Machine's T21 MK2 - Precision Build

[Lozzer86]

Brothers,

After spending some time with a real 1914 Lewis, photographing, measuring every detail, understanding how the mechanisms work..... I realised within a few feet of it that my T21 was so far off it was going to drive me crazy !

So my advice is.... if you've made a T21 and you ever get a chance to handle a real Lewis... DON'T !!! You'll lose sleep

So there was only 1 thing I could do... Make a new one from scratch

Only this time, I wanted to make it millimetre perfect, reproduce all of the glorious details in the firing mechanism, have an open breach, a see through cocking mechanism, reproduce the barrel engraving, the hand engraving, the tiny makers symbols.... every scratch, every imperfection, every detail from the base of the stock to the tip of the barrel.

Oh, and just to add some spice to an already spicy adventure.... It had to weigh under 2.5 kilos and it had to come in 2 parts for ease of transport !!!

So here is my photo journey. A journey which took 4 solid weeks and is still going.

Here's a picture showing the real Lewis (TOP) against my nearly finished T21 (BOTTOM). Bear in mind that the 2 are at slightly different angles.



It's still not fully complete. there are a couple of bits missing and some changes to the greeblies, so i'll keep this thread going as I amend the bits.

Now.... you guys know how to use a Dremel and basic tools, so I won't be boring you.

But I'll show you a selection of the build photo's taken from the start.... The first thing you'll notice is that this is NOT a PandaTrooper build. It's not going to work for the level of accuracy I need. It's a pipe build which gives me a chamber for mounting the front barrel inside.

To make absolutely sure that this build was exactly the right dimensions and shape, I took all the reference photographs and enlarged them to 100% scale using photoshop.

Then I spent a long time tracing the outlines of all the parts to use as templates.

The stock, receiver, top plate and even the barrel was done this way. By using the trace outlines, I was able to reproduce all of the parts with ultimate accuracy.



It's worth mentioning that when I overlaid the tracings with the 'publicly available' shape and dimensions, it was quite different. But unless the existing drawings and templates were reproduced from a real Lewis, that's to be expected. To be fair, the available ones are a good representation of a Lewis, but they don't measure up correctly in many of the dimensions.

Once you have all of the information, measurements and trace outlines, the actual process was not far off a conventional build.

The difficulty was substituting materials from the original steel on the real Lewis.

Plastic will never be as strong at steel in any thickness, and given that I wanted this to be as light as possible I needed to be smart with the materials used.

The entire weapon was eventually made from light wooden stock, aluminium, ABS and lots of Milliput for shaping.

The basic shape... Made from a light wood and using the traced outlines, I marked up the main body. The trigger guard has to be so thin, it needs to be made from aluminium. Wood won't be strong enough at this thickness. You can see the areas that I needed to cut out for realism. It doesn't leave a lot of wood left for strength.

The pipe that will receive the barrel extension, making it a 2 piece weapon.

The receiver is fully open from the feed plate to the ejection port. Once the barrel slides into the receiver, the holes close up.

Both sides were faced with 2mm ABS sheet to give twisting strength. These we bonded to the wooden form and allowed me to shape the curves of the grip and underbody correctly.

The Lewis doesn't have any square surfaces, which you only see on the actual gun on inspection. There are also many strange undercuts and shapes on the underside which need to be included. None of this is visible from any screen shot from the film. You only see these on the actual Lewis. It's a complicated design :/



Full Barrel made from 3 parts of TIG Welded Aluminium.

The welds were ground off to make it smooth, then the reduction was gradually filled to mimic the reduction in the actual Lewis.

It's a very gradual reduction as you'll see in the end photos.



Lathing Guide and Receiver Outline.



Initial mockup of Receiver assembly, made from ABS and Architect Craft Board.



Internal Barrel Pipe with some 3D printed Spacers that are bonded to the inside of the larger front barrel housing.



Lots of Filler Primer on the base form. At this point all of the subtle curves and shaping has been completed. I use filler primer to give me a thick base to sand from.

This removes any tooling marks on the receiver, allowing me to get the shine needed on the body.

Again, this is only seen on the real Lewis.



3D printed Front Sight. I used a bit of 3D printed parts for this, firstly to keep the weight down and secondly to save hours of painstaking part building.

I print in PLA as ABS doesn't have the same strength for the size part. But it gives me another problem. Sanding PLA is almost impossible, so each part has been coated with resin and filler primer, then sanded.

Once painted, it's close to any resin cast you can get.



Hand engraved (By Me) symbols and lettering present on the original.

There are many different symbols, including a 'Masonic' symbol on the receiver tray base. My TD ID is the Serial Number (33751)



Laying down the base colours. There a many different colours here, from grey to silver to blue. And many different tones and blending.



Front Barrel Vents for the inside of the hot end.



Initial Weathering of the Receiver Mechanism. Notice the latching mechanism for the Ammunition Drum.

This is the first of many layers of weathering, using the reference photos to try and accurately represent the colours and areas.



Plastic is starting to look a lot like metal now



One of the most difficult aspects of the real Lewis to replicate, the Barrel Engraving !!!

So far we have discovered 2 types of Lewis barrel engraving and knurling.

I'm not sure if that's a date driven thing or a use driven thing (Field use vs Aircraft use). Mine has the concentric barrel engraving from top to receiver.



On the scales ... It's good

A little over 2.3 kilos, which is 5 lbs.





Comparison against my Old T21 and my new T21.

At first, there doesn't look like much difference.

But there are lots of subtle differences and once they all add up, it's like black and white.









There's still a few bits to do and I'll update as we go, but so far it's a fairly realistic Lewis

It also weighs in at only 2.3kg.

[Strider]

Raw talent, bro! Looks fantastic!

[nick.black]

Mate this is by far the best T-21 I have ever seen. You have really set a gigantic bar for us all to aim for with this.

Amazing engineering skills,

Wonderful paint job and weathering

Ingenious use of parts and attention to detail.

Well done buddy, thoroughly deserved and I hope you will carry it with pride.

Nick

[Rolf]

Top creative skills, looks great

[TD42115]

Absolutely awesome man..

[Jonboy2312]

This is beyond awesome! My build looks so rough in comparison...

[BadBatch]

Wow! I am speechless. That is seriously one of the most amazing builds I have ever seen.
You should get some sort of award for this build. Seriously.
Thank you for including your sketches in with all of the reference photos.

[spOOL68]

Looks amazing! Great job!!!

[iconoclasta_88]

This is just amazing!!!

Big congrats bro!

 

Saludos.