Webley Whiting Project

[ccdjg]

Hi
I have sent you a pm can you please let me know if you have received it.
Thanks
TomK

Hi Tom. Thanks for reminding me to look at my notifications, something I always forget to do. You now have PM. Cheers, John.

[grahamrob]

John,can you start to make two of everything,then I will take the spare off your hands,will look forward to shooting it this summer,seriously well done so far, Graham.

[Hollowpoint]

Looks great so far! keep up the good work.

[ccdjg]

Webley Whiting Update

Since I last posted I have been working on the trigger unit and the barrel of the Whiting. The trigger is interesting as it is made up of two parts – the trigger itself which rotates on a pivot pin in the usual way, and a secondary pressure transfer arm which is separately pivoted inside a slot in the trigger. When the trigger is pulled back the secondary arm, which is held back by a pin and is under spring pressure, is made to rotate upwards, so pressing on the sear and releasing the piston. The tricky part is getting the location of the pins just right so that everything functions smoothly within the confined space of the frame. This picture shows the two components separated, http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psdu6wurtn.jpg and here are the two assembled together http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...pstcybjwnt.jpg
Luckily making the two parts went without hitch and when the trigger unit was inserted into the frame and secured by the pins it worked fine first time and I was able to cock and fire the gun with no problem – although you have to remember I am only using a very weak main spring at this stage, as nothing has been hardened and tempered yet.

Giving a big sigh of relief that the rather fiddly trigger project had gone without mishap I then turned to the barrel project. For this I had already decided not to attempt to deep drill my own barrel from steel bar as I doubt very much I could do it with any chance of success. I have bored out a short barrel from scratch before, it was the one in these threads http://www.airgunbbs.com/showthread....blueing+barrel ; http://www.airgunbbs.com/showthread....hlight=bellows

I didn’t have access to special long drill bits and fancy pumped cutting fluids that the professionals use, and I was only able to achieve boring the hole by drilling halfway from both ends and keeping my fingers crossed that the two holes met in the middle. This was a slow process but exciting at the break through stage, and at that point I knew how the channel tunnel diggers must have felt. Although that particular exercise worked well, the Whiting barrel is longer and beyond the range of my longest drills. So I decided to use an old .177 air rifle barrel that I had and to cut it to size and taper it slightly as in the Whiting patent drawings. Luckily quite a few years ago I picked up a bunch of old barrels for a song from Nottingham Arms Fair ( does anyone remember that fair? – it was always good for airguns and it was a sad day when it ceased to be). They were pretty battered and rusty and I had no idea at the time what I was going to use them for but it seemed too good an offer to pass up. So I was in the fortunate position to be able to select one of the better ones for the Whiting without having to dig into my pocket. Here is the barrel concerned, from an HW35 and stamped “LINCOLN”. After cutting it to a few inches longer than the final size needed to be http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps0vwncrnn.jpg
I then taper turned it in my lathe.
Taper turning is something else I had never done before so it was back to the books for a while and then I was ready to give it a go. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psbdwlo9hf.jpg
Fortunately the tapering went OK and I was then able to turn down two stepped shoulders on the end of the barrel, one for the barrel securing thread and the smaller one to receive the barrel sealing washer. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psybczjvdn.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...pszcczopio.jpg

The end of the main frame was then drilled and threaded to receive the barrel. This picture shows the breech after fitting the barrel and shows the annular recess which will eventually take the leather sealing washer. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psjczgjfht.jpg


So this is the current state of play, with all the components that I have made to date loosely placed together. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psea6muprj.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psvhkdqtb3.jpg

At last it is beginning to look a bit like the Whiting pistol and the main things left to do on the engineering side are the trigger guard, the sights and last but not least the detent closure system. Something tells me that the detent is going to be the biggest challenge yet, as one false move could spoil the main frame. You can see the holes for the detent already drilled into the frame in the third picture back. It might be a while before the next update if things go badly, so I am keeping my fingers crossed.

[ccdjg]

Last time I posted I said that the main structural jobs remaining to be done were the detent breech closure, the trigger guard and the sights. I have been pretty busy off and on but progress has been made and I can now update the record as far as these tasks are concerned.

