71/84 parts sources?

[britarms]

Hi, does anybody know where I might find a magazine tube & spring for my 71/84? I have the follower and the cap, but not the rest.

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[Patrick Chadwick]

Ok, here come's today's D-I-Y project. Finding the parts may well the kind of job that takes the rest of your life, and most of us would rather have a complete, functioning rifle before we die. Fortunately you have the follower and the cap. If you can borrow a complete 71/84 as a sample for copying, it should be possible to make the tube/have it made in any moderately well equipped machine shop.

What will bother most people more than the tube may well be the spring. Your chances of finding one are probably 5/8 of FA, to use a British technical term. But it is quite feasible to WIND YOUR OWN, using a mandrel of appropriate diameter in the chuck of a screw-cutting lathe with an adequately long bed. The wire is fed in via a guide attached to the cross-slide or toolpost, and the spring pitch can then be set quite accurately, as if you were cutting a screw with a very long pitch.

And just to show that this is not just a product of my fantasy, and to save my typing fingers from further wear and tear, there is a little book for model engineers entitled "Spring Design and Manufacture" by "Tubal Cain", No. 19 in the Workshop Practice series, Argus Books*, ISBN 0 85242 925 8.

It has more than enough on theory and design principles to satisfy our needs, worked examples, illustration of the setup options, and even curves to allow for a reasonable prediction of "spring-back - the effect that the spring unwinds a bit when you you release the tension, so that you actually have to use a mandrel a bit smaller than the finished size would suggest. Then get a coil of piano wire of the appropriate diameter, and you're in business!

Otherwise you will be in the hens'-teeth searching game, and if you ever find a spare, it will have come from a scrapped rifle and have a price that makes you flinch.

Do It Yourself!



*Maybe now called Nexus - a long history of takeovers and renaming, I fear

[Calif-Steve]

The import of South American 71/84's(10 years ago) included piles of parts. The tube did not survive and lots of guys had to make their own. You can not find/but the part. Good luck.

[britarms]

Well, thanks for the encouragement, anyways. I never thought of winding a spring, sounds like a fun challenge. I was thinking I might be able to use one from a lever gun or shotgun, if I could find one that would approximately fit. For the tube, if I can't find an original, I'm going to check my steel suppliers for tubing.

[Patrick Chadwick]

I was thinking I might be able to use one from a lever gun or shotgun, if I could find one that would approximately fit.

Almost no chance - a) the 71/84 tube is longer than the magazine tube on anything else. b) Shotgun tubes woud be too wide, LARs too thin.

I'm going to check my steel suppliers for tubing.

If you cannot find suitable steel tubing - why not use thin-walled brass tubing a.k.a. telescope tubing. The tube is not visible when the rifle is assembled!

Try a commercial non-ferrous metal supplier. Metric sizes should go from a couple of mm up to about 30mm, with 1mm or even 0.5mm wall thickness. Inch sizes may be more restricted. A brass tube will be much easier to work.

[jmoore]

The spring, unforunately, is too easy!

Order this one:

Magazine Spring


---------- Post added at 05:05 AM ---------- Previous post was at 05:04 AM ----------

BTW: scroll down a bit after the Numrich page comes up- I don't know why they try to hide the individual items...

[Patrick Chadwick]

My ghast is flabbered!

But look at it from here:

NO order accepted for over 100 dollars. About 70-80 euros, depending on the whims of the currency markets.

BUT shipped with the US postal service. Cost? I don't know, but I do know that it ends up at the not-so-local customs and excise center, to which I have to drive and pick the goods up, paying customs duties in cash before I can do so.

AND a 25 dollar fee, for that order worth less than 100 dollars.

All of which means that the spring for less than 7 dollars would cost me more than 70 by the time I get it home!

So although I am very well aware of Numrich, as someone living outside the US, I find it unfortunate that they, by collecting so much milsurp material and then only selling it under the above-mentioned restrictions, have effectively dried up the market for everyone outside the USA.

Patrick

[jmoore]

Sorry, old bean, but as britarms is in Canada, I thought it might help.

However, the spring book sounds interesting. My primary source for spring lore is a horribly tattered book by Wahl. Not much on the practical side, though. Catchy title something like "Spring Design and Performance", I think- the cover's about gone.

[Patrick Chadwick]

Jmoore, if you google it, you will find it only costs 6.95 (pounds, of course!). I have mentioned this a couple of times: model engineering know-how can sometimes help with gunsmithing problems. The "Workshop Practice Series" of books provides very useful tips on various metalworking and machining techniques, foundrywork, hardening and tempering etc. and I have acquired most of them over the years. If you want to refurbish an anonymous 19th century percussion rifle, or a flintlock, then it's no use hoping to find spares - there aren't any.

Patrick

[jmoore]

Jmoore, if you google it, you will find it only costs 6.95 (pounds, of course!).

Patrick

 

About twice that across the pond or a bit more. Dang, I try not to buy stuff off the "internets". Leads to dramas about half the time, it seems.