There’s only a few more weeks left to the year. The website has been live for a little 3 months and has garnered 4,000+ views. Thanks to everyone who had taken a moment to check out the site, and hopefully you’ve enjoyed the content so far.
These next few weeks will be busy for me. Many of you know I have been working on getting my EMS Basic license, well the testing for that will be this weekend. If all goes well I’ll start running with the local volunteer ambulance service. Couple that with holiday preparations and my time is becoming extremely limited. There will likely be only a few updates between now and the end of the year.
Last week we did make some time to take a deep dive into some of the popular new cartridges on the market. What they are, why they exist, and a deep look as to whether or not they really are any better than what already exists. You can read that write up here:
As I mentioned at the end of the write up, this was a fun article to write and I may do similar write ups in the future. Sometimes it can be hard to cut through the marketing hype to understand what a new cartridge does, we’ll try to make sense of it in these write ups.
As always, if you have comments, questions, or suggestions feel free to email me at Jayandrew338@gmail.com or check us out on Facebook. Thanks for being a subscriber!
Happy Cyber Monday! We don’t sell anything here at The Ballistic Assistant, but we know there’s some pretty awesome deals to be had, don’t forget to check out Brownells, Midway USA, JD Guns N’ Gear and others.
This past week we released a few write ups, mostly dealing with our Pawn Shop 30-06. We were able to mount the scope base and take it out for some range time.
We used Remington Hog Hammer loaded with Barnes 168gr TSX bullets. Having done plenty of testing with Barnes bullets, I know that the bullets can perform. So how did the rest of the load do?
We continue to work on the 3D Printer. Progress is likely going to slow down over the holidays, but we are working to get this thing built. Here we did the machining on the Y and Z Axis Lead Screws.
We’ve has a few pretty decent snow events over the last few days and it’s been fairly cold. As weather allows will be a few more trips to the range in the coming weeks as we need to sight in the VZ-58 and do some trigger work on the Pawn Shop 30-06.
We hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season so far, as always, if there’s questions or comments you can email me directly at jayandrew338@gmail.com or check us out on Facebook.
Good Monday Morning! This past week went by fast for us. As a consequence we did not get as much done as we would have liked. In the United States this week is Thanksgiving, which shortens the work week from 5 days to about 3, (Except those working in Retail. Been there done that, sorry guys).
We’ll be posting a few articles this week. We went to the shooting range to sight in the Pawn Shop 30-06 Mauser. Some exciting results there, so look for an article on that this week.
In the meantime here’s what we published over the past week.
Along with the theme of the Pawn Shop 30-06 we are taking another scrap Mauser Action and turning it into something of a scout rifle. This is along the lines of Jeff Cooper’s vision of the ideal rifle. Compact, lightweight, and capable of taking game up to 1,000lbs.
This next project is a complete departure from the theme of the site. However I thought it was too cool of a project not to write about. This is something I am doing for work. We have been using an eBee drone for all of our aerial surveying needs at the mine, but due to the high operating cost we are looking at a self built option. I’ll be doing all the Research, Construction and testing of this new bird. If you’re interested here’s the introduction article.
We have continued to make progress on the 3D Printer. The frame is all but complete, and we’re moving on to building the Y and Z Axis drive train. The frame is probably the most involved subassembly of this build. To see the detailed write up, check out the link below.
As you can tell I have several irons in the fire, working on a few different projects. This keeps me busy, as I wait for parts to arrive for other projects. Hopefully there is a little something for everyone.
As always, if you have any comments, questions or suggestions feel free to comment, shoot me an email (jayandrew338@gmail.com) or check us out on Facebook. Thanks for subscribing!
This week has been a busy week for me, and while I was able to make some progress on the projects, I haven’t been able to do a whole lot else. So if there doesn’t seem to be as much of a variety of posts, this would be why.
Fair warning, we in the United States are moving into the Holiday Season. All sorts of chaos ensues during this time of year, and that usually makes money tight, and time short. As a result many of the projects I am working on will slow down. We will be rolling out several new project pages over the next few weeks, some of these will be related to shooting/gun smithing, others will be unrelated to the hobby, but are projects that I am undertaking for work.
Given that the projects maybe slow, I’ll be working on more articles that focus on the manufacturing side of ammunition development and production.
This past week we made some more progress on getting the gremlins out of the VZ-58. Here’s a few write ups on what we did, and how it improved things.
We introduced the project page for the Junk Mauser to 308 Scout Rifle, but I have yet to provide a formal introduction to that. We’ll be working through that this week. This should be an interesting project.
