury of having two of these things one that i was around to play around with with the hindsight of a hundred years of of just knowledge of how to make this thing work and um and and be able to apply those lessons to something that i've got to make 45 percent of the parts for this one we're going to put it back together again and ship it back to its very happy owner an example of a beautiful world war one piece of long recoil oh my god this thing is dyslexic it's like a jackhammer i've brought the broken part out now the part threads down into this hole with a nine millimeter with a one millimeter um pitch it's odd i'm not going to argue the metric system again we've already had that battle it doesn't matter i'm working in decimal because i work in decimals so just humor me we're going to ride by it we're gonna cut nine by one millimeter threads on this new part with a die that i've procured because i could make my lathe do metric but you can never disengage it and rather than even attempt to explain that i'm just gonna cut it with the die now why did this fail well here's a drawing of the part okay it's got this stud part the top part that goes into the hole in the bolt right right uh right here this top part plugs into that the threaded part is threaded down into this and then there's a little stem sticking out the bottom and the stem is counter-bored on the bottom side so we bring the stem up through it flare the end of it out and make kind of a rivet out of it so the reason why it's in three pieces was i didn't really know what this looked like on the inside there's no drawing of it that i could find so i had bored a hole down the center of it in an attempt to try to figure out what what does this look like and then it was cracked and i was able to pull the broken part of the threads out and then i was able to push this stud part i'm sorry it goes like this out the bottom and you can see the slight flare here where it flares at the bottom of the hole to hold it in so what we've got to do here briefly is we just have to turn a piece that's about 355 thousandths in diameter which is around nine millimeters just just humor me it's close enough okay this this thing absolutely is busier than a three pecker billy goat when it's running we're going to cover that here in a quick second i'm going to take you through how this system operates and then we'll shove it out to the historians to tell you it's uh its significance uh in world events but for right now this machine needs to be repaired and we are now about to cross that boundary between armor and gunsmith so here we go to the lathe batman hey i just said we're going to delay there's one thing i want to show you real quick this is a neat little gizmo that was made for me by rick our machinist um rick has a rick has a little shop called the artisan shop where he makes one-off stuff like this this die fits in this and allows you to just hang on to it and turn it it's actually pretty nice it's knurled there is a side on this die that is far more open than the other side so the trick is when we start this thing you want it to start on the open side and come in so we'll leave this down in here and then when i go to mount this these set screws will come in and twist it down i just want to show you this really neat piece of kit you'll see me using it i wanted to tell you where it came from now we're gonna go to the lathe [Music] so so [Music] do [Music] so we're back up in the vise now and i've threaded the part in that we made the the threads end and the end of this hang on let me get my carbon sheath plastic well no it's not plastic mine is a wood sheath carbon patent pointy device got it you can see this is slightly proud and now i'm going to take a hammer and set this down inside the vise are we centered up on that i don't even need any heat all i need to do get me a big beater and a small ball here so here we've got the small ball see and i'm i'm aiming this with my left hand and providing the power with my right hand all i got to do is get the end of this piece of tool steel the mushroom you see the end of that is turning into a rivet no lock this is how you do this before lock tight before industrial adhesives this is just like when we did the 1919 now that's a complete planish i'm going to take grab a file here dress the top of this off and just bring it in smooth and it'll look exactly like the other one did there you go i mean it doesn't get any better than that okay so let's talk about what's going on here i found something out and i don't claim to be any kind of an expert but i have had the um fortune yeah bruno is making little air quotations with his fingers so reach up and make air quotes with me shall you and there you go go i've had the fortune of having lived with both of these things for a little while now and i'm beginning to learn a few things about this system um that in a dry laboratory or range environment it's not that bad but i'm going to tell you out in the real world it wouldn't last long let's look at a couple of things that i found this is also a planished overhaul where they stuck the end through and then beat it down into a rivet and cut it off so as you can see here on this particular one i i noted something and i don't know if we can see this is that cut visible is that cut visible right there let me