Modified Drum for M1 or Commando

[deerslayer]

So I welded enough of a stick magazine onto a drum to work in the volunteer arms commando. The drums got a spacer inside so it's single feed. It was nice to see the Taiwan drum head enough spring pressure to push them up the tower and keep up with the gun.

 

https://youtu.be/v297FoMLfvU

[pitfighter]

Fun, love it - that's some dirty smoke

[emmagee1917]

I would assume the drum stops feeding when the last round leaves it . Is there dummy rounds or a plastic strip running between the drum top and the bolt ?

Chris

 

PS : I'd switch to a different brand of ammo , you seemed to have a bad primer every drum full you shot

[deerslayer]

Handloads...lol...backwards primer I didn't put any dummy rounds in it. So it leaves rounds in the stick mag...

[emmagee1917]

So when it stops you can tilt the stick slightly down , remove the back , fill her up , replace the back , wind her up , then shoot the last 10 or so from before and 40 some odd out of the drum ? Did you open up the top of the drum to allow the rounds to leave it without stripping then add a spacer to one side and allow all the rounds to be stripped from the stick's feed lip on one side only ?

Chris

[deerslayer]

It shoots a full 50, but you load 60 rounds.

First loading.. turning the rotor slightly backwards so one "finger" has a bit of tension and placed right where it will catch a round on the feed lips, I dropped rounds down from the top. In this case 10 of them. When the last round was in place the rotor held them all in position because of the tension. At that point load the drum normally. When it fires and runs out of pusher ammo, the rotor spins (all you drum shooters know this happens when a drum empties), and when it stops spinning, some of the rounds in the stick slide back into the drum as invariably a finger on the rotor won't stop perfectly on the ramp. Thus the bolt slides closed on an empty chamber and there is a couple round gap below the bolt. The spacer is on the right side (as held in the gun) so the single stack is straight up from the feed ramp. I tried double feed first as an experiment that I knew would likely fail.. And it did. Since you don't wind a Thompson drum backwards like say a ppsh drum or suomi, it's not a simple matter to create 10 dummy rounds as pushers like you see in some conversions. You could probably create two joined sets of dummy's (5 rounds each) but then there would be the problem of getting them loose from the tower.

[Burns556]

Thanks for the great write up Dan! I'm going to file that away.

[deerslayer]

Be fun to try a 1911 mag on top... For the lebman conversion.