Well I progressed a few little things on this project. Now before anyone freaks out, let me be clear:
1) YES, I am faking some of these parts. Some call it "humping". Essentially what we are talking about is taking a common K98k part and making it into a less common part and then re-serializing it to match the rifle where appropriate. No, this would not be ethical if I were doing it to improve the sale-ability of a rifle for monetary gain by representing it as original - DO NOT DO THAT!!! (it's fraud, really).
2) NO, I am not doing this to be unethical. My build will be clearly marked as a reproduction below the wood line and I am NOT going to hump any parts that aren't visible when the rifle is assembled, so a cursory disassembly will show the rifle to be NOT MATCHING. For example, I will leave the firing pin mis-matched. It does happen to be out of a byf44 though. Be careful though, serious fakesters are not so concerned about your well being as I am
3) Pay VERY close attention to what I am doing here in some of these posts. This should help newbies detect FAKES. As a machinist, I think I'm pretty decent at "counterfeiting" 1944 era MO parts. And no, I have not done / will not do this and sell an "improved" rifle as original. Others have and will. Hopefully you all learn something here.
4) I hope that my posting this stuff on the net, while informative and entertaining, will serve as proof that I'm clearly not hiding this rifle's lineage to any future prospective owner. Though honestly I don't plan to ever sell it - it's going to be my range rifle for when I get sick of wearing my glasses and trying to see fine iron sights - lol.
The goal of this project is, within reason and without making this clone too indiscernable from the real thing, to make the rifle resemble a real one. I am not using a WW2 barrel, so though it will outwardly look original, a close inspection will show the post-war proofs on the bbl. A serious faker would weld over those markings, surface-anneal the welds, and stamp new markings. I could do that, but I'm not a fraud artist
Now obviously I started with a bare receiver so a matching bolt would a miracle to find. I have a stripped, mismatched, late-war byf bolt on the way which will be "skillfully force matched" (I hate that term!) to show you guys how convincing fake markings can get. I already have all the small bits, most of them actual oberndorf production, with a real mix of serial numbers which will be made to appear matching.
Let's start with the cocking piece. Late war Oberndorf cocking pieces are just like mid-war cocking pieces from any manufacturer except without a WaA. Somewhere in 1944 they started using a 5 digit serial number with a letter suffix. MO bolt parts only had the last 4 digits stamped on them. My receiver is an f block so all 4 digits were used on all bolt parts except the extractor which was un-numbered by '44. Later (I think around h block?) MO changed to only putting 4 digits on the shroud and bolt, the rest of the parts getting only the last 2 digits.
Here is a mid-war WaA37 cocking piece chucked into the lathe. These hare pretty glass hard, so you need to use a carbide cutter to do a skim cut and turn it into a "fresh" part. Since we are trying to duplicate a late-war piece, I'll leave some machining marks on the back of the cocking piece, unlike the smooth surface on this earlier part. A poor fake would look smooth and irregular because the amateur would use a file and sandpaper to scrub the old markings. Better fakes use real manual lathes and mills to duplicate the original manufacturing process as we are doing here. Some basic polishing was done to radius the outer lip as per the K98k drawing for cocking pieces. I happen to have 2mm a number stamp set that is a dead ringer for 1944 era Oberndorf production. The sanitized part is mounted in a heavy vise and a heavy ball peen is used to apply new numbers. They should be deeply stamped. You then put the cocking piece BACK into the lathe and re-polish the rear surface with 120 grit. MO parts were always re-polished after being serialized to de-burr the stampings. Finally you real the hole out to .216" to eliminate any distortion form the stamping process and ensure a smooth fit of the cocking piece.
When this part is blued, it will look real. How to detect it may be fake? Well, yo ucannot scrub a cocking piece without the rear of the firing pin standing a bit proud. this can be hidden by slightly trimming the FP tail (I didn't do it to this one). The cocking piece could be mounted on a known "good" firing pin and if the edge of the domed tail sticks above the cocking piece surface more than a few thou, it's a re-numbered part. Period.
Next, I needed some late-war scews to used in my stamped trigger guard. Although lock screws were typically no longer in use, MO continued to use up scalloped screws. In this case, I had a post-war East German rear action screw and an early numbered front screw. these were mounted in the lathe and the serial number removed from the one and the dome turned flat on the other. these now look like typical rough and un-polished late-war screws. When making a replica gun, it's little details like this that make it look convincing.
Here we see the original rear sight assembly (factory un-numbered, but "WM" proofed on the inside) that was still present on the original barrel, but badly rusted. In this case the pitting has largely been removed and the part filed to 180 grit to replicate the original late-war finish. After re-blueing it will look factory fresh.
More to come.
