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Phila Ordnance M1 Thompson Full Auto Blank Gun


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From what I hear the M1 trigger frames are getting hard to find. I wonder if Bob would take a M1 frame without pitting (complete or stripped) as trade-in for one of the full auto blank firing guns.

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  • 3 weeks later...
I saw this gun in person at the Battle of the bulge reenactment. It looks well made and great workmanship. I did not see it shoot but if it works as good as it looks its a great deal for a blank gun.
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  • 5 months later...

Had a need to take the frame apart on my Phila. Ord. blank gun since the last round hold open feature was not working. The fix was simple; I just milled the small tab off of the top of the trip and now everything's working perfectly. I noticed that all of the parts within the frame are original NOS AOC and S -marked. Also original NOS is the butt stock, pistol grip, pilot rod, front sight, and buffer.

 

Bob supplies an original 20 or 30 rd. mag with the gun.

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  • 3 weeks later...
I was looking over my friends gun and i was wondering what the small pins are in the receiver in the area where the lower and upper meet? I am thinking some kind of pin to strengthen the thin areas? Just curios, dan
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I was looking over my friends gun and i was wondering what the small pins are in the receiver in the area where the lower and upper meet? I am thinking some kind of pin to strengthen the thin areas? Just curios, dan

 

I notice that the walls of the blank gun's receiver bolt cavity are thicker all the way around than on an original M1A1 TSMG. My guess is that these pins and holes prevent the receiver pocket from being milled out and enlarged, and were added to help secure BATFE approval as a non-gun. Hope Bob B. weighs in on this one.

MVC-086S.JPG

Edited by TSMGguy
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You are correct. The blank gun bolt is slightly narrower than an original

bolt. The ATF would not allow a bolt pocket that could easily be machined

to finished dimension. If you could do this it would be as if the blank gun

receiver was a 99% machined receiver.

In addition to the bolt pocket being narrower, the front wall is thicker. This

is so it is impossible to use an original bolt. If you ground down a bolt so that it

would fit in the pocket the bolt hesd would not reach far enough to fire a cartridge.

So the pins you see are what I call "anti-machining" pins. They are hardened

steel pins and cannot be machined even with tungsten carbide.

In addition there are tungsten carbide pins where you can't see them

elsewhere in the assembly so it cannot be machined, hacksawed, or chop-sawed.

The whole design was years in the making and the final version is the

third one I sent to ATF.

The blank gun is so realistic the ATF approval letter describes it as a

"machine gun" but that it is not regulated by ATF and is not a firearm.

My understanding is that I have received a patent for this design I will

know for sure in a week or two.

 

Bob/Philly O

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  • 1 month later...

Just a post to say how pleased I am with my Phila. Ordnance M1A1 blank gun. It's so realistic, beautifully made, and true to the originals. It's been fun to hand it to others with no explanation and watch the fact that it's a blank gun dawn on them. The smiles just get bigger and bigger. I enjoy it just as much as any firearm I own. It can be left out of the safe and enjoyed, since $ five figures are not lost if it's stolen.

 

The pic is of a batch of blank gun bolts in production in the P.O. shop. Note their fidelity to the originals. They have the second sear notch so the safety can be set to lock the bolt closed:

IMG_8037.jpg

Edited by TSMGguy
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  • 4 months later...

Was shooting my Phila. Ord. M1A1 blank gun again just yesterday, inside of a large enclosed hangar on our local general aviation airport. The gun put smiles on several faces! The first knowledgeable shooter to examine the blank gun closely noticed its full auto nature, but didn't realize it shoots blanks only. He was puzzled over its markings.

 

You could probably hear those blanks all over the airport! We explained the noise by saying that we were doing some riveting on the frame of a car that's being restored in the same hangar.

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