Anyone fancy making me an Owen gun?

that's fine i like them , just not sure what period they were for but i don't expect too much nit picking on the design from anybody.

The one with the fins is a 1942 version so is fine. It gets confusing because there are so many different versions.

Just made up a compensater/sight base and it looks too short , 36mm is the measurement from the cad file but i'm thinking at least 46mm would look better .



this is it mounted on the extended barrel and it just look wrong to me , i'd rather use a bit of artistic licence and make a guess at the length .

To me, it looks like the compensator is too short. In the pics the compensator looks longer. That may make all the difference in the appearance. If you try making the compensator longer and as close to the diameter of the barrel as possible and make the slots in it thinner it will look closer to the pictures and create the illusion of a longer barrel.
Every time I see a pic of what you're doing, I am very impressed. This gun is going to be a work of art

OK I'll judge it by eye , I can make it the exact same diameter as the barrel ,the thread is 14mm and the barrel 17mm so that's easy ,it just needs that slightly wider section that the sight is mounted to at the back ,glad we agree on the size.

This gun is going to be a work of art

I agree, a great bit of engineering , do you have your own workshop ?

This gun is going to be a work of art

I agree, a great bit of engineering , do you have your own workshop ?

its modest but yes i have a workshop , some people want a snooker table , i wanted a lath and mill .Nocked up a new longer compensater ,all dimensions by eye this time and i'm far more pleased ,slots reduced from 4mm to 3mm as well.

its modest but yes i have a workshop , some people want a snooker table, i wanted a lath and mill

All I have is a Black & Decker Workbench and a drill I'll have to have a word with Santa

Bloody hard work getting a lath down the chimney but it's worth a try

This is lookin fantastic, really nice to see another unusual gun being made, good on ya' mate

To be honest I'm more interested in making the more odd gun's than something ordinary these day's .
Today I made the finned barrel section .


might reduce the diameter a bit on the forward section , from the pictures it looks like the rear most fin is larger and everything else is narrower , that is how I made it but maybe it needs to go down a bit more , that won't take long , the boring out and parting of the fin's is what takes time.

better now


actually could still go down a little more , so hard to tell until you compare picture.

Narrowed the fin's and deepened the slots and reduced the diameter , look's a lot better .

I think that looks spot on.

It'l look better once its chemically treated to blue/black it .
Started to make the barrel release catch today ,it's the piece in front of the receiver ,used in the real gun to field strip and it's going to be functional on this one as well ,pulling the catch up will release the complete barrel and hop assembly ,this will make servicing the hop easy as well as cleaning the barrel not to mention a cool feature to be able to partially field strip it .I've made the outer cylinder and locking plunger as well as drilling the body of the gun and hop housing ,all I need to do is make the knurled knob for the top and to weld it in place ,it will be sprung obviously and fully strip able for maintenance .

That sounds truly awesome. The sort of feature I wouldn't have dared ask for.

well i had to make something to go there and it was easy enough to just make it work ,here's what i have so far.





I've also finalized the design for the mag release catch ,as the magazine is facing the opposite way round it's going to be difficult to use the usual position for the catch to mate with mag ,there is however another feature on the magazine that i can use ,there's a vertical slot on one of the narrow sides of the magazine ,the slot is 2.5mm wide and the same position on both the King arms and AGM magazines and will be a perfect place for the catch to mate so that's next on the build list .

I made the knob for the barrel catch and it's all welded in place and blended , there's no horrible welds on any of the Owen gun's I've seen so all the welds have to be blended smooth , the plan is to blue the gun not paint it so there's no hiding thing's under the paint .The barrel and hop assembly are a good tight fit and the catch work's well with only the tiniest movement of the barrel once fitted .

Looking good.
I think the reason that the welds are not visible on Owen guns is a result of the very different situation in Australia compared to Britain. Australia had no Dunkirk so weapon stocks were not needed as urgently, factories were not being bombed and although submarines were sinking shipping, Australia was more used to being self sufficient.
Even the Austen was an improvement over the Sten Mk2 which the British were producing at the time.

I like the idea of adding a folding stock to the Sten, it seems such an obvious thing to do once you see it.

That's undoubtably why they look neater made ,to be fair the sten was made in factory's staffed by women who had only recently taken up the trade of gun smith ,that's not in any way meant to be sexist ,the women in question did not get a three year apprenticeship ,more like three week's I'd guess and in far from ideal situation's ,nobody could have been expected to do better ,the fact is they got on and did a cracking job .
Next on the build will be the receiver but I might just reduce the amount that the Alloy part before the finned section extends at the end of the main steel tube section ,on the real gun it's much shorter ,its part of the sten hop housing and the barrel screws into it but I can reduce it a bit without the barrel becoming insecure .after that though it's the receiver .