BASS6621

Thanks for the confirmation. The "4" font was definitely different between the two halves so I was suspicious of a restamp. My Savage has the same font style. Also as noted the front sight and post selector/safety were suspect as well.

Does the font style look correct on this lower to match the upper? http://www.autoweapons.com/photos07/jan/1666.html

I've shot thousands of rounds of Wolf. I like the .45 in either lacquer or polymer coating. Runs well in both the Savage 1928A1 and in the M10. I swore by the 9mm lacquer coated, but the latest 9mm with the polymer coating has been inconsistent; too much flash out the ejection port, sometime LOTS of burning powder ejected. http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/dry.gif Some light loads as well; Not a good thing in f/a. http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/ohmy.gif I think I may pass on any more 9mm, but will stick with the .45.

Had a chance to shoot that Sten the other day and all was well until the stock separated from the tube while it was on full in the middle of a burst!!! http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/ohmy.gif http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/blink.gif http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/unsure.gif So much for that firing session. Stock (skeleton model) appeared to have too much slack which allowed it to pivot against the recoil spring cap, allowing it to disengage from the receiver. Tapped the little tab on the stock (that goes up into the trigger guard) with a hammer and that seem to tighten things up considerably. Also swapped out the safety as it kept falling out of the "A" setting back to "R". It was missing one of the spring loaded balls. Anyway, interesting gun. We shall see how things go at a subsequent session. BASS6621

21 smoker, Thanks for the response. Always good to have someone else confirm something like that as being within the norm. Best Regards, BASS6621

Looking to buy a Taylor Mfg tube gun Sten MkII. It's a nice looking piece of work; haven't shot it yet, but at least it looks good. One question is the housing seems to rotate around the circumference of the tube a fair amount even with mag in. I know there needs to be some rotation to facilitate field stripping, etc. All seems seated (the spring loaded rod does go into the hole on the barrel jacket). Just seems though that there is a fair amount of movement, even with a mag in the mag well. Is this normal? Thanks, BASS6621

I'm coming up on 120 days PENDING (December 17th) for a STEN MK II. Am still hoping I'll have before the New Year.... we shall see.... BASS6621

Looks like they took an M1/M1A1 receiver and welded the cocking channel (you can see the weld on the closeup up by the RPB stamping) and then milled out the top end to accept a 21/28 style cocking knob. I suspect there's a modified M1A1 bolt in there rather than a 21/28 style with actuator and Blish. It also looks like they just "lightened" the receiver/lower at the same time by milling away the ledge in several spots as you can see the contiguous mill marks. Mated it to a '28 barrel (or maybe even machined some fins into a M1 barrel) and then add some threads for a suppressor (kind of thin threads though). Interesting modification. While not at all traditional, I like the looks of it. It does need cut outs for a drum though :-) BASS6621

For what it's worth, I was reading Jim Ballou's book on the BAR (good read). In it there is a section about NESA (New England Small Arms) which was a conglomeration of a group of New England manufacturers who made the BAR during WWII. I don't have the book handy, but what was interesting were some of the notations in the book regarding NESA's BAR contracts. Some of the contract markings were of the form "NE-n". (IIRC NE-9). In checking my Reising 20 rounders, they are marked "NE-2". Are "NE-n" mags NESA manufactured and just incremented to show the contract number? I don't recall Frank's book going into much detail here but it has been a while since I last picked it up.

I did have my Savage 28A1's original red buffer disintegrate just as described above the first time I shot it. Pulled the lower off and found it had crumbled to dust; looked like old eraser shavings. Didn't find this out until I went to clean it. No failures of any type were experienced during that session. The ammo I was using the first time out was Winchester. I use .45 Wolf all the time (and 9mm in other SMGs) and have never had an issue, but YMMV.

gijive, Thank you for the information on the older style Stembridge blanked barrels. I was not aware of this and will look for it on some of the older movies. I have seen several actors trying to cycle their blanked TSMGs in movies and will have to look for the flat spots. Wasn't at all thinking you were saying my blanked bbl wasn't original (in fact, I would probably say it was not the original bbl). Just wanted some clarification, if possible, on which TSMGs Gordon mentioned that might have been rebarreled with NAC bbls. I believe his focus is primarily the Colt guns, but was wondering if the rebarreling had been done to all the non-M1/M1A1s TSMGs at SGR. BASS6621

re: 'The Stembrdige Thompsons, according to Gordon Hergistad, were all rebarreled with current made NAC finned barrels for the movie "Dick Tracy." ' My Stembridge Savage 28A1 came blanked with what I believe to be a non-NAC mil. barrel. Is Gordon referring to the Colt '21 and '28 TSMGs? How would you differentiate a NAC barrel from a mil. production barrel; Other than the presence of the "s" for a Savage bbl, how could you tell it was NAC production? I have to dig ithe old bbl out and check for other marks as I still have it. I believe it does have witness marks, but can't remember if it had any other marks. FWIW, my barrel was blanked by a screw (w/ an allen wrench socket) that had an orifice. End of the bbl was internally threaded and the screw was threaded into the rifling. This was completely hidden by the compensator. Also the Blish lugs had been removed. BASS6621

SecondAmend, Could be, but I think it's probably not a proof mark. Those "seem" to be well established as "P" stamps or pin prick punch marks. Could just be part of the specs of manufacture, but I wonder if there is some consistentency in it's placement. Why do I say that? When I got my SGR TSMG, the blanked barrel had it's witness mark out of alignment with the receiver mark (comp/front sight was aligned). The replacement barrel I put on it initially had the witness mark go to the same space/distance from the receiver witness mark as the blanked barrel witness mark that had been on it during its movie life. Not trying to draw any conclusions from my limited experience, but I find that interesting as it suggested some limited consistency. Maybe I need to take some measurements on some of the pulled and NIW mil barrels I have with regards to the placement of witness mark in reference to the start of the barrel thread to see if there is some consistency. BASS6621

