Bringing a Colt Vickers 1918 "Balloon Buster" Back From the Dead!

[tricky9914]

Ok,

So the story begins with a friend of mine (who I will not name, because I did not ask him), who saved a few guns from California. Back in the 50's or so, a Dr. owned a collection of transferable C&R MG's out West that he let his kids play "Army" with. Though these were not DEWATS, he took it upon himself to "deactivate" the firearms so his kids could play with them without any concern for them going off, should live ammo make their way to the firearms. As I understand it, he had roughly 10 or so MG's. The deactivating of each firearm varied; some would have welded chambers, some would have parts removed etc... My friend (who is a 07 SOT) personally went to CA to retrieve the firearms once they had transferred to him.

Well, I bought a Balloon Vickers and an 08/15 aircraft gun out of the collection, but both needed work (I'll make another post about the 08/15). 

First, this particulars Colt Vickers is chambered in 11mm Gras and would have been build by Colt in 1918 (as is stamped on the barrel jacket) and sent to France. The idea was to place this Vickers onto aircraft to use them to shoot down observation balloons (hence the name "Balloon Buster"). Now those who know these firearms, know that almost all of them on the market today were "demilled" by having a very large dent placed into the side of the jacket just forward of the trunnion. This one was no exception. I don't know if they used a press or a sledge hammer, but the damage was bad... As the Vickers operates under short recoil, and the barrel needs to reciprocate while firing, the idea of denting the jacket would throw the front and rear barrel bearing surfaces out of alignment so the barrel would be "stuck" when forced into the trunnion bearing area. Think of a coke can... If you drill a hole in the bottom of the coke can perfectly aligned with the top opening and then squeeze a dent into it, the top and bottom will shift out of alignment... I supposed that was the idea here. Needless to say, once we got into it, the damage was unbelievable.

 

 

With the assistance of a good friend of mine, we got to work. We started by first attempting to remove the dent from the inside with the jacket still attached. The main objective here was to NOT use heat, as I did not want to discolor the beautiful original finish. We started by using a small metal wedge and a hammer to start tapping out the dent. We were able to make good progress, but the difficult part was the dented metal collar. With the jacket still inside, the metal was just too distorted and too strong to move back. We then decided to separate the jacket from the firearm. We had removed enough of the dent at this point to move the jacket away from the firearm. Now, in order to keep the jacket on the firearm, Colt used silver solder. Again, I did not want to use heat, so we simply tapped the jacket off the firearm. After all, half of the jacket threads were already trashed, we knew we were going to likely add additional damage to the threads, but we planned on re-filing the threads anyway so that was not an issue. After some persuasion, we got the two halves separated.

The photos above were taken about halfway through the process. We had already mostly removed the dents and at this point we were cleaning the threads. In order to remove the dents, we used a couple unconventional methods and some fabricated tools. My friend fashioned a couple jigs which were rings made the fit the inner and outer diameters of both the jacket and the ring attached to the trunnion. We used these to get a rough approximation of the shape of the two parts, which was a guide to help us get them back in round. The thread pitch is 18 per inch. We got a couple bolts from the hardware store with the same thread pitch and laid the bolts flat along the threads and used channel locks and c clamps to pry the rings back into round without further damaging the threads. We were fighting to round out the general form and also twist the metal inward or outward to get it out of the warped distortion caused by whatever dented the parts in the first place. After this, we used thread files and picks to clean the old silver solder out of the threads and reshape them. All in, this was the most cumbersome and tedious part of the repair. We stopped every step along the way to measure the diameter of each with calipers to make sure every dimension was reasonably close. As you know, if you press, pull or tap on one side of a circle, it will deform the shape somewhere else. Using the jigs to help us keep the parts in round was essential. 

By this point the two parts were relatively dent free and pretty well back in round. We had welded a pointed "spike" to a flat bar of steel to use as a shaping punch. We used this to reform the shape of the "corrugated" jacket and also lift the vent louvers back out of the jacket... We then simply used pliers to form them back down. If you look closely, you can tell which ones were repaired and which ones weren't, but from 2 or 3 feet away, you can't tell.    

At this point we were ready to get the parts back together. We quickly learned that the threads of each parts were sized to allow a gab between them... This makes sense, as the solder needed to be able to get between the threads and harden. This made putting the two parts back together pretty simple. There was some twisting and pulling and we generally had to use a rubber strap wrench to help us apply torque. Once back in place, we applied a couple stake marks to the bottom of the receiver and jacket so they would not back apart. We did not bother with the solder in case we want to take the jacket off again. The firearm SN is actually on the jacket itself as that is where Colt stamped them, so the two parts wont be apart again anyway. Also, I like the originality of it. When I shoot it, I will just be careful to not overheat the barrel.

Here is the finished product:

I think it turned out great. Also, the barrel slides in and out of the trunnion perfectly well with no hangup at all. We had expected to have to do some adjusting, but no adjusting was necessary at all! As it sits, it is still in 11mm Gras and would be fully operational if I had a plane and some ammo. I have a complete kit with tripod on the way (actually from a member of this board) so I will have it shootable in .303 once that arrives. I don't plan on shooting it "much" just because it does not have a water jacket, but I will still take it out and enjoy it every one in a while. 

Anyway, thank you all for stopping by. I am very excited to have been part of brining this beauty back to life! 

Chris

Edited Saturday at 05:00 PM by tricky9914

[pstidan]

Very nice!  Now you need to get in touch with Mike Duke over on 1919A4 dot com and have you set up to run your Balloon Buster using .308 and 30.06.

[hkg3k]

1 hour ago, tricky9914 said:

I think it turned out great.

 

I agree!  Nice work and nice documentation / pics!

Edited Saturday at 06:42 PM by hkg3k