Some light relief here from the current covid crisis(CCC) and its free.
Come over to the forum Farcebookers its a true living data base of information after you have posted something 
Last Summer I met a guy who was desparate to get a G43 for the WW2 games,to be honest I have allways been interested in the weapon of the Future introduced in the war rather than a weapon of yesterday so a long clunky wood stocked rifle has never done it for me,but researching the subject I have got more interested in this weapon,and it was a way for the Germans to increase their fire power late war,despite it being around 3 times the price of an mp44 ,that weapon was supposedly in plentiful supply but limted ammunition,or so I read as they could not ramp up production of the kurz ammunition.However standard 8mm ammunition was stockpiled and thats what the G43 used.Someone once estimated that the Germans may have started WW2 with 7 trillion rounds of 8mm mauser in storage.
My donor gearbox is a version 7 ,and ak47 hop unit and m14 70rnd mid caps,these are the short ones,i will be using metal and wood construction so when it wears it will be more like a real weapon in appearance hopefully,well actualy I know it will I have done this before a few times.
Below I am using a lathe to drill multiple holes for the battery compartment,and a smaller hole for the wire to the motor.I am also starting work on some furnature parts,they are made from an unkown material in Airsoft is called real metal,these are the front sight and the stock band,here you can see a blank and a rough cut part for these components.
Here i am dilling a hole for the outer barrel,doing it this way will precisely locate its axis inline with the stock centre line,and so the gearbox and airsoft barrel and hop unit will susequently align with this axis also,this is essential if you want your gun to feed any rounds ever,have good airseal,or have any shooting accuracy.The top cover for the barrel has been glued in place with paper bettween so i cam remove it after the hole is drilled.
Next pic down i have used car filler to glue the stock to a 40mm wide steel bar so i can locate it in the tool post and mill out a cavivty for the gearbox, magwell and hop unit,there are lots of intricate shapes to get it all to work.
Also the sight and outer barrel can be seen
Now its realy starting to take shape,below also I have cut a blank from a girder with a 9 inch angle grinder,to form a stable mount for the rear reciever and the scope rail,so I wont be leaving gun parts all over the battle field(any one have an AGM weapon).It will be firmly located in the stock and then screwed in place.
Keep up the good work 
Sometimes the old ways are the best,if a hand plane is good enough for Jesus then its good enough for me.
Whats more its 80 years old and still works,has allways worked,and will still work in another 80 years time,This tool i inherited from my Grandfather.Even better it dont use electricity so its doomsday proof too
And what i like about old things is there is no micro chip to fry itself,no software update to rip you off,no sofware to trick you and nerf its performance when it is 5 years old and it should still work but the manufacturer dont want you to have it no more and to buy a new one.
Only problem is its effing hard work
So Basicaly many WW2 airsoft weapons seem to be poor or patchy quality,like bad zinc castings and wood that just snaps off,poor feeding,design flaws like hop units and mags that don't work,poor or non existant spares back up,or at best patchy supply of parts.Or its just expensive,Also you can get poor accuracy or the gun is just not that skirmishable or enjoyable before it is demoted to wall hanger.And although I enjoy the benefits of GBB OR HPA they do have downsides to them also.Thats why as well as using readily available airsoft donor parts that are cheap but competant and potentialy repairable or upgradable,for me and my customer the AEG is still king despite sometimes having its own flaws, and gives a good bang for your buck.
So I do believe that some of my designs offer an alternative design ethos that addresses most of the above issues,having said that this project still has never fed a BB yet so I dont know if its a lemon myself yet.
So coming back to the build details one of the features of the G43 was a stamped metal cover and slide rail for the bolt,its quite intricate and i dont have a die to form it and must panel beat one myself.
In the first pic i am using an english wheel that has been adapted to work as a jenny to form some of the features.
In the next photo i am using a wooden vee former and using a fly press to push the sheet into vee with a 1inch metal bar to get the correct radius.The cover is on the left and former bar on the right.
In the last photo I have my rear sight base added to it and my moving spring loaded bolt,this is just a piece is 1.5mm sheet and have added a plate at the front ,and a metal block at the rear to hold the cocking lever and on the right the catch that locks the bolt to the rear and then releases it to let it come forward again.Pulling the bolt back will allow you to adjust the hop-up.
