Hey Peter

[Peter Laidler]

As a matter of interest Jeff, I'm not sure that there was an actual thread for the gas cylinder except that it was a metric thread over a diameter. As a result, it was difficult to clean out the threads after you'd got a split gas cylinder off the rifle. They were alwaqys c\rboned up due to the gas venting into the thread.

At our big Base workshops (and maybe the bigger Field workshops too) we had the male end of a return spring tube cut down the thread and case hardened and being the same thread on a diameter, it was used as a cutting tap to clean out the fouled up carbon from the gas block.

Someone told me that the return spring tube nut at the bottom could also be used to do the same job. I suppose it could, providing the thread/diameter was identical.

There, another simple Armourers tool for you L1A1 fiends