Arthur, . That's good info re Cutts and barrel replacement, thanks. I still have a question though after this discussion. Can someone explain to me why alignment marks are found on new-in-wrap mil surp barrels? Every new surplus barrel I've examined always has them. If they're are not used for alignment (to indicate when the torque and/or h/s is about right), what are they used for? Thanks, BASS6621

LIONHART, No, my SGR AK is f/a. It's a Steyr Maadi conversion done by Pearl Manufacturing for the movie and is one of the two made up for "Robert". Beat to heck externally, but runs like a clock and has all the "kill" marks cut into the wood. BTW, I had to laugh when it was announced that the op to capture Saddam Hussein was called "Operation Red Dawn" and the two target sites were "Wolverine 1" and "Wolverine 2". Someone had a sense of humor. :-) BASS6621

gijive, Agreed, it would be difficult to tie the gun to any particular movie. Like I said, it gives me some flexibility to dream of what might have been. I did the rebarreling job a few years ago. Didn't really have any access to Doug R. at that time (he was frequently out of the country) and this excellent forum wasn't around then. I even had to borrow the tools to do the job as unfortunately his excellent rebarreling wrench and receiver fixture were available (I would buy those tools today if I could). I took the rebarreling route I did based on direct observation between different demilled receiver parts and different barrels. Suffice to say I removed, with a flat hand file, no more than .01 inches from the collar by rotating the barrel by hand. This was fairly time consuming; taking me the better part of two evenings to "hand lathe" the barrel. No metal was removed from threads in the area surrounding the chamber, so structurally, there should be no loss of strength. Had I been removing metal from there I am sure the strength of the barrel would have been negatively impacted. With regards to the comp alignment? No need to realign as the front sight lines up and is vertical. Headspace was fine as well; I've got all the measurements written down in a journal I made of this effort, but I recall it being right in the middle of the acceptable range. Without any torque measurements at my disposal, I took a shot. If there is a torque setting I would like to know the number in the event I have to do this again. Maybe I just got lucky on this, but I did pretty well. The TSMG was the first, and only gun, I have ever rebarreled. Truly a labor of love for me and the gun has never failed me in any way since I swapped in a real barrel. It was a joy to see that Savage reborn to fire live rounds again. Thanks for the confirmation Gordon Herigstad had been doing some research on the SGR TSMGs. I thought I had heard that at one time, but wasn't sure. I am aware of the location of 3 other SGR TSMGs in addition to mine (1 28A1, 1 M1A1 and 1 Colt 21). Maybe I'll drop him an email and see if he has any insight he can share. BASS6621

Jim, I purchased my Savage 28A1 from LMO (Long Mountain Outfitters) when they closed out the Stembridge gun rental collection (like in '98 or '99 can't remember right now). Lots of choice pieces including a good selection of TSMGs (all variants). Many blank adapted like my TSMG. Wish I had more money back then, I would have bought a few more things. Some of the NFA guns they sold off came with a COA (Certificate Of Authenticity) citing which movie they were featured in. My "Red Dawn" AK has that COA as it was used in that movie, but not the TSMG. Apparently only some of the guns, which include items like the Lewis guns used in "King Kong" to M60's used by Schwartzenegger and Stallone, were tracked back to specific movies. IIRC, there was some effort underway to try to tie the TSMGs that were sold off back to specific movies or to get additional history on them. I don't know of any other details on that effort or if it is still ongoing. So unfortunately I really don't know which movies it may have been in. That gives me lots of "flexibility" so I can watch movies like "Battleground", "Back to Bataan", "To Hell and Back" or "Them" and say to my wife... "Look! There's my gun!" ... You never know... I might be right one of those times. ;-) BASS6621

ws556, When I did a rebarrel job on my Stembridge movie gun a couple years ago I didn't use a torque wrench. All I had was some of Doug Richardson's tools (loaned to me by another TSMG owner) and a demilled '28 kit with the barrel still attached. The index mark on both the barrel and receiver nose of the kit lined up. I found once I took the barrel off the receiver stub and then hand tightened it back after cleaning the threads, it would hand tighten to where the barrel index mark was about .10 inch from the index mark on the receiver stub. When I mounted that take off replacement bbl to my Stembridge gun, I found it was about .20 inches out of index line alignment. I removed enough metal from the barrel shoulder (IIRC maybe about .01) to get the barrel index mark to be within .10 inches of lining up just. When I finally tightened it, the index mark and receiver mark aligned _perfectly_. I did use Doug R's headspace gauge to check h/s; you'll need a set of feeler gauges to really do it right with the gauge. All was within acceptable parameters so I was good to go. Anyway, that barrel has been on the gun for several K rounds now. Never a misfeed or stoppage. My method was somewhat unscientific (save for breaking out the calipers for measuring), but it worked very well. My advice when removing the barrel, use a fairly long breaker bar (maybe 2-3 feet). You may need the leverage to get the old barrel off the receiver. However when re-barreling, use a short (maybe a foot long) bar. You'll have a better "feel" when you go to tighten the replacement barrel in the receiver. You'll also be less likely, in my opinion, to over torque the barrel. Practice a little if you can on a old barrel and receiver nose to get the feel for it. Hope that helps! BASS6621

I picked up a '28 parts kit several years ago. All the parts in the kit were Savage manufacture (S marked), but the lower frame itself. This has no acceptance stamp, GEG or "S" mark. It only has "No 3771" uniformly stamped on the buttstock rail, very much like a Colt. I've wondered (hoped) if this might perhaps be a Colt '21 frame. Is there any other way I can tell? Thanks