Recent content by Diamondback

Updates: With the help of a nose-job on her ejector, Athena just successfully hand-cycled for the first time yesterday afternoon. Slidelock to drop slide on a snapcap for reload, rack to extract and eject, repeat and back into slidelock from ejection of second snapcap and empty mag. Now other...

End of week update: Thanks to some help from the tool guy at Lowe's, a DeWalt 5/32" titanium bit and a pair of channel-locks, barrel-link pin FINALLY installed. Hand cycling testing indicates function through operating cycle from barrel linkdown and slidelock through feed, linkup an...

Build update: Frame and slide fitted with full range of motion. Ejector fitted and allowing full slide travel but could use a little polishing to reduce friction. Next up, a little more off the right tab of the firing-pin stop so I can mount and tune the extractor, then trying to figure out how...

Full range of slide motion on the beast, barrel reliably goes from linkup to linkdown in hand cycling. Still not as smooth as I'd like so more polishing to do, but it's mechanically making headway. Next problems are tweaking the lip on the feedramp and getting the firing-pin stop and ejector...

Novak, with LPA fiber-optics waiting to go in. Still debating about an optic cut, but decided that would be a "Later" matter after Initial Operational Capacity.

We have Battery! Two inches more to go... Needed the rubber mallet to get the frame and slide apart again after this test fit/mockup, but...

Yeah... even with the slide and frame just rubberbanded together and no internals, this thing is a LOT of gun. One part that's spicy, Fusion bores their firing-pin ports for 9mm pins so I'm gonna have to have that opened up to .45 before we're ready to start testing SMC's. Definitely gonna have...

Slide for the beast arrived today... now the fitting, filing and lapping begin.

Oh, and one last post from me with the Spirit of the Christmas Season... there'll be a bit of a tangent here but bear with me, it WILL loop in. One of my buddies in a Lego collector group's two big things are designing Lego models of real trains and Bible study, and the group Secret Santa...

Addendum, for comparison... Custom retro-ized LAR Grizzly 7" Longslide "Silver Heat": "Project Athena"* design study as 6" Longslide based on Army Ordnance blueprints: *laughable part on the name... I have a friend who's of Greek heritage and when I mentioned my gal decreeing that I had to...

Something's coming... Something BIG! Turns out the "short cut on long slide" has been done ten years before I can up with it... the custom 7" retro-ized LAR Grizzlies used to portray The Shadow's Silver Heat in the 1994 movie. Just mine is a bit more practical and doesn't have the extended...

Beautiful work, sir. Frame's a Caspian--they were instrumental in tech support in the early days, so it was nice to be able to throw them the business. There's another reason I have to start with a new slide: a custom radius cut--where traditional L/S's are cut all the way back to the...

Yeah, typo's on my part, meant ejector. :) Original concept was an "optimized and handed" pair of 7" on Para doublestack frames--optimized meaning as you hold one in each hand, slide stops and ejection ports outside, thumb safeties inside, and ambi mag catches to use standard right-hand mags on...

I'm building in .450 SMC, basically an improved and less battering .45 Super. The idea was using the extra two inches of slide mass to help tame recoil, and the extra two inches of barrel for better muzzle velocity, accuracy and terminal ballistics. Tyler at Fusion recommended a 20lb recoil...

Construction underway on that 7" Longslide. (This pic is a partial test-fit only.) Frame assembly only needs: *Hammer/Sear/Disconnector group - pending funds *Ejector - needs decision; getting contradictory tech advice on long vs short for "magnum" loads *Trigger - have yet to find a GI-style...