get this out of the way oh let's do that there it is how about that okay this cut was made by me by removing this handle this handle it had the terwillikers pounded out of it anyway i got it that round i made that cut because what i found was and i've got where's this mag this is the one i opened up with this mag has a damaged lip right here as the rounds come up the rear end the rear end of this round is actually tracking up in that groove here in mine i'm in center now i don't have a monitor to the gate guys we're flying and i'm looking at bruno he's thumbing up thumbing down getting me in the middle here so for bruno so we're we're flying up inside this groove and then when it hits this kick forward the round pushes forward right and it makes sure that this rim is in front of the one behind it they guide it great however under recoil when this bolt that barrel and everything winds up going forward if this magazine is full it has a lot of inertia so the weapon will come forward and the the magazine will stay put and the entire weapon will come in and what i found was where'd that unmodified one go ah that's the one in the vice so we'll use the modified one this piece of the bowl handle there's the dent right there let me get this out of the way so you can actually see it right there that the magazine is staying put in the entire gun not the bolt handle but the entire system is running into it so what i did was is i cut that notch on a piece of equipment that i'm going to make 40 to 45 percent of the parts for this stock out of the box rather nice one is going home but it's but this modification needed to be made and i made it there's another modification while we're standing here that needs to be made and i got to go find this little bugger here it is let's pull this off because all we have to do now is cut this and dress it and this is done so that's done so the gun guns meeting part of exercise is complete okay this is the heat shield that they talk not a heat shield heat dissipation it's made out of aluminum and it has ribs in an attempt to increase its surface area the problem you've got with this thing is that the od of this is maybe 15 000 of an inch smaller than the id of the barrel sleeve and we're going to talk about this in a minute because we got to reset camera wise to be able to see this so aluminum has a rather high thermal coefficient of expansion and back when this stuff was being used 19 10 12 14 aluminum was some new space age stuff back then so they didn't realize that it was gonna grow as much and what will happen is this thing will actually expand enough to start dragging on the inside of this barrel shield and at that point and it happens at about 60 80 um we this gun is getting ready to go somewhere where we're gonna run it until it stops and it's gonna i'll tell you from personal experience it's gonna stop at about 60 rounds because it's just going to be too hot they did not know we're going to do a camera reset and i'm going to show you something on this system that you won't get to see elsewhere i'm going to show you where all the drag is on this peg and why they tie up from heat so i showed you what damages the mags i think i stepped on what damages the mags but i want to show you how the heat kills this thing and that's why they go down the mud yeah okay the mud i'll spot you to mud ah let's get into the heart of this thing real quick because i'm going to show you some stuff that really can't be demonstrated anywhere else this is the barrel the barrel has if you really look at this thing there is an awful lot of steam engine practice in this they've been really building steam engines for real about 100 years by the time this weapon was designed but let's look at some spots here that where there's a high spot in the back there's a high spot here and then there's a high spot all the way out here at the nose and that's actually a gas piston and i'm going to show you that here in a minute this heat shield screws over this and goes in here i keep calling it a heat shield guys i'm fully well aware of the fact that it's a radiator my bust there's a piece that's supposed to be here that i didn't put on because i didn't see it when i did it that's why ah here it is hang on one more part one more part just in the interest of accuracy let's look at this so you pull this piece off the barrel screws out and you're left with a breech sleeve a barrel a barrel lender gizmo this guy goes in there that heatsink goes on there and this screws on here boom all of that plus the bolt which sits up inside here the bolt runs up inside of this okay so the bolts in here doing this and the piece that we just fixed let me find get the one off the other one here and the piece that we just fixed plugs into this and then this whole thing slides up inside of this sleeve when you got it together up inside the gun that goes up in there right this entire system all of this is going back and forth so when the when this comes forward hang on a minute let me get it in here the right way well you ought to try doing this in a field when the bullets are coming the other way right so this will come forward bang this entire thing comes to the rear the entire barrel comes forward and then then as soon as this comes forward this surface right here is going to trip the mechanism that allows the