Anyone fancy making me an Owen gun?

Just an off the wall suggestion but maybe a bycicle trailer would suit you're need's ? Not so easy to get on a train ,not sure if you still get them but back in the day when I was a nipper with a bike trains had baggage compartments you could stand in with a bike ,I rarely travel on trains but if they still have these baggage compartments then a trailer would be easy enough .

I am thinking more of storage for home or when I can get a lift. At present I tend to carry a Sten in a P08 large pack and I see no reason the Owen won't also fit. I may add a couple of battons to the bottom of the box so it can be bungee'd to the rack of a bike without moving side to side though. The days of a baggage compartment are long gone. Most trains have space for 2-3 bikes and will not allow trailers. As for not drawing attention, the fact I am carrying an Owen gun, usually would mean I would be wearing a slouch hat and wearing service dress anyway, I cannot see how I could draw any more attention. Although tbh. the attention is not all bad, so far Aussie uniform on the train has resulted in a 50% chance of being asked for a photo with some girl

Well when she's finished she should break down really small ,barrel off ,stock off and mag out none of its very long .
Had a slight setback ,after fully assembling it she decided not to feed ! I must have miss measured by 2mm somewhere but the nozzle was not far enough back in the hop enough to allow the BB's in ,to cut a long story short it now has a custom made air sealed nozzle and feed perfectly and still crono's at 320fps .
After that I had to make some progress so I internally re enforced the rear lower receiver so it's strong enough for the stock fitment .

Russsel I'll be making the stock soon and just though it might as well fit you ,what is a comfortable distance from the rear of the pistol grip to shoulder for you ?

That is hard to say. I think the important distance is going to be from the shoulder to the rear of the tubing. If it's too short it will be tough to look down the sights on the right hand side of the gun. On the Sten I get about half an inch clearance between my nose and the end of the tubing if I look down the right hand side of the gun. I would suggest using the Sten stock as a guide to the length.

Edit: Actually playing more It can be shorter as it depends how you position the shoulder and the layout of the owen is different in that the hand position is so much further forward. I don't know.
I guess the best option is going to be to go back to the CAD files and hope that the original was designed well.
20cm from the receiver to the top of the rear of the stock.
22cm along the bottom edge of the stock
36cm from the back of the pistol grip to the center of the back of the stock.

It's a very odd design having the sights on the right hand side ,anyway I'll use my best judgment on the stock ,I can extrapolate it from pictures quite accurately .

I made the front sight today and welded it to the compensator ,blue'd it and the trigger guard ,little by little thing's are getting finished
Tomorrow if I get the time I'll make the rear sight ,its a far simpler piece to make but has to be fitted accurately so it lines up with the front sight and where the BB's are going ,then its the stock ,end cap and cocking handle and slot.

cocking slot and rear sight done and as that's the receiver finished it got blue'd ,pretty pleased with it ,too dark now to give it an accuracy test but fingers crossed i'll test it tomorrow .

Phew ,the sights are if not pin point accurate are good enough to hit my usual target approximatly 30 meters away ,it was also the first time I have adjusted the hop and that's working nicely as well .
I have just found an inconvenient part of the design ,although the barrel ,foregrip assembly is quick diasembly, at the moment the grub screw to adjust the hop must be removed first as its scewed into the top of the reciever protruding down to the hop and although I plan on having a tool in the gun for adjusting/removing the grub screw it will mean re adjusting the hop each time .I'm going to try and find a way of having the adjusting grub screw a part of the removable hop assembly ,i have 2-3mm above the hop arm and inside the main receiver to play with ,it's one of those times when it's only when you put it all together before you see the shortcoming of the design ,it's not a deal breaker as is but it could be better.

Yeah, that would be a bit annoying. Especially as I already started work on a case on the basis of taking the front off to fit it in.
The box arrived on Friday and I have already lined the inside with craft foam and the lid id now covered in recruiting posters, photos and newspaper clippings.
I found this one particularly funny:

Those poor Aussies, having to stop surfing in order to fight a war!