I predicted that the detent mechanism was going to give me the biggest headache and I was not wrong. After making several attempts and many minor modifications I concluded that I was never going to be able to make the system shown in the patent drawings work, probably because it required a higher degree of machining precision than I was capable of. The patent system involved two rods moving at right angles to each other, one rod having a fixed peg that rode in an angled channel in the second rod. When the second rod was pushed inwards the first rod was then forced backwards so releasing the locked cylinder housing. The whole system was spring loaded so that it returned to its original state on releasing the pressure. What tended to happen in reality was that the rods could rotate very slightly in their holes and from time to time this would make the peg dig into the channel sides and no amount of pressure would get things moving again. This resulted in total lock-up of the cylinder housing – not something you could live with. After wracking my brains for a long time I decided to abandon the “peg in a channel” idea and have inclined shoulders on both rods so that they slid over each other. That way any rotation of the rods would not cause a digging in problem. You can see the two rods here: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psq1vir9zf.jpg

To my relief this worked well, and the final detent system http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psx0qlhem4.jpg
gave a firm lock-up on snapping the cylinder housing closed, but was easily released by a slight pressure on the release button. More importantly it worked every time.

I then turned my attention to the trigger guard. Ideally this would have been made by cutting the basic shape from a steel plate but unfortunately I didn’t have any suitably sized plate so I decide to cut it from a thin piece of scrap as here http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psm08e7nxa.jpg
and here http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...pspvxktybx.jpg
and bend it to the appropriate curved shape with heat http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psevse2q8l.jpg
Along with milling the appropriate locating points this took quite a while, so I was not very pleased when I finally cut the curved piece to length and then found that I had somehow or other cut off too much. Into the bin it went, along with some choice word of farewell. Next day I had to repeat the whole process again, and I made sure this time that I stuck to old saying “measure twice and cut once” and finally got it right: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps6tf3vget.jpg

I decided to do something easy next to reduce my stress levels so I had a go at crowning the barrel. As there were no sights or other protrusions on the barrel I was able to clamp it in the lathe chuck (using copper foil to prevent the jaws marking the barrel), and then it was easy to shape the end using a file and emery paper: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...pswnkf1vpa.jpg



The rear sight plate was also straight forward with its simple V-notch, and this was screwed directly into the cylinder plug: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psotancyaw.jpg

The original patent drawings suggested that the sight plate and cylinder plug were machined as one piece, which would have presented considerable difficulties, so I adopted the route of making them as two separate entities. Apart from a countersunk screw in the sight plate there is no evidence that the two are not just one unit.

The front sight was bit trickier as it required a 2 mm channel to be milled into the end of the barrel. I am always wary about using small diameter end mills in steel as they are easy to break and not exactly cheap to replace. So I took the milling very slowly and luckily all went well and the end mill survived to be used another day: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps69btrlau.jpg
The sight plate was a snug fit in the slot and will be brazed in place permanently at the final assembly stage: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psawwuf5td.jpg


So all the functional components of the gun are now made, although there will still be some heat hardening of parts to be done, as well as the brazing the grip to the main frame.


It is interesting to compare the gun at this stage with the original prototype, as here: http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psisd0nvod.jpg
You can see that the original looks sleeker and this is because of the curved contours of the frame, something that I will have to do next. There is also the scalloping to consider, and this is a bit of a problem as I have no idea how to go about this. Any suggestions? Then there will be the lettering to consider, the chequered grips , and the final blueing. Should keep me busy for a bit longer.

[Garvin]

It's coming along nicely, John. Thanks for the update. Credit to you for coming up with a solution to the 'square peg in a square hole' detent problem (well, not quite!) that was within your capabilities. I look forward to the final pics.

[frontend loader]

Nice work.You could use a die grinder for the scalloping,worth having a lot of practice first mind.Have a look at some of the tools used to port cylinder heads.Could finish off with a small drum sander on a dremmel type tool.

[ccdjg]

Nice work.You could use a die grinder for the scalloping,worth having a lot of practice first mind.Have a look at some of the tools used to port cylinder heads.Could finish off with a small drum sander on a dremmel type tool.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into it and add it to my list of other possibilities. This is quite a critical step as if I screw it up it will ruin the look of the gun and will be irreversible. Also there is surprisingly little room to manoeuvre as far as depth goes and it would be very easy to pierce the air chamber.