bolt to come back forward this to come back that to come up this to come forward that to come back just to come up and this is the 1900 browning long recoil system uh you know that as a remington model eight you know that as a winchester model eight in an auto five um any one of a number of long recoil sporting things this was not a sporting piece so in order to have all of this reciprocate you're going to get three jolts on this thing and the jolt that was killing the um hang on a minute that was killing the mags got to put this together back here and then slide it up as all of this comes forward there's a forward bump then you get the recoil slash gas pushing pushing on the front of this thing impulse that goes all the way and all of this runs into the abutment at the back end bang this all stops boom fit all slides backwards and this comes forward round eject fresh one comes in so you get a forward backward right a big joel so it hits backward that's recoil bang it runs into you it runs forward it goes off it runs into you it goes forward it goes off it runs in holy cow this thing is busier than a three pecker billy goat when it's running all of this reciprocating mass has to be lubricated this whole deal here we're going to pull this out just to show you what's going on all of this sits up inside of this tube right here so i'm going to take this out of the vise just for a second and load the all of this up in here okay and all this fits pretty tightly there's not an enormous amount of clearance in here all of this fits pretty tightly and then this runs all the way up to there and goes into battery and there's the ejection sleeve the ejection port is open so when it goes off this moves and as you can see here you can see that's cooling fins going by and then this is a gas piston let me hold this up here so it doesn't slide down this is a gas piston and as you can see right here that moves now there's a flash hider that's got the front sight on it okay that flash hider screws down over this so when the charge goes off this entire area pressurizes and in addition to the recoil it shoves it back and it's kind of like a recoil augmenter on the maxim system where they had that whole augmentation thing plugged into the front end of it in order to allow the gas to do it this fits like a steam engine cylinder in fact it's it looks like a labyrinth packing junk ring on a on a tram steamer well as you could this thing is a little bit dirty and i can turn it loose and it won't even fall out i've turned it loose and it hasn't fallen out because it's pretty dirty right now well to get this off you're supposed to be able to take this off i had to calibrate the tur willikers out of this thing to get it apart calibrate that's percussive maintenance ah there it goes so it's very dirty but you're supposed to take this off and clean all this out now when this is screwed on here and this thing is ready to go and the nearest hole is here how in the name of sam hill do you lubricate that well boys and girls i'm going to tell you the way it was done back in 1918 was just a poor kerosene down the muzzle of this thing whether it was loaded or not that makes the modern the modern sensibilities get a little bit wigged out um osha in 1918 was a small town in wisconsin all right i'm back down here in a towel there's a couple other things that i want to show you the weak link in this gun in this entire system are the springs and i would begin to tell you that maybe these springs are a little bit i wish these springs had a little bit more rate to them the inner spring pushes on the bolt with a fixed firing pin and when the when the when the bolt locks shut the firing pin appears swoop and off it goes so the actual act of this rolling shot is what detonates the the cartridge this spring goes over the outside of that that spring is pushing on the breech sleeve so you got this going on in there while you've got this going on inside of that yikes i'm going to try to put this in here that's in here like this no that goes in there like that that's right so then this pushes on that and this pushes on that clears a bell right that whole stack of garbage has got to operate there's no room for dirt anywhere in here there isn't any room for dirt this whole thing is a journal bearing it's a sleeve bearing and it's got to be lubricated and i'm telling you um i have the collector grade public publication book about the show show um and it's a it's it's honor bound it's the name of the book it's a fabulous book if you're into this system it's a fabulous book and it's probably got every single thing in it collector great publications puts it out and that has the reprint from the 1918 american army synopsis on this thing the french needed a squad automatic weapon that's what we call it now they needed it now and they needed a whole bunch of them mr mccollum did a very good video on this and covers a lot of this history you're going to see other history of it i'm just dealing with it as a machine right now i can tell you as a machine it works great when it's clean but not when it's hot and not when it's dirty it does not like being hot it does not like being dirty last thing i want to show you and then i'll stop talking here and we'll put it back together again this piece right here pushes the cartridge off of the top of