Mk5 Sten Fore Grip Saga

[bigduke6]

For many, they may have seen the Fore Grips available for the Mk5 Sten that fit on the barrel nut, although I offered to help out two forum members with the ones they had bought, it seemed straight forward until a last hitch......

So a few pics of one of the grips one things for sure they aren't a fit at all, but very nice wood and well finished its just the band that lets it down.... although its the grip itself that is a friction fit and not the band, the band has a square nut welded to it that the screw goes through and tightens the grip to the barrel nut.







You can see from above, the band is far too big on a Mk5 Barrel nut, so I decided to measure the nut in the pic which is from a Mk5 Sten plus I took another measurement from my Mk5 Sten and both were about the same ( I must stress here that one single measurement of the diameter is no good you will need to take several and work the average) the Nuts themselves have probably had some hard use combined with bangs, knocks etc will soon take it out of
shape.

Armed with the info I decided to make a simple spacer to be a push fit into the original band and be a decent fit on the nut, again with a distorted nut its not possible for it to be a perfect fit but certainly better than what it was.

After making these I thought I'd make two complete new bands, once home I checked them against my barrel nut, as I'd made the inside diameter oversize so I could turn them to be a good tight fit, so with a few finish cuts they fitted on my barrel nut perfect.... of course at this time I had a members Sten that was due for phosphating and Suncorite, so tried one of the new made rings to this barrel nut.....

A bit taken back when it rattled on..... so tested with mine and a good fit, took the one off my other Mk5 and a perfect fit..... so only option here was to make another spacer for the original.

pics below is the difference of the two barrel nuts in the new complete band I'd made,







I would assume the barrel nut was a standard size ? I guess its over to the man who wrote a book on the Sten....

So one member has a package with original band with one of the spacers fitted and also one of the complete bands I made, the other member..... well he gets a bigger package but only the original band with a spacer fitted.

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