Mach4
Member
Recently I scored a bunch of WWII era 50cal BMG casings and bullets. They were recovered from bombing and gunnery ranges in the Nevada desert many years ago where B17 and B25 crews trained. I found it quite amazing that these were in pretty good condition…likely attributable to the fact that they fell into sandy areas of the desert. Most of the bullets have rifling marks which I think adds to their character.
They start out pretty rough….not surprising after 80 years.
But they clean up nicely and make a very nice "pen with a story".
To make these, I generally followed the very nice write up in the library but made some significant changes to the workflow. Initially I tried using wood dowels, but had considerable trouble getting a hole straight through the dowel. I switched over to 3D printing a sleeve and this has worked perfectly. The other change I needed to make was processing the bullets. Since I'm using ball rounds rather than tracer rounds I don't have to deal with lead - I can just drill out the bullets directly and glue in the brass sleeve just like a regular wooden pen. I do take off the last bit of the bullet so it doesn't extend as deeply into shell casings. To glue the sleeve into the casing I use CA rather than epoxy - it's quicker and sufficiently strong.
My personal preference is to leave much of the patina intact as I think that lends to the character of the piece along with the rifling, nicks and dings that are part of the history.
They start out pretty rough….not surprising after 80 years.
But they clean up nicely and make a very nice "pen with a story".
To make these, I generally followed the very nice write up in the library but made some significant changes to the workflow. Initially I tried using wood dowels, but had considerable trouble getting a hole straight through the dowel. I switched over to 3D printing a sleeve and this has worked perfectly. The other change I needed to make was processing the bullets. Since I'm using ball rounds rather than tracer rounds I don't have to deal with lead - I can just drill out the bullets directly and glue in the brass sleeve just like a regular wooden pen. I do take off the last bit of the bullet so it doesn't extend as deeply into shell casings. To glue the sleeve into the casing I use CA rather than epoxy - it's quicker and sufficiently strong.
My personal preference is to leave much of the patina intact as I think that lends to the character of the piece along with the rifling, nicks and dings that are part of the history.
