Broken rifles? Don't bin them...bring them back to life! (Tutorial)

Hi Folks,

This is my first attempt at a tutorial, so please be kind....   If you are like me, you probably have a pile of these in your collection:



What to do?

Myself, I hate throwing vintage items away, especially when they have potential to be used again.  For this tutorial I decided to start with the standard M16 rifle.  

For this operation I used the following tools:   Soldering iron with fine tip, glue gun (purchased for $2.00 at a discount store) drill with small bit (7/34th or appropriate) some left over black epoxy spray paint, pliers and some 1/8th or 3.16mm aluminum tube from a local hobby shop ($3.00).  Three tubes come in the package, enough to do several rifles.  




First step is to clean the rifle (as you will be painting it later on).  After this, plug in both the soldering iron and the glue gun in order to have them nice and hot when you are ready.  

Take your tubing and determine how long you want the barrel piece to be, measure and cut off.  Use either pliers or hacksaw, if using pliers, shape the end you have cut off.  hacksaw or dremel is better to get clean ends.  remember when you measure that the tube needs to be longer than the desired barrel length.
 

Then take hot soldering iron and melt a hole in the end the rifle where the barrel will fit in.  ONLY MELT A SMALL OPENING.. I can't stress this enough.  Then use a small drill bit to hone out and gently lengthen the hole.  

Insert tube into rifle to test fit.


This is what the end should look like.  

Once proper fit is achieved,  fill hole with hot glue from glue gun.


Position while glue is still hot and allow it to set.

Quick spray with paint and you have...


Perfect?  No, but this is something you can use in Dioramas or displays.  If you had the desire to spend some time painting this nicely your results will be better.  I did this very quickly to see if it would work and plan on fixing some more!  

Hope some of you can get some use from this..

 

Great tutorial!

Lots of good techniques.

Camojoe, over at The Trenches (It's a Link) sells injection moulded M1 rifle barrels. Using ActiionJon's technique and CamoJoe's barrels you should be able to bring your M1's back to looking like new.

I've made successful repairs to the SLR and Grease Gun barrels.
Just a suggestion when posting picture links, use the IMG link in Photobucket and the actual image will appear in the post and not just a clickable link.  

hi action jon i took the liberty of ammending your post with the direct image links
Captain Action (jay) Moderator. Great fix by the way !!!

Captian action wrote:

hi action jon i took the liberty of ammending your post with the direct image links
Captain Action (jay) Moderator. Great fix by the way !!!

I tried to do that myself but it wasn't easy using an iPad. Thanks Jay.

superb work Jon, keep it up my friend   

Great work! Look more professional than my attempt! Drilled a 1.5mm hole in the end of gun and stuck a pop rivet stem in it and coloured it in with black marker pen!

Thank you for the kind words gentlemen!

Here are a couple of close ups in 'action'

great tips and photos

A fab tip and fab pictures
Cappy you said you have repaired SLR's how do you get the muzzle shape at the end of the barrel as I have a few damaged one's that I would like to have a go at fixing

Cheers
PJ   

Great upload well done, another little job to do   

Simple, but effective trick to restore weapons to serviceability--thanks for pioneering the way!   

Simple and effective and any chance to give new life to the broken has to be done.

This must have been when i was away, great tips!