Remington 9 mm recall

EIEIO is what he screamed when the high voltage bit him.

At one time I had a 12 gauge single shot pistol made in one of these "back-woods gun shops" in N. Thailand. The shop where it was made had a drill press, a pedestal grinder, an AC welder, an abrasive "cut off" machine, and a couple of guys working there.

The pistol didn't look that bad, fired when you pulled the trigger and I once killed a snake with it so I guess that it served the purpose it was made for.

N. Thailand? I spent a year at NKP. 1970 phil kangas

Eli Whitney and his interchangeable parts is greatly exaggerated. Nice idea but like automobiles and airplanes it had to wait for technology to catch up.

I'm not sure they've figured out how to make a 1911 that doesn't require some fiddling yet. As I understand it Springfield Armory's price structure depends on how much fitting and tuning they do agter getting the raw parts from Brazil.

Ford'd Flivver is another museum piece. He lost interest after the test pilot was killed. Too bad. A little more perserverance and they might have come up with something like the Ercoupe. That had DNA from the Stout Division. Light aircraft always eluded Ford.

No argument there and it's something governments would rather not think about. After all, designs like the Sten could be turned out by a well equipped bicycle shop. All the furor about 3D printing ignores some basic facts.

According to a very sharp ME I worked with a zillion years ago, WW2 was the catalyst. When you had to save the 6-32 screws that held on a transmitter cover with that unit because the screws from a supposedly identical unit from another vendor wouldn't fit, you got the idea it would be less hassle if they did. Just repeating his opinion.

Which still hurt less than when the mule kicked him through the side of his barn. :)

It didn't have to wait long. His less-publicized contemporary Simeon North invented that technology.

"North is now generaIly credited with the invention of the milling machine-the first entirely new type of machine invented in America and the machine that, by re-placing filing, made interchangeable parts practical."

Early production milling machines could generate not only flats but surfaces with arbitrary curvature in two axes, one from the lathe-turned profile of the cutter and the other from a cam that raised and lowered the work as it passed under the spindle.

There was still the problem that parts changed size and shape after heat-treating and required honing or grinding to fit. You can still see that today on lathe chucks with matched and numbered jaws, and bearing size codes on crankshafts.

-jsw

Heavy aircraft gave him trouble too. Lindbergh's first task during WW2 was helping Ford figure out how to mass-produce B-24s to aircraft tolerances.

That article only mentions him. There are more details in his "Wartime Journals".

-jsw

War production issues also prompted the US, Canada and Britain to finally settle on a common definition for the inch.

-jsw

I can only sympathize with you. I spent about six months there in 1972 and the only memorable thing about it was I got to see one of those giant catfish :-)

But the 12 gauge pistol was made near Udorn.

Issue 1911's, or at least the one the Air Force had before they issued the .38's , had completely interchangeable parts. I've seen the Armorers strip a batch of 50 of the things, throw everything in a pot of solvent, slosh them around and just grab parts and out them back to gather.

The Springfield guns are likely closer fitting than an issue 1911 that rattles when you shake it :-)

Eli Whitney and his interchangeable parts is greatly exaggerated. Nice idea but like automobiles and airplanes it had to wait for technology to catch up.

I'm not sure they've figured out how to make a 1911 that doesn't require some fiddling yet. As I understand it Springfield Armory's price structure depends on how much fitting and tuning they do agter getting the raw parts from Brazil.

=============================================================== {Ed]

Yes, from what I've heard, and I really don't get it. I'm not covering that kind of metalworking these days so I'm not inclined to go ask the gun manufacturers what this is all about. But it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

There's a lot of history here, starting with the fact that making guns involves a lot of milling, and milling was only a roughing process until the

1930s. Even after that, it wasn't capable of precision on the order of tenths (ten-thousandths of an inch, for non-machinists) until we had closed-loop CNC, starting, in a big way, around 1980. And you need that kind of accuracy and repeatability to overcome hand-fitting of gun parts.

So hand-fitting is a tradition that was a necessity until recently. But it's not a necessity anymore. If they need repeatable turning accuracy to 50 millionths of an inch (roughly one mcrometer), they can buy it off the shelf. If they need the same in milling, to 100 millionths -- one tenth -- they can buy that off the shelf, too.

Something is still going on that a good manufacturing reporter should dig into. The gun magazines are not capable -- they don't know manufacturing that well. And it doesn't show up as a *general* subject in the metalworking press, because their focus is on higher levels of tech. They may report on one specific development or another in gun manufacture, but not on gun-industry behavior and gun-industry technology. I'm covering fabricating rather than machining these days, so I haven't gone there myself.

It didn't have to wait long. His less-publicized contemporary Simeon North invented that technology.

"North is now generaIly credited with the invention of the milling machine-the first entirely new type of machine invented in America and the machine that, by re-placing filing, made interchangeable parts practical."

Early production milling machines could generate not only flats but surfaces with arbitrary curvature in two axes, one from the lathe-turned profile of the cutter and the other from a cam that raised and lowered the work as it passed under the spindle.

There was still the problem that parts changed size and shape after heat-treating and required honing or grinding to fit. You can still see that today on lathe chucks with matched and numbered jaws, and bearing size codes on crankshafts.

-jsw

==================================================== [Ed]

Yeah, that was "selective assembly," and that's disappearing, too, as repeatability improves in most machining processes.

I guess that is where the SKS and AK-47 comes in. They are loose enough that they will function most all the time and not that critical like the AR-15 and many others are. Might not be near as accurate, but will go 'bang' every time.

I guess that is where the SKS and AK-47 comes in. They are loose enough that they will function most all the time and not that critical like the AR-15 and many others are. Might not be near as accurate, but will go 'bang' every time.

============================================================ [Ed]

That was a core concept behind the AK-47. Kalashnikov's idea was that it should fire with mud, and even some sand, in the action.

I've always wondered about the 1911 in that regard, too. Mine was a military-issue gun made in 1941. It' been accurized, once in the '50s and again in the late '60s, but it's obvious that the gunsmith took up a lot of clearances to make it shoot straight.

At least by WWII it had progressed past the point where Weiland the Smith cut hus screws by hand with a file and hardened up a few for taps to match.

The world would be a better place if the early Christians had followed Marcion's lead: discard the tribal mythology of the old and edit the Jewish influences out of the new.