Do you have suggestions, comments or concerns? Shoot me an email at jayandrew338@gmail.com or check us out on Facebook!
I hope everyone has a chance to thank a Veteran today. They are truly special people who do not always receive the recognition they deserve. To those that served, thank you!
This past we were able to get out an test fire the VZ-58. Learned a few things in the process. We’re still working through some bugs with this rifle build, so expect o see a few more articles before we can call this project complete.
We continued our discussion on Variation. This time how to visualize it using simple control charts. Hopefully this article will prove beneficial in helping to understand what normal and abnormal process variation looks like.
We continue to make progress with the 3D Printer. There is still some design work left to do, but for the most part the major components have been modeled. I’ve started putting together the pieces for the frame, and we are well on our way to getting something going!
With everything we do, let us know what you think. If you have questions, comments or concerns, email me at jayandrew338@gmail.com. If you’d like to be an active member of the community head over to Facebook and like our page. Thanks for stopping by and have a good rest of the week!
It’s Monday, and it’s November. Hopefully no one is too shaken by the time change. Most of the US gains an hour in the fall, and loses one in the spring. I do appreciate the extra hour of sleep in the fall.
We kicked off this past week with continuing to look at the subject of variation. Specifically how to measure variation and its effects on production.
Despite the record setting cold here in Utah I was out in the shop and continued to work on several of the projects. The VZ-58 build is now ready for test firing. We’ll have a few write ups on that coming up this week. For now here’s the last few things we had to do to get ready.
I totally messed up single point cutting the threads on the Draw Die Housing, I ended up having to restart the whole project, but I learned a few things. Everything is written up here.
The 3D Printer build goes strong. Parts are on order, I’ve been itching to finish the design to the point where I can begin to really get into fabrication. Here’s the little I’ve been able to do so far.
As always, thanks for visiting the page, if you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or concerns shoot me an email at jayandrew338@gmail.com. Join the conversation and check us out on my Facebook page The Ballistic Assistant. If you enjoy what you see here, share us with your friends.
It’s the last Monday in October. Boy has this year flown by.
Last week was a busy week for me, we’ve been working on the design evaluation and redesign of the 3D printer before we start making chips. Here’s a write up covering that:
For those who are interested more in the manufacturing of ammunition, we kicked off a series of write ups on Variation. This one is an introduction to much of the terminology and measurements use to quantify variation within a data set.
A few months ago I built some tooling for my bullet swage press. I’m was not happy with how rough some of it turned out, so I am rebuilding the tooling so it has a little more polished look. I’ve shared the design, and my build process here.
Thanks for taking the time to subscribe. You may have noticed there’s a lot of frying pans in the fire, which is good. It allows me to work on a few different things while I wait for parts to arrive.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions regarding the website feel free to reach out. My email is jayandrew338@gmail.com, but you can also check us out at The Ballistic Assistant Facebook page.
Good Monday Morning! Hard to believe we are almost through October!
We have had a busy week. I’ve been able to get a lot of work done on the VZ-58 Build. I am at the point where I am waiting on some parts to come in. As I get those parts in I’ll continue to share how that build is going. We are on the tail end of things and I am anxious to get out an put some rounds down range!
Since we are wrapping up on the VZ-58 I will be kicking off a few more projects. These are projects that have sat on the back burner for a few years. I’ll be working on them as time and money allows. You’ll find these projects under the projects menu on the home page.
There’s been a lot of focus on the VZ and other projects, but I do not want that to detract from the main theme of the site, looking at internal ballistics. I’ve debated on several ways to try and kick this off, here’s what I came up with as a general overview.
If you’d like to know the general process from load conception to product release, this is the article for you. This will also introduce the testing that is conducted as part of the Load Development Process. There will be more Write Ups on each test later, so look at this as an introduction.
All of the write ups that pertain to developing a load for the commercial market will be found under this menu option:
Thanks again for subscribing! If you haven’t already join the conversation over at Facebook. Our page can be found here. As always if you have an corrections, concerns or questions feel free to email me at Jayandrew338@gmail.com.
If you have read the previous article you will know that I pressed the receiver on the barrel, and I mentioned there were some issues. Here’s the the problem and what I ended up doing to fix it. Hopefully you won’t run into this on your build but if you do, hopefully you are able to avoid the pitfalls I ran into.
When I pressed the receiver onto the barrel I had installed the bolt, the locking lugs, and the Go Headspace gage. What I didn’t realize is that the lugs we not fully locked. This resulted pressing in the barrel too deep. When the bolt was closed the locking lugs dropped but only about 1/16″ of an inch. The issue became apparent when I installed the bolt carrier. It would not close all the way.
