Is now a fully complete semi-auto belt fed 1919a6 browing machine gun.
If some of you remeber me when I still played airsoft you might remember me working on making an airsoft version of a browning 1919a4 mg to go with all my other WW2 stuff. That seems like yesterday but it was almost four yeas ago. I originaly bouth the parts kit intentionally for making the airsoft gun, but when I did all the modifications and built the internals I made sure not to alter any of the original browning part in case I ever wanted to build it into a real gun. Well, the years went by and though I thougt Id never tire of airsoft I eventualy found other hobbies (some even more exp than airsoft lol) and the parts went on the shelf with all of my other projects.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to dig the ol parts kit it out and see if I still had all the original parts and thankfuly I did. Reason being that I knew with us now being an obamanation I should probably start working on making this shootable while I still could, so I orderd a semi-auto trigger and sear kit with new rivets, and started making the sideplate. The sideplate I made out of T-1 A514 abrasion resistant plate, and using the original blueprints I made it on the CNC mill at work.
This sideplate is different from a full auto plate though because of that large bar shaped island left on the inside. This bar makes it so you have to relif cut the new semi-auto modified bolt and barrel extension so that they fit into the gun. This also make it impossible with this sideplate riveted to the gun to shove any unmodified fully automatic internals into the gun. After I had the sideplate done I installed the semi sear and trigger, and milled the bolt, barrel extension and lock frame so that they would now work with the semi auto plate.
After that that I took the gun to work and riveted the sideplate on and was ready to tke her out for a test run.
The kit originally came as an isreali reworked to .308, but I just orderd an 8mm barrel for it to cut down on thecost of ammo. It runs like a top on .308 but at 60 cents a round I cont afford to be blazing away (its really easy to do with a belt fed gun be it semi or not lol). Also I was fortunate enough to buy a bnunch of surplus 8mm when it was cheap so Ive got quite a bit of it. The only thing left to do is re-parkerize the gun because of the new sideplate, and also because the vintage WW2 parkerizing is starting to wear off after 60 years.
More to come!