the mag let me grab a mag here so let me get all this out of the way so that will strip around off the top of the mag meanwhile this um this handle right here i'm sorry this this is actually mounted like this i just wanted you to see it this track right here is actually manipulating a feed gate that's up the cartridge comes in and then the feed gate drops out of the way this thing goes in between it and it actuates a device up in here ah that one wasn't running right it actuates a barrel lock right here this this piece right here gets up into the into the into the slice that's mounted in a barrel so here's the feed ramp right here this whole thing there's a lot going on and then you got this bipod which is less than worthless but it is what it is so that's pretty much it this part slides up underneath here goes up into that tunnel and depresses this to allow the barrel to unlock and yeah and your billy goat's doing its thing so let me put this thing back together again show you something with the feeding out of a mag and um doesn't wrap this pig up every single screw on this thing can does will has might come loose there are special spanners to adjust some of the screws some of these aren't screws this actually has a little tip that sticks out and where these slots are sets where this block is which sets how high up the bullet retraction mechanism sets up in there um yeah you got to look from such a proud promise to where they were last thing here and and do a quick move over i want to show one thing real quick this is the bump here you go back here this is the bump everybody's talking about this thing if you put your face here which it's natural to want to do to attempt to look over these sites this will come back and break your cheekbone don't do it so if you ever see somebody shooting one of these things you'll see their face all the way up here and once you learn how to do it um you learn that when when operating this equipment that your psych picture is irrelevant you better be watching where the rounds are dancing or they're gonna head over the backstop a couple of things about this because it's an open bolt piece of equipment you cannot put the magazine in it with the bolt forward it won't go up in there the right way you have to have the mag back or else this follower will jam it up we i've actually seen that happen to us so a procedure we've come up with is just to ensure that that it's selected you see the screw turner right here that's actually the selector switch on the other side you ensure that this is selected to save when two people are operating this like they ordinarily would you had a gentleman that was running ammo the provider the provocateur or whatever he was the provider would walk up with this with this mag in his hand um with the paint on this side to tell him which side you think the two big smiley faces would be the giveaway when we've operated this gun in the past i have the person that's operating and put their hand right here and hang onto this bolt handle if you're doing it by yourself just verify that it's in safe so that you the the bolt probably won't release knowing of course that once you insert and you lock that up in there if this bolt comes forward it's going off so it will pick a round up and it'll go off so let's demonstrate so this was obviously never designed to be loaded in the field and from what i've read they were only i'm guessing they were only used once well you can see some of these dummies i built have had the living crap beat out of them by this thing uh these uh projectiles are actually soldered into these things and i've lost about half of them already you can see when the round comes up it actually is supposed to kick forward ever so slightly and it will these rounds are just beat up they've got holes in them but you can see where it's standing proud of this where it's all forward so the mag would insert once you're sure it's in when you pull the trigger it chambers around and bang off it goes okay now there is no way to cycle the barrel sleeve so if it gets hung up there's no way to do it all right but if you put this thing in cooper coo it comes forward see we've had a malfunction here because the mag two-thirds of this guns problems are the mags here we go and this mag is down now why is it down so let's find this out why is that not up and here we have the mag damage that we were talking about because this has the unmodified bolt in it and that mag is slag well having said that i'm going to go put the unmodified handle or the modified handle back in it and i'm going to tell you that there's really only one thing left to do isn't there you and that boys and girls is how i put the sex in dyslexic [Music]

Channel: Mark Novak

Views: 90,503

Keywords: #anvilgunsmithing, @anvilgunsmithing, Mark Novak, Anvil, Gunsmithing

Id: FYXU6R-g78s

Length: 30min 28sec (1828 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 19 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Esc_ape_artist]

Huh, they got it pretty right in Battlefield 1.

[u/Rabh]

Just out of interest because Mark mentions some history it in the video, here is a link to Forgotten Weapons video on the Chauchat:

https://youtu.be/bCwP3Dm52Ls

[u/TheSoulOfValves]

Starting to become my favourite channel on Youtube this guy. What a pro and a great videomaker!