Who makes srprings??

jethunter

jethunter

CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Super GunNutz
Rating - 100%
356   0   0
Location
Central AB
I need a mainspring for a Webley WG. It is a flat V type. Does anyone know a blacksmith or gunsmith capable of building a spring for me? I posted on the gunsmithjing forum and didn't get a single hit.
 
I don't make them commercially but I can walk you through it, if you want to make your own. Biggest limitation may be a source of heat, but other than that, they are not hard to make

cheers mooncoon
 
Mooncoon knows his stuff. Helped me sort out what I was doing wrong. So far I'm down to being able to make big springs pretty easily. Little springs not so much - I get about 1/3 to successfully work. If it helps I've got a half baked youtube video that tries to outline spring making.
 
There is always that exciting moment of truth when a spring is compressed for the first time.
 
Thanks for the tip on the video H Wally I'll see if I can find it. Not all that familiar with YouTube so I haven't considered it as a serious information source, I guess I better "update" myself.

Yup the ones I have tried to make have been small flat springs such as loading gate springs, trigger group springs, etc. Interesting process & you get kind of driven to try and make the thing; but I'm missing something somewhere in that process.
 
If you're just doing flat springs - hacksaw blades and recoil springs for chainsaws and lawnmowers are a great resource. The recoil springs are about $2 for a huge spool of varying thickness and width. For small fiddly stuff just snip off and shape the piece you want, but be careful not to ruin the temper.
 
mooncoon said:
I don't make them commercially but I can walk you through it, if you want to make your own. Biggest limitation may be a source of heat, but other than that, they are not hard to make

cheers mooncoon
Click to expand...

Thanks! I will take you up on that offer. I'm in a camp in northern AK for the next 2-1/2 wks then I'll be home and ready to start.

I'll need to find material and a heat source. What would you suggest?

Thanks again!
 
H Wally said:
If you're just doing flat springs - hacksaw blades and recoil springs for chainsaws and lawnmowers are a great resource. The recoil springs are about $2 for a huge spool of varying thickness and width. For small fiddly stuff just snip off and shape the piece you want, but be careful not to ruin the temper.
Click to expand...

Ha so simple I guess I like to overcomplicate things. Would never have thought of a hacksaw blade - good call. Interesting thread....

Thanks
 
jethunter said:
Thanks! I will take you up on that offer. I'm in a camp in northern AK for the next 2-1/2 wks then I'll be home and ready to start.

I'll need to find material and a heat source. What would you suggest?

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

I know I'm butting in, but anything that'll get it up to an orange-yellow heat across the whole surface of the piece. You might be able to get away with less heat, but it'd make it difficult.
 
jethunter said:
I'll need to find material and a heat source. What would you suggest?
Click to expand...

I use drill rod for making the springs; it is possibly 1095 steel meaning a simple steel with 0.95% carbon. You can harden and temper steel down to about 0.4% carbon but drill rod is readily available at places like Budget Steel here on the Island. I use a oxypropane torch for heat --- essentially a cutting torch but using propane instead of acetylene. I would suspect you will want to start with 3/8 drill rod and heat it red hot then hammer out to approximate thickness. Most springs run around .1" thick at their thickest point and taper to about .07" at their tips but those are measurements you need to take from the broken spring assuming it exists. I generally leave the spring a little thicker than the finished dimension to allow for grinding and filing smooth. Once I have finished with the forging stage, I heat the spring red hot for 1 or 2 minutes then completely cover with wood ash until cool, to anneal it. When cool I use the bench grinder to remove the scale from the surface; I think the scale is harder than a file and will dull one quickly. Then file to finished dimension using lots of cutting oil and draw file smooth then a quick sanding with 140 grit abrasive tape and bend to shape.

Final stage is to heat red hot and quench in water or in water with 3/8" of motor oil on top which should leave it brittle hard. Dry the spring off and draw the temper in molten lead at 720 - 730 F or put it in a small metal tray resting on 1 1/2" finishing nails, cover with used motor oil and heat the oil till it burns. When the oil has burned away, the metal should be spring temper

I tried using pieces of car springs for making a particularly large mainspring but it appears to require a lot more heat to draw it to a working spring temper. Even at 740 F which was as high as my lead pot would go, the spring still broke while the spring I then made from drill rod worked fine

cheers mooncoon
 
H Wally said:
If you're just doing flat springs - hacksaw blades and recoil springs for chainsaws and lawnmowers are a great resource. The recoil springs are about $2 for a huge spool of varying thickness and width. For small fiddly stuff just snip off and shape the piece you want, but be careful not to ruin the temper.
Click to expand...