[ccdjg]

Various distractions due to the warmer weather have slowed down work on the Whiting, but now at last I can report on some progress. The main structural jobs to be done when I last posted were (a) to “scallop” the frame to produce the thumbholes, (b) braze the grip frame to the main frame, and (c) make and chequer the walnut grip plates.
The scalloping posed more than a few problems, as any mistake would spoil the look of the gun and would not be reversible. Also if the scalloping went too deep the air chamber would be pierced, and there was little room for error in this respect. In the end I ground down the end of an old large drill to give the required profile for the depression, and then sharpened it. To help the drilling process the depression was first roughed out in steps using end mills, and then the shaped drill bit was used to smoothly finish off the hole.
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psdpauocgw.jpg
The process was then repeated on the other side of the frame.

Brazing (hard silver soldering) the grip frame to the main frame was successfully achieved at a dull red heat, using the method I outlined earlier in this thread. Precise location of the grip to the frame was facilitated by first making two small locating pins, which helped to hold the grip in place during the brazing process. By applying pressure to the joint during the process a very close fit was produced with virtually no braze showing round the joint.

With the grip permanently in place I was able to fine tune the length of the cocking hook lever and the shape of the hook to ensure that it worked correctly.

The grip plates were going to be made from two thin slabs of walnut that I had cut down from a block of the same, but I was not relishing the chequering of these. I have done some chequering before, and although this was successful it was a very slow process and was not good for the arthritis I am prone to get in my hands. So I looked for a short cut. After a lot of consideration I made a grooving tool from a ground down tap, using the thread profile to provide the necessary grooves. With this revolving in the lathe I could pass a piece of wood under the cutter and produce several grooves of the correct depth in one pass. Then repeating the process with the blank turned around gave the required diamond pattern. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psjezomet9.jpg

This method of course only works on a flat surface. The final shaped grip plates have curved edges so it is still necessary to do some hand chequering round the curves to complete the pattern. This is not very difficult however, as the existing grooves act as guides for the cutting.

Before making the grip plates, I experimented with other thread sizes, using ground down bolts, and you can see here that all worked well, giving me a choice of chequering size. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...pskdy8etno.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psrprv5cdh.jpg

I was able to match that used on the original Whiting prototype by using a fine threaded bolt, but I did not like the pattern very much and decided that I would use poetic licence and go for a more attractive larger size, as here http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...pscmmyqrlb.jpg
After all, I have never claimed to be trying to produce a perfect copy of the original gun. I also did not like the idea of the grip retaining screws bedding down directly into wood, so I made some countersunk brass inserts as bit of personalised bling.

With all the structural work completed I was now in a position to shape the rounded contours of the pistol and finally to polish out the numerous milling and filing marks.
The gun was then fitted together for the first time in a mechanically complete state, with a cut down Diana 2 spring in the cylinder. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psfl8aitlb.jpg

To my amazement it cocked and fired first time, although the trigger pull was excessive. This was easily remedied by removing some metal from the sear contact point.

This shot of the gun shows the shaped fore-end http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psstisxdw3.jpg
The screw you can see allows access to the spring loaded detent.

The gun itself is here compared with the original http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...psfxrvjvu3.jpg

This is the gun in the cocked state. http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q...pszgmiapsm.jpg


The gun is currently “in the white” and needs bluing, but first the lettering has to be sorted out. As I have no access to an engraving system, and the thickness of the metal between the frame surface and the underlying air chamber is too thin to take the hammering of metal stamps, I will be using a photoresist etching process. This is going to be fiddly work, as will be the bluing, and it might be a while before I get these finished. I will report again when these jobs have been completed, and I will also report details on the power and performance, and the design plusses and minuses of the pistol, as to the best of my knowledge such information has never been reported.

[Garvin]

Outstanding work, John!

[Rob M]

Just superb, thanks for sharing!

[silva]

That is very clever indeed, can't wait for it to be finished and put thro' its paces !

[Garvin]

put thro' its paces !

Or 'pigeon steps', perhaps. My understanding is that these pistols are low powered, so I'm interested to know if those Diana springs help with velocity.

I must say, the Webley Whiting design is starting to look more attractive to me since John started this project, a feeling that usually ends up with an insatiable desire to own one!

[Mark D]

Well done John - it's always nice to watch artists at work.

[RichardH]

Bizarrely I have a pantograph engraver if you have something to copy for the letters?

You are welcome to borrow it, or buy it for scrap value