Some ghetto grade DIY rollie gear

@O @oafpatroll 2 years ago

Made the same post on gunsite but thought it may be of interest here too.

I got a 6 inch Ruger Security Six from a fellow GSer a while back with the intention of fondling it extensively and doing a bit of ICORE, Steel Challenge and maybe even SADPA to irritate SO's who would have to switch from shot timer to calendar when I lined up.

Decided that other than speed loaders i would ghetto grade all the additional gear I needed. That came down to holster and speed loader carriers. Made the holster a couple of weeks back and still have a couple of small changes to make to the belt loops and need to add a bonded in stiffening plate where they're bolted in. It came out better than I feared considering I haven't made plastic gear in a long time and it's ABS, rather than Kydex and is a bit trickier to work with and less forgiving or muppetry. There was a lot of muppetry as I'd forgotten pretty much everything including the goldilocks temperature range for the oven. I wasted at least 5 pressings before i got something usable.

Next up were the speedloader carriers. I saw a design from a guy that trades as JOX in the states and liked it a lot so i decided to see if i could steal the idea.

Worked on a paper pattern for the blank I'd need to cut.

And then formed up a very crude prototype by hand for functional testing

It worked a great deal better than it looked and I realised that starting from a PVC pipe of an appropriate diameter would save me a lot of time and effort. The right daimeter is 40mm but unfortunately that doesn't seem to exist in black in Safferland and i've only been able to find 50mm black for use in solar thermal applications. Went ahead with a slightly refined and simplified version in white 40mm. Changes included the omission of the floor as I can bond one in if it turns out to be necessary and moving the grasping windows to the front and rear of the carrier.

Now that I have the design dialled in I'll make a stiff plastic template for marking up the pipe and crank out some in blue. That is unless anyone can point me in the direction of black 40mm PVC pipe somewhere local. It does exist and i see reference to it in the US and on Chinese sites but not here. It needs to be PVC or some other thermoplastic as the retention depends on being able to push the body of the loader into the heated end of the pipe section so that it makes a tight pocket. The base bottoms out on the cutouts and is then sprung in place by rolling the top edges of the tabs over for a perfect snappy retention fit that is not impacted by the OAL of the cartridges. This desing works equally well for my 38 and 357 loads.

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@T @tripodmvr

Google - Builders Warehouse or Cashbuild came up as first choices. Other hardware stores would likely also have.

@O @oafpatroll OP

Google - Builders Warehouse or Cashbuild came up as first choices. Other hardware stores would likely also have.

None of those guys have black PVC in any dimension. They have black LDPE irrigation pipe in a few sizes and white PVC in few.

I've enquired with wholesalers and they reckon black PVC is only bought here by their clients who do solar thermal stuff, mainly pool heating, and that's why they use 50mm as it fits all the pool piping.I not too bugged by using the blue as it has a thicker wall for higher pressure applications so will allow me to make the retention tabs even smaller while maintaining excellent retention.

@T @tripodmvr

I saw the blue pipe and thought that might blend in better with your clothing. The name "Heath Robinson" ring a bell?

[deleted]

I actually really admire what you achieved, your doings are very pleasing to me.

@O @oafpatroll OP

Thanks gents. It's lekker to work with your hands and figure physical stuff out when your day job is being a talking typist.

@Z @zguy

I saw the blue pipe and thought that might blend in better with your clothing. The name "Heath Robinson" ring a bell?

Are you Heath on GS ?

@O @oafpatroll OP

I saw the blue pipe and thought that might blend in better with your clothing. The name "Heath Robinson" ring a bell?

Are you Heath on GS ?

I'm not and have the same name here and there. Flattered for the opportunity to be mistaken for him though. He has machining skills and equipment that I seriously envy. I'm more of a hand mills and sandpaper dabbler.

@O @oafpatroll OP

Just noticed that I forgot to include a picture of the holster.

@T @tripodmvr

Artist and illustrator William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) was famed for his brilliant cartoons of ludicrously intricate and complex contraptions, apparently designed to carry out the most mundane tasks or sometimes no tasks at all.

Some of these were even made and displayed in public places to hugely amusing effect.

