While going through some of my old collection of metalworking links, I found a link I don't think I ever saw before: an encyclopedic page on the M1 Garand including lots of details on the manufacture. They had things like this four headed milling machine that milled four receivers at a time. It's all about getting more parts cut for every movement of the hand wheels on the mill.
One of the most interesting innovations they had was a Blanchard lathe, named after inventor Thomas Blanchard, who worked at Springfield Armory for five years in the early 1800s.
He also invented machines used for building guns, a barrel lathe and a machine often called a "Blanchard Lathe" used to copy arbitrary 3-D shapes. His initial design, patented in 1819, could quickly and accurately cut new gun stocks based on a 3-D model. It did not require a skilled woodworking operator. That's a 1930s Blanchard Lathe operating in the second picture below. Over 110 years since its invention, and still an excellent tool!I interpret the 3D model in "quickly and accurately cut new gun stocks based on a 3-D model" as using an existing carved stock as the master and cutting copies of it. I believe this is the referenced picture.
This machine is holding six stocks in various stages of machining, which included vacuuming up the chips. The stock could be inlet on this machine.
That top level page links to a wealth of information on the guns, along with various kinds of ammunition, sources for making your own Garand, and information on other guns from the WWII era. I'm not a military collector per se, but I admire the innovations here. Before computers were driving manufacturing machines, geniuses were figuring out how to speed production and improve quality with what they had.
When my Dad was selling machine tools he sold either an attachment or a complete machine called a "Tracer" that did the same thing. You'd load it with a template or an actual machined part, and it would duplicate many-at-once.
ReplyDeleteBeen about 55 years, so sorry if that description is a bit fuzzy!
I love the M-1 Garand.
ReplyDeleteYoutube's Keith Fenner / Turn Wright Machine Works has a 16"-ish lathe with a hydraulic tracer attachment. Sometimes he will make a sheet steel template on his CNC plasma cutter, then use it with the lathe tracer.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! Thank you for sharing this.
ReplyDeleteIn 1966 when I was in the military I had a friend who was on a military marksman team and had free access to the gun range and ammo. He fired 100,000 rounds through one of his military M1's. He said it was still as accurate as when it was new.
ReplyDeleteOne of the recent books on Colt had a section in the back on special machine tools invented by them- all sorts of cool machines.
ReplyDeleteA Garand is a wonderful tool- mine is not super accurate in the sense of a three shot sub moa group, but very consistent in that it will reliably put an 8 round clip into a 2 1/2" 100 yd group using the Greek HXP M2 ball. Fulton Armory did a nice trigger job, on a Garand ,one just pops out the trigger group and mails it in. Easy and reasonable on cost.
Considering the likely uses for it, the M1 certainly did the job. Probably could have been used another 20 years except for the pressures that come from the long logistics train and the post-WWII pressure for everyone to adopt the newer NATO 7.62x51.
DeleteIf you can think of the name of that book, send it along. Sounds like a fun read.
There are two pictures of M-1's after the US phasing them out, that I consider iconic- one is of a Korean Infantryman taking shelter behind a Vietnamese grave stone , holding a Garand, the other, an African Tribesman cradling an M-1 while crouched on a ridge overlooking his cattle.
DeleteThe Wadsworth Antheneum in Hartford has a superb Colt collection, many one off prototypes, etc. They do not display it often, my guess is the PC police do not like it. I think the book referred to is of some parts of that collection.
Here is a short video of a copy lathe- multiple spindles and a rotary cutterhead for each spindle, tracing a 3D template.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJJESeqhgfY
I have seen single spindle copy lathes but not multiple spindles. The copy attachments I've seen, kinda like the router pantographs you see in lettering machines for things like name badges, aren't uncommon and I recall someone making one for his Sherline.
DeleteWhat I found interesting about that video was the shape sure didn't look like a rotationally symmetric part to me and I wouldn't think of doing it on a lathe. This machine seemed to turn both the work and cutting tool. The work turned slowly, like the rotary table on the mill, and the cutter seemed to be going really fast.
The buzz these days is horizontal machining centers which combine the movements of both a lathe and mill - rotating the work or the tool as necessary.