Looking good Kingmaker, progressing at a nice pace with nice photos too pore over
Update alert ,so due to using a AK47 hop up, mainly because I know the cyma unit is awesome and cheap also, (from previous experience with it),and is readily available also on the event of a needed repair, I need to space the hop chamber away from the front of the gearbox ,which is an m14 one of which the nozzle is longer than the ak nozzle,initialy I had calculated this to be 1.75mm,but experimentation seems to prove 1.3mm gives the best air seal and fps,reducing the spacer width allows the nozzle to extend further into the hop rubber this is what gives better air seal.If I reduce the spacer width too much the nozzle will not retract far enough to allow ammo to feed.
So what appears to be a simple ring in the photo, it has a stepped recess on one side and a stepped shoulder on the other ,all the internal and external diameters have to be very accurate also, and the testing to find the correct hop up position has taken some time to achieve.
The tubed shaped part is designed to join the hop and mag together,as the gearbox is in the way of the 2 parts meeting up, also this tube must be removable or the gun will be possible to dis- assemble, again this was a laborious process of design thought’s, sketches ,measuring, testing and remaking of the part as it is designed and modified at the time of manufacture. Now it's working i have now decided to make the tube from aluminium ,as the steel one will damage the spring catch at the top of the feed tube on the magazine so yet more time.
As a side note I like the AK hop up because it is the only one I can think off with 2 lugs that allow it to be screwed into position, rather then some fancy location between a load of injection moulded part, which usually results in problems due to Chinese reverse engineering not being as accurate as the original precision TM products.Having your hop up firmly fixed In place gives the best accuracy,fps and feeding consistency.Small amounts of movement cause problem in all 3 areas.
The 'L' shaped part is the safety lever, based on the original G43,it won't actualy fuction in this role on my AEG
Yes I know it looks like a minecraft G43 But when I get my wood plan and rasp on it thing will hopefully get better.
That rectangular black hole looks boring but the magwell and catch took some time to make and get set up on the gun,but even though all the mounting screws are not in place it was working well when i hooked up a battery,I had range,groupings and more important feeding.The barrel was just laying on top of the stock with no mounting screws,magwell just pushed up with my hand.So its officialy an AEG Now not just a load of lumps of metal and wood
I managed to modify an ak47 adjuster bar to fit a K98 sight leaf,so this makes a good g43 rear sight as no part I can buy of the shelf is any where near correct. 
Overall I am pretty happy even if my original component designs have had to moded slightly as I make them.
Wow, it's certainly taking shape Kingmaker!
What a fantastic build
armoury
m1a1 Thompson,sten mk2,mp40,stg44,sterling,mk2 bren gun,lee Enfield no4 mk1,Mauser Kar98, Walther ppk,smith and Weston m10 and Mauser m712
Give me a big enough hammer and a place to stand and I could fix the world.
i'll kill a man in a fair fight or if i think he's going to start a fair fight or over a woman or.......
a problem shared is a problem halved ,but an advantage shared is no advantage at all
if a job's not worth doing then its certainly not worth doing well
Just had a good read through, metalwork is great! Are you going to do the woodwork by hand? I use a bench belt sander, after using wood files takes a lot of the laborious sanding by hand away.
Did you alter the hop to fit the gearbox, or alter the gearbox to fit the hop?
Andy
Hi Andy I have a vertical bandsaw to rough out,its a metal working one so slower but ok for odd jobs,and did lots of milling and drilling on the lathe,I have one of those cheap compound vices on my pillar drill that has 2 slideways to help with more accurate hole placing.I was going to rasp and plane the stock,but did a lot of the rough shaping with a belt sander in the end,starting at 36 grit so its so fast 1/4 inch is gone in a second.
If you look 5 photos back in the thread there is a pic of an adapter spacer I used to get the nozzle depth correct in the hop unit and adapt the different shaped boss on the hop and hole in the gearbox.I attempted to explain it dont know if it made any sense to anyone else than myself,PM me if you need to know anything.I did make a load of the spacers its free to you if you neeed one.I intend to put more images up to explain the internals to anyone who needs some inspiration.
I did see a build by a polish airsoft builder(++ to Doug for pointing me to that article)he used an A+K SVD gearbox,so you dont get the motor in the grip,which is a pain to do and makes it a bit fatter in this area which is not ideal.Also it moves the mag further towards the muzzle,which is another bonus,maybe i will try that on the mk2.Thats if i find the time as I have wanted to build an EM2 for the last 8 years,i need a real sword Type 97 gearbox for it which is a bit pricey.