The term “Heath-Robinson” came to be applied to anything that looked outrageously complicated and was even used for an early computer designed to crack the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.

There’s a delightful compilation of Heath Robinson’s cartoons and designs called Very Heath Robinson by Adam Hart-Davis which gives many examples plus lots of information about the man himself.

@Z @zguy

Artist and illustrator William Heath Robinson (1872-1944) was famed for his brilliant cartoons of ludicrously intricate and complex contraptions, apparently designed to carry out the most mundane tasks or sometimes no tasks at all.

Some of these were even made and displayed in public places to hugely amusing effect.

The term “Heath-Robinson” came to be applied to anything that looked outrageously complicated and was even used for an early computer designed to crack the German Enigma code at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.

There’s a delightful compilation of Heath Robinson’s cartoons and designs called Very Heath Robinson by Adam Hart-Davis which gives many examples plus lots of information about the man himself.

AH! ok thank you! 8)

@O @oafpatroll OP

I made prototype number three of the speed loader carrier and I'm done with development. Well almost, I made the 'skirt' below the retention fingers too short to accommodate 357 field loads so that part needs to be 6 mm deeper but that will be sorted in the template.

It works like a bomb and with a template will be easy and quick to cut out. I will not be finishing the 6 I need by hand as it's a ball ache but will rather deburr and polish them in my wet brass tumbler.

When I think of how much of a mission this design is to make from sheet I can understand how the guy I stole it from was charging 70 dollars a piece. Making it from a PVC pipe is a couple banana exercise by comparison and I think that 2mm thick PVC is actually a better material for the application than Kydex as it's stiffer.

His design rendered in Kydex required a complicated arrangement to allow a double layer in the belt hook, I assume to stiffen it up enough while using material thin enough to make the loader releasable with reasonable force.

@O @oafpatroll OP

Made up a batch of 8 of the loader carriers to the final design. I made a laminated paper template/mask that I used to spray the pattern onto the pipes and then cut them out by hand. Since I haven't used a coping saw for for ages they aren't all identical and my OCD has kicked in hard so will treat it as a zen exercise and try and leave well enough alone. They work fantastically well, better in fact than any of the commercial ones I've tried and cost me a few bucks each in material so the exercise was well worth the effort.

Last thing to do is add skate tape sections on the loader body lined up with the grasping windows for a death grip and to aid in indexing the loader in the hand so that they are in the same orientation when you go for for the insert into the cylinder.

@J @janfred

Now just to do some water transfer painting. Can make some pretty interesting paterns that look quite professional.

You could probably convert this into a bit of a side-hustle for beer money.

@O @oafpatroll OP

Now just to do some water transfer painting. Can make some pretty interesting paterns that look quite professional.

You could probably convert this into a bit of a side-hustle for beer money.

I'm more stuck in the mud than 'old school' so would probably break out in hives if I were to decorate a piece of gear with skulls or american eagles or such like but I know there's definitely a market for it. The nes in the pics haven't been tumbled yet and that really finishes them off nicely leaving a completely uniform and matte surface. It works equally well on the ABS I use for sheaths and holster.

I have thought about the side hustle thing and the key would be a rapid and precise way to do the cutting. I can get sheet water jet or lazer cut at very reasonable rates but not pipe. To make it viable in the absence of CNC cutting I'd need to get a steel jig made up that I could use to guide a flush cut router bit or something along those lines. The real overhead is in trimming and polishing so precision cutting that allows for the finishing to be done in a tumbler is the only way it would be viable. An additional issue is that I'd need to get hands on the most popular loader makes and models to be able to make steel templates as the critical dimensions all vary.

@O @oafpatroll OP

You could probably convert this into a bit of a side-hustle for beer money.

Some members of my club saw the carriers I made and twisted my arm gently to make a batch for them. I Got 20 to the point where they were profiled and polished yesterday but I think that had already burned up approx 10 hours. There will still be a an hour or two to mold the belt tails and retention fingers.

I've done a bit of googling and have found Chinese videos of PVC pipe being lazer cut. Anyone know if there is a local company who can do lazer or waterjet or some other method?