No 4 Mk2 disassembly, what is the trick?

[Peter Laidler]

I wouldn't loose any sleep snipershot. All Armourers usually made their own sets of tools during their training/apprenticeships which lasted their whole lifetime. One of the best materials is those worn out 18" long industrial hacksaw blades. You know the things....., blue coloured, 1.25" deep and 1/8" thick. Can be annealed, worked hardened and tempered to suit any application. I still have loads of my oild hand made tools including my unique 91 degree square. Apparently it was the only 91 degree square in the class.

Incidentally, one of the old wartime apprentices told me several years ago that they were required to make a set of SMLE/No1 rifle taps on a lathe during their basic bench fitting phase. Then test against a master gauge. These were used to clean-up threaded holes and re-cut damaged threads. And THEN, use those newly made and tempered taps to manufacture a die plate which was used to re-cut damaged screw threads.

You can guess what happened........ The hardening and tempering of the taps was flawed for the first few tries so you started again until you got it dead right and only THEN could you successfully cut the die plate.

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[Seaspriter]

my unique 91 degree square

Captain, there is actually a very good use for squares that aren't square. In every one of the several 18th century houses I restored, the old beauties had sagged and sloped as their joists, posts, and sills either rotted or became compressed over a 200-300 year period.

This made every window and door frame out of square -- typically anywhere from 1-5 degrees (sometimes even more). When restoring or replacing old moldings, we had to cut a miter to the odd angle. Historic restoration carpenters (and shipwrights) thus became "masters of weird angles." Either you used an out-of-square tool, or made one to fit the weird angle, or used a protractor with variable positions (my preference). So perhaps your unique device has a future, in the hands of one of the masters of weird angles. (of course you could just peen the thing on 89 degree side and bring it back into spec, but then you'd no longer have a story to tell. )