The hop issue is fixed ,I made up a sort of plastic bridge over the hop arm inside screwed to the hop assembly and the adjuster grub screw goes in the plastic instead of the receiver ,it has the aditional bonus is being like a nylock nut ,its adjusted exactly the same way and the tool just goes a little deeper into the receiver .
I made up the end cap as well ,it's secured by a screw that passes through the rear lower receiver then through the rear tube section of the upper receiver and screw's into bracket welded to the end cap ,as I mentioned before I plan to make a double ended tool that has a hex section of different size on each end ,one end for hop ,the other end removes the hex screw for the end cap to change battery's ,this tool will store in the lower receiver but only be accessible by removing the stock .There's not much more to do now ,the stock ,sling pounts (must order some mild steel rod ,i keep forgetting )and cocking handle and a lot of finishing and tarting up ,hopefully done by next weekend,well maybe .
I'll upload a few more pictures once the kid's are off the PC .

Started on the cocking handle today ,I'm pleased with the way it's looking but it's going to be tight on space ,I'm hopping I can have it moving ,sprung even but it may have to be fixed ,it's going to be tight in there for fitting battery's as it is ,even fixed it's still going to need a false back to the slot in the receiver or the battery will be visible and it all takes up space.

Started on the cocking handle today ,I'm pleased with the way it's looking but it's going to be tight on space ,I'm hopping I can have it moving ,sprung even but it may have to be fixed ,it's going to be tight in there for fitting battery's as it is ,even fixed it's still going to need a false back to the slot in the receiver or the battery will be visible and it all takes up space.

It occurs to me that the other option would be to make the batteries look more like a feature of the gun. I 1st considered covering them in black tape and coiling silver painted string around them to look like a spring. If there's a size of PVC tube that would fit over the batteries and fit inside the battery compartment then this could either have a helical groove painted silver to look like a spring or just have a spring on the outside if there's enough space. All you would need to make the cocking handle work, would be a spring or elastic band attached to the cocking handle and hooked onto the PVC tube as the battery is put in. You would just need guides to keep the PVC tube clear of the cocking handle so it has clearance to move.

i know you expect to see the spring but you don't ,never in any picture ,the spring was quite narrow as you can see in the picture below and was deep in shadow i'd guess .

i think you may be overestimating how much space there is ,there is absolutely no way of fitting a pvc tube over the battery and inside the gun, you have to understand that the battery plug's and lipo sensor have to fit in there with enough wire for the plug to extend out of the gun so you can plug in the battery , i'm agonizing about weather i can make a guide for the cocking handle and i'm hoping i can keep it down to 3mm(2mm would be better) absolute max depth into the space for the battery and only the smallest width i can get away with ,i will do my best but it may just not be practical .

No silly me, the Owen doesn't have a spring in the rear compartment of the tubing, the tube has a bulkhead halfway down and the spring is in the front, with just a rod connecting to the charging handle coming through the bulkhead. It was this design feature that made it so reliable. Dirt could get inside the charging handle slot as it would in the Sten, but it didn't get near anything vital.
All I need to do then is make the batteries black, they arrive tomorrow so if they aren't black then I shall wrap them in electrical tape. If the space is really that tight, it might be wise not to have the charging handle moving as that would endanger the wiring.

I've been tinkering around with this all afternoon and I think I have a solution to the codking handle ,at the front of the slot I have a guide block that is secured by a screw into the spring guide in the back of the gearbox ,through the guide block goes a 3 mm rod ,the rod is connected to the handle at one end ,the rod passes through a 15 guide hole in the guide block then through a compression spring and is bent 90 degrees at the end to retain the spring ,this all takes minimal space when the handle is forward as the rod extends forward inside the receiver and next to the gearbox ,the down side is that the spring has to be small enough to fit between the gearbox and receiver ,max 4.5 mm with o.5 mm clearance ,so in short the only spring I could find to fit was Biro spring ,with 2 Biro springs I get a reasonable travel but the spring is quite weak ,I try'd magazine spring but it's too wide ,the other thing is when you pull it back you can see the guide rod in the slot forward of the handle .

Quickly checking ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/33133569 ... 0&ff14=108
It's not terribly important to have the cocking handle working.

The batteries arrived and are black so shouldn't be too obvious through the slot as long as I have the label facing the right way.

I have been making progress on the box. The interior is lined with craft foam and I have covered the box in various recruiting posters, newspaper clippings, photo's etc. The lid has been varnished and so has the underside of the box. I think I shall try to get some more sturdy hinges and some sort of catch. Then I will just need either some handles or means of attaching the Lee Enfield sling to the box for carrying.
Internally I can't do anything permanent until I have the gun. I am however toying with storing magazines in the lid by using a piece of foam glued to the back (hinge side) of the lid and then adding a lip to the front of the lid. The foam should keep the magazines pressed up under the lip to keep them in place. I estimate that this would allow me to fit way more magazines than I could ever need.