These 2 pieces of aluminum will eventually become the receiver.
This is how I left off on the barrel page.
I pressed the Barrel Bushing into the Receiver today at work. The next step is to weld/solder the bushing into the receiver tube.
In this picture I am welding/solding in the Barrel Bushing. I am using a product called ALUMALOY. (Its the poor mans way to weld aluminum. The stuff actually works, I use it on a lot of my projects.) I am heating the tube up with a propane torch and using the welding stick I am running a bead around the edge on the bushing. My hope is that it the alumaloy will have flowed into the notch I made in the Bushing and after I can the chuck the whole thing in the lathe and using a boring bar clean up the rest and make a nice flush surface the barrel will seat on.
Here's how it came out looking.
Things went a little astray today. I started by cutting the receiver tube down to size on the bandsaw.
I had the tube setup in the lathe with the steady rest and started to bore out the tube and square up the bushing and that's when the problems started. I think by heating up the tube to weld in the bushing the aluminum became annealed. As I started to bore the tube the aluminum was very gummy to machine and after a few minutes the finger on the rest caught the tube and gouged it up. I ended up finishing squaring up the bushing without the use of the rest, so it still should work out.
Now that the tube has a nice gouge in it I'll have to turn it down a bit so instead of boring out the front of the tube to fit the barrel I turned the barrel a bit to fit the tube. I probably should have just done this in the first place.
Here's where I'm at now. The barrel screws into the receiver pretty good. I tried to turn the front part of the tube where the gouge was at but it still doesn't look to good. Learn from my mistakes at least. I'm going to continue on and worry about the looks later.
Next I applied layout dye to the tube and marked for the loading/ejection opening.
I then set the tube up in the Mill to cut out the opening.
I cut one slot length wise, then rotated the tube and cut another, then cut one more across the tube. I then used a hacksaw to cut the rest.
Here is the rough opening of the ejection port. (and I do mean rough) I'll have to go back later with a file and clean everything up. Next time or if I end up redoing all of this I will cut and mill everything before I heat up the tube and weld in the bushing.