Thanks for the offer of the spacer/adapter piece, I might have that. I’m doing my own G43, but progress is slow because other projects get in the way, I have the complete M14 to use so might be utilising the original hop...don’t know yet haven’t got that far! I will be making a wood stock but will not be doing that for some weeks yet, still collecting pieces for the job too.
I have an A+K SVD gearbox, (90%complete gun) but that’s going in an SVT 40.....when I get around to it! and there’s a Lewis gun in the line up before that too!
Looking forward to more progress on your G43.
Andy.
Some shaping to the top barrel cover, I have milled 2 slots that help barrel cooling on a real firearm.
Also, there is a slot for the sheet metal spring catch that secures the front band in place.
Here I have cut and shaped 2 metal plates for the butt plate, I can’t stamp it in one pressing it will have a welded seem on the corner.
2nd pic down the trap door that normally gets to your oil bottle and cleaning kit. Being an AEG, it will be for the battery access lots of driliing and precision filing to by hand here.
3rd down I have rough fitted the plate and cleaned up the woodwork to blend in with it.
The drawing with the pink numbers is a document I sent to a guy called Ben on facebook ,he gave me some key dimensions that I was only able to guess until he offered to help me,mid job,so a big thankyou to Ben,He has a Shoei replica,so they are very accurate copies generaly speaking
The trigger guard and mag-well surround is another blanked and stamped sheet metal part, designed as so it could be made fast and cheap on the real Gun,it was only in production for around 18 months ,at most and around 415,000 were produced in that time, again lots of hand cutting and filing by hand for me.
The loop around the trigger has to be dished out to form a spherical shape, it’s not just a flat strip bent into a ‘u’ shape, I have used a ball peen hammer to dish it over a hollowed out piece of wood.
Two of the screws holding the trigger guard locate on metal threads in the 6mm thick plate that froms the mount for the gearbox,so everything should pull together nicely here and be durable and be able to re-assemble lots of times.
This will explain my Gearbox,hop and mag mounting idea.I have made a metal frame that locates all 3 together in an accurate way that will allow feeding and accuracy and good air seal.
The frame is made from a piece of 18mm wide and 6 mm thick steel plate screwed to the g/box case underneath the cylinder.
There are 2 1.2mm metal plates either side with ears that go either side the nozzle to firmly screw the AK47 hop unit to,the part that looks like washer is a stepped bush that adapts the circular boss on the hop to the oval location hole in the v7 casing,it is 1.4 mm thick and also adjustes the position of the hop to allow for the longer m14 nozzle compared to the AK47 one the hop unit was designed for.
The tube shaped part is needed to lengthen the vertical feed tube on the hop unit so the M14 mag I am using can sit under the gearbox.
The magwell has an integral mag catch and is also screwed to the thick steel plate that form the basis for the main steel frame.The steel plate has 2 threaded holes as mentioned previously,and it sits in a precision slot in the stock that is aligned with the barrel centre line,and the trigger guard is held to the stock with 2 screws that go in the threaded holes mentioned above,and so puling the gearbox down into its mount position,and the tigger guard is positively fixed to some thing metal also.
This week I made a Waffenampt punch,its a bit crude but is ok for a bit of fun,these marks were put on weapons by armament ministry inspectors to say that items are proven to be manufactured to the agreed quality and specification.
Its actualy a Reich eagle with the inspectors number underneath,some people call them Funky Chickens as they are a bt of an odd shape,this is stamped on the reciever on the far left,next to that is the maunfacturers serial number,I have put this in 2 other places so far,Then the Weapon name in this case G43 (later on they became K43,but it was the same gun,although many parts do have variations.Well every part,its German after all.)
On the right is the BYF 44 ,this is the 3 letter code to hide the manufacturers name from the allies,and the number is the year of manufacture.
On the Very far right you can see another funky chicken and a second serial number.This is on the sliding bolt.
Also i did some test shooting and chrono work,and some screw holeS are not even drilled yet in important places,and it seems ok so far,but checking performance before finishing of will allow fine tuning,its not worth rushing in and ****ing it up .
still some detail parts to make though,any one got any stock finishing tips,i was going to apply boiled linseed oil,red brown stain,then french polish and bees wax.I have done a test piece and it don't seem to go black when you put water on it and leave it over night,but I dont want it to go black over time as this can happen somtimes with linseed oil.