This is how far the bolt carrier would close, this is not what we want.
I don’t have any dykem on hand, so I used a sharpie to check the lug engagement. At this point my assumption was that reason the bolt was not closing all the way, was the locking lugs we not dropping into place.
The “Rub Marks” are the extend of the lug engagement.
At the time it seem reasonably that only a little material needed to be removed from the receiver to get the lugs to fully drop into place. I had hoped that a little polishing would be all it would take to resolve the issue.
The two surfaces circled in blue are where the locking lugs drop into the receiver. This is where I has hoped a little polishing would help drop the lugs into place and allow the bolt to close.
I worked the stone across the contact points regularly checking my progress. There was no change. So I did the next logical thing, got a better abrasive to remove material a little faster.
The lug file has to safe edges and a very fine cut.
I carefully ran a few swipes across the receiver. I wanted to remove as little material as possible and get the action to close. There was no progress made. At this point I stepped back and reassessed what I was doing. Once the material is removed, it is very hard to put back. With this receiver costing ~$440 I didn’t want to risk permanently damaging the receiver.
I slowly worked the bolt back and forth and tried to determine where the hold up was. Well I figured it out, and it had nothing to do with the locking lugs. The bolt face was making contact with the breech of the barrel bringing the whole assembly to a stop. Yes, we could insert the headspace gages and we would find that the Go Gage slipped in, and the No-Go gage set the bolt back a little preventing the lugs from dropping at all.
There was only one way to fix this. I had to slowly press the barrel back until the distance was correct. This was the one thing I did not really want to do. I did not have a good way to press that barrel out. What I ended up coming up with, I’m not proud of, but remember, I am doing this build for myself and not for anyone else.
This honestly made me nervous the whole time I was doing it.
Slowly applied pressure until I was able to observe the barrel move, took it out of the fixture and check the action.
The action fully close with the Go gage inserted. This is how it should have turned out the first time around. The action will not close on a No-Go gage. The Go Gage is sitting in the foreground.
Luckily my approach worked and by pushing the barrel out I was able to resolve the issue. The issue was never with the locking lugs and I regretted filing on the receiver. However I checked the action, and when a Go gage is inserted the action is tight with no play. I am confident that my ill advised attempt to stone/file down the lugs did not do any lasting damage.
This is how the locking lugs should look when the bolt is close and they have dropped in place.
Since I altered the lugs in the receiver I checked to see how evenly the contact was between the left and right lug. Again I used a Sharpie to mark up the lug and check for wear.
Based on this measurement the left lug has more contact then the right lug. You can see almost all of the lug is contacting the inside of the receiver.
In this case I stoned the left lug to bring it down and allow the right lug to make better contact with the receiver. The even support between lugs will equalize stress on the receiver and the lugs which will help reduce wear. I suspect these components will wear together and be mated during the “Break In Period” still I wanted to see if I could get it a little closer.
The lugs after a little work was done on the receiver.
I felt that I was able to make a bit of a difference. Plus I was able to polish up the surface, and hopefully that will reduce the potential for galling.
As I stated when I began this write up. This isn’t the ideal thing to do, had I not made the mistake that I did, we could have skipped all this together. However since I made the mistake, I suspect that others may too. This is how I corrected it.
The Ballistic Assistant has surpassed 1100 views! Last week I was just excited to get past 500. Thank you to everyone who’s been reading an enjoying the content. I hope it has been insightful and useful to you.
A few things of note;
I removed the Consulting Page from the site in order to not run afoul of a few forum rules that do not allow for commercial advertisement. Right now I feel it’s more important to build content and let people know of the website then to try and generate income.
I began EMT Classes to get my EMT Basic License. Here in Milford, Utah we have an all volunteer service. This service is paid, and while it’s not much, the pay I receive will be dedicated to maintaining the website, and funding the projects.
At the request of one of our readers I published a write up on how to use QuickLOAD for load development. If you want to see how close QuickLOAD is to real world testing, I’ve included the data in the write up.
We are about 1/2 through the VZ-58 Build. At this point I am beginning to look forward to see what the next firearm build is going to be. I am considering an Israeli FAL, or a AR 45 PCC. Is there a build you’d like to see? Let me know!
If you haven’t already, check us out on Facebook. We’d love to have discussions over the site content, and hear reader suggestions. Click here for our page.
Have we made errors or mistakes? I’m the writer, editor, and site manager, so I am bound to make lots of mistakes. Let me know! Shoot me an email at jayandrew338@gmail.com.
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