Ah....., but back to thread 8. Unless you tell us what Swanson Hollywood blanks are, then the Bren parts suppliers won't know what parts you need! On the other hand, if they feed and work well, what else do you need?
Looks like long nosed commercial blanks. All you need for them is to modify the muzzle of an otherwise unserviceable barrel. You COULD bore a 1/4" hole vertically (or horizontally) through the exact centre line of the bore JUST ahead of the gas block and insert a 1/4" bolt through it. That will restrict the gas available.
Then depending on the gas available, adjust the gas setting of the regulator to suit.
We used to use a similar method of restricting our 7.62mm Bren guns but with the through-bolt close to the muzzle. However, some blank didn't operate well until a similar bolt was placed just ahead of the gas block. This was a tacitly agreed method but I never saw it officially approved anywhere. Something to do with restricting the VOLUME of gas.
Actually what i'm Looking for is sum Bren Gun internal parts for 2 of my Bren's I'm converting to Blank firing only. Anyone here dealing in Bren Gun parts?
Like Bren carriers do we? just recently here in NZ we had 27 running carriers on the airfield at Wings Over Wairarapa 2015, a record. (3 broke down or overheated before the run past the grandstand) you can hear some gas guns being blasted off by some of them. there was also a Quad .50 half track with gas guns adding to the din.
Mickey Mouse Ear (MME) camo. Do check the photos of Universal Carriers at Arnhem in 1944 to see if it was used there. I personally love the MME camo pattern but the British Airborne do not seem to have used it very much.
I have my 1944 Willys MB which is ex-Norway and had some airborne modifications, so it appears that it served as a replacement vehicle in 1 Airborne Division after Arnhem and in time for the Liberation of Norway in May 1945. I had it painted in MME at one time and loved the look. Sadly I cannot find good photos showing the airborne use of MME camo. So, when I repaint it this year, I plan to NOT do it in MME :-( as I cannot verify its use with 1 Can Para Bn. (Normany to Wismar)
This is mine about 10 years ago with a WWII veteran of 1 Canadian Parachute Battalion seated in it. It is marked for 1 Can Para Bn, in 6 AB Div. but because the markings were duplicated basically it is also 3 Para Bn in 1 AB Div. (I now have combat rims and fresh WWII tread pattern tires for it.)
Same jeep in MME also taken at WWII fort - Fort Rodd Hill.
I also understood that the KIWI carriers were built as training vehicles ONLY. Part of the reason was that NZ had the capability of making the vehicle per se, but lacked the facilities to make the proper "armoured" steel and thus "
training" use and not "operational"use.
Drive train was bog-standard Ford side-valve V-8 engine, gear-gox and diff., much the same as in the tens of thousands of "Blitz" trucks.
The Oz-built versions used "proper" armour plate but have a different style of angled glacis plate arrangement.
In the movie biz, it is common to tap a thread into the muzzle of the barrel; usually a coarse pattern is good.
The "adapters" are threaded cylinders, a bit like a long grub screw, say 25-30mm long. these have a small hole bored along the centreline to allow some gas to bleed forward and provide "muzzle-flash".
More modern toys like L1a1s and M-16s are usually done a bit differently:
The flask hider is removed and a "top-hat" plug is inserted between the barrel and inner shoulder of the flash-hider. The trick here is that the "arty" types want FLASH, so they get it. the flange at the rear of the device retains it in place and the bore is NOT "butchered". A "generous hole is bored from the rear of the adapter forwards to just short of the front end.
The point of the cylindrical extension running forward into the internal void of the "muzzle device" is to carry hot gas forward to the location of the "slots" in the flash-hider.
The front face of the adapter has a quite small hole bored into it to allow gas to escape forwards.
Now for the "arty" part: small holes are also bored RADIALLY into the sides of the extension and these are located so that they line up with the slots in the flash hider.
Gas escaping via these radial holes gives you that creative " star-burst" flash effect, because the adapter has bypassed the slots that were carefully engineered to break up the high-pressure gas front of the muzzle blast.
Playing with the propellant load is essential, as well. Modern, fast-burning "smokeless" propellants may well provide weapon function and noise with a suitable blank-firing device, but there is little flash or SMOKE..............yes, I know............
It always struck me as vaguely ironic that one of the key roles of the movie "armourer" was to roll back a century of exquisite engineering that has gone into HIDING the muzzle flash from the enemy AND THE FIRER.
SO, it is not unknown to use a MIX of smokeless propellant and something like "Pyrodex" (synthetic black powder) to provide flash with an increased "dwell time" and SMOKE!
The "dwell time" is very important in the movie game. Most features are shot on 35mm film at 24 frames per second.
If the shutter is not open at the time of the muzzle flash, it is missed completely; all you get is smoke and a "boring" look of a gun being "jiggled" by the operator.
Many of the BIG movie armourer's houses do "gas-guns", especially for machine-guns. These are either original or faithful(ish) replicas of the weapon desired, but "modified" to burn Propane or similar with an electric ignition that can be synchronised to the shutter of the camera. Sound, as with conventional blanks is almost ALWAYS dubbed in at during post-production.
PM
