Et tu, TTC magazine?

So, I’ve been looking for a source of magazines for my CZ-52 pistol. Back when I had more money and the magazines were more available I didn’t buy any more – just the one extra one I found one time at a gun show. Now that I’m trying to get properly equipped, they’re few and far between. And expensive.

On SARCO’s website I saw a TTC magazine that is 7.62×25 and supposed to be an 8 round magazine. The Russian/Eastern Bloc TT-33 uses a magazine that is very similar to the CZ. Unfortunately, it wasn’t similar enough. I’ll attach pictures of the TTC magazine vs the CZ magazine later to illustrate the difference. What to do?

I continued to do some research on magazines and it looks like I need Yugoslavian M57 9-round magazines. The reason these are a better candidates is that it appears that it is/was common for M57 owners to use CZ magazines as spare magazines with the minor modification of adding a cut for the magazine catch. That by itself answers the question of which one to try next. Good thing they’re cheap. 😉

I will have to get the magazine bottom plate, the extended ones that I have on the CZ magazines. Might try to make some if I can figure out where to get a cutter that can make the slots for the magazine bottom.

As they say in ‘Helix’ – progress

So, this past Sunday I had an extended melting session. Started up the foundry easily enough, but it wouldn’t heat up enough and when I’d hit it with the blower it would die. Not to mention that I initially forgot about the clogging issue. Needless to say, frustration level was high.

After some troubleshooting I decided not to use the blower – it was causing me more issues than helping. I got to the point where I figured out how to set the burner to really push out the heat without running rich. It’s all a combination of fuel pressure, air pressure, and controlling fuel flow with the needle valve. Wow. It was a great learning experience. Once I got everything figured out it was late in the afternoon, about 4pm, so daylight was getting to be an issue. By the time it was all said and done, the sun had gone down and I was putting stuff away with the light of the camp lantern.

volvo_head_3What was the outcome? I melted down two boxes of drives and parts for a total of three ingots and two small stakes (what I call the smaller triangular ingots) and one Volvo cylinder head, which yielded three good size ingots with one stake and a tiny piece of a stake. I probably could have made three full size ingots (bread molds) which is what I’ll do next time.volvo_head_9

Monday afternoon (17-FEB-2014) I received the 6-ft pieces of ACME threaded rods: one 5/8″x8 and 2 of 1/2″x10 and the 5″x1″ bore pulley for my boring bar. Nice! I was sweating how I would bore the tail stock and what size I would make the bore then it occurred to me – just make it match the head stock spindle like the Gingery model. So, I’ll make it 1.5″ bore. I started looking at steel bars on-line – pretty reasonable for CRS.

Valentines Day, 2014

Had a GREAT day, up until the Cats went and lost in double over-time to the scum devils 🙁

Had a good day at work, got to have a fantastic lunch with the wife :). That was the high-light of my day. I NEVER get to have lunch with the wife unless she’s on my side of town, since I don’t get to drive around anymore. We went to the Cheesecake Factory, my buddy Roy had gotten me a gift certificate for my birthday that we hadn’t had a chance to use and it worked out great!

Coming back from lunch the temp gauge on the car started to rise – troubleshooting it at different stops – it was the relay. Even though it says 40-amps on it, don’t believe a Checker/Oreilly/Autozone relay. Time to invest in a couple of good relays (one for standby) or get a PWM controller.

So I get back in the office and my wife tells me that one of my girls got ZERO Valentine cards from her classmates, while her twin did. She was devastated, I was heart-broken. I will do my best to bring up her spirits and let her know she’s loved.

Lastly – I scaled the images I’m going to use for what I have to start with for images for my firearms stuff, mainly my AMD-65 build pictures and a few of the CZ-52 pistol. I need to take new pictures of it after having repainted it with ceramic coating to silver and black.

Thanks enough for tonight, will add more this weekend I’m sure.