Don't worry about the temper. In fact take the heat up to red hot (which will be about 1500 degrees F) and cool slowly in air to remove the temper and soften the metal. Unless you do this you can't really work the piece to shape it,or file it, to the original spring. You can cut it but the shaping is impossible really without softening things first. Then when you've got the size and shape with relevant curves harden the piece again by redhot heat and instant cooling in oil. If you cool it in water it will be too brittle. Then retemper the hardened workpiece by taking the heat again VERY CAREFULLY to about 750 degrees F. when you will suddenly notice a change in the colour of the workpiece to a 'nitre blue' type colour. Sometimes this colour flows from one end of the workpiece to the other. Immediately cool again in oil. Don't take the heat beyond that point. There you have your spring with it's new temper. If you screw up, don't worry, just start again from the beginning. You can soften, harden and temper the same piece as many times as you like. One key is to polish the piece before heating it with 600 grit a) to get all tool marks out of it because tool marks are a point of fracture forces and b) so that the metal is shiny and you can better detect colour changes in it as you apply the heat. Nothing to it. Propane torch is good but a carburizing flame such as acetylene is better. There are some other tricks but that's the gist. Nothing to it !! Try it out.
 
With drill rod springs, I always bend red hot rather than annealed and cold. I suspect more than a few would crack with cold bending. Also with drill rod springs, the colour to go for is when dark blue just changes to grey (when drawing the temper from brittle to spring) By using molten lead, you get a uniform heat with no hot spots or cold spots. I use a high temperature thermometer but before I had one, I floated a thin piece of mild steel on the surface of the lead and when the temperature was reached, pulled the plug and quenched the hardened future spring in the lead and kept it there for as long as I dared without the lead freezing.

Some material like car leaf springs appear to require much higher temperatures to be drawn to spring temper, at least in my experience

cheers mooncoon
 
the littlegun site has to be one of the most cumbersome ways of making a mainspring that I have run across. I had to read it several times to figure out how he was making the forked end. Definitely not helped by having lots of spelling mistakes. When I forge a spring from drill rod, I leave a lump at the end which can then be filed into a hook, either simple or the claw type which littlegun is describing. To my mind hacksawing a spring from a sheet of spring stock is just as much work as forging one from drill rod. I am still trying to understand just how little gun converted the T shape into a claw. He also makes no real mention of the aspect of preload which is giving the spring more bend or leaving the V more open so that it is under tension even with the hammer down or released.

cheers mooncoon
 
handofzeus said:
I've made my own springs for a single action Colt clone, but I also just ordered a bunch direct from Wolff springs in the U.S. Great folks to deal with and obviously ITAR registered.
Click to expand...

handofzeus,

I think that's fine if you can do it but some springs are so few and far between that no one has them. The last one I had to make was that awkward split spring to operate both the safety button as well as the trigger in a Marlin Model of 1889. They're always breaking (usually the safety button arm,and I have to say none of my own have !!) and no-one sells them. I think it's very important to polish absolutely every small file mark, imperfection and sanding marks completely off the work after annealing to avoid later fractures. Tapering or organizing the thickness in various parts of the spring is also important. This can be done with a grinder and/or files. Someone once told me there were old timers who could build a whole gun with files alone. Probably not but at least go a long way.

I think mooncoon's drill rod idea is good. For these smaller springs I use flat stock I get from Brownell's. I cut them with a Dremel tool. Perhaps mooncoon is talking of much bigger springs?
 
James Dunlop said:
For these smaller springs I use flat stock I get from Brownell's. I cut them with a Dremel tool. Perhaps mooncoon is talking of much bigger springs?
Click to expand...

I bought a tube of Brownell's spring stock about 20 years ago perhaps more. The tube is about a foot long and has a selection of pieces of flat stock in various thickness and width. I have hardly ever used it. The pieces are usually the wrong dimension for the smaller springs that I have made even if I want to hammer them out (while red hot). I make 5 or 10 mainsprings a year, most of them V springs. I make one or two small springs each year as well. Even the little sear springs in a side lock, by using drill rod, I can leave a bump at the end and file and drill that into the loop that the fastening screw goes through rather than try to bend and wrap the end of a flat spring around into a loop. You can buy blank V springs and I do have a few but they are not drop in springs. They have a bar or strip of metal in the approximate location of the little tit that goes through the side plate. The idea is that you can grind or file that bar down to a pin that is in the correct location. I have also seen spring stock sold as a sheet of metal about 0.1" thick that you hacksaw the future piece out of; that looked like a lot of work. For mainsprings, I usually start with 3/8 drill rod because it takes a surprisingly wide piece of material to make most mainsprings when you allow for the pin which sticks out from the lockplate side.

I think two of the most unusual springs that I have made, one was a coil spring made from a flat ribbon rather than round wire in cross section, and the other was an enormously wide spring for a miquelet lock. The first one I made by flattening out some 1/8" round wire spring steel and grinding to width (and then spiral wrapping hot on a mandril) and the second I had to start with 5/8" drill rod because the spring was over 1" wide

I am not saying that I am particularly good at making springs but have made a moderate number over the years. I don't make them commercially, just for the guns that I collect, which are usually in tired condition.

cheers mooncoon
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom