Little something different… .22 Mag Carbine Pt1

So, I’m almost done with the first Rem. 25 rifle, its down to finishing the finishing  on the stock and metal… A couple more coats of oil for the stock, and the blueing.  But I didn’t work on it the last couple days. I’m tired of oiling that stock, and while I finally have everything needed to do the blueing, I’m still not shure thats what I want to do to it…

So I worked on something else last night.

The internet is a dangerous place. I was looking at some older cartridges, like the rare/almost obsolete 25–20, the 32–20, and the 218 bee… Then the .22 hornet, and some other wildcats from the turn of the last century… That led me to a revolver forum I used to frequent. I browsed around, and that showed me a coule black powder revolvers with conversion cylenders for cartridges(nothing new, I’d seen it before). That got me to thinging about the .36 cal Navy revolver that was Dads, and wondering if I could get a conversion for it.(yup… at $250!) Looking at conversions led me to some guns made between converted cap and ball revolvers, and the famous colt SAA; open top cartridge revolvers. And the modern replicas. And a dealers site led me to look up the manufacturers site… Which led me to a gun style I’d almost forgotten about;

I’ve always wanted one of these revolving carbines;

So, reseaching and reading about the cartridge for the other gun project, led me straight(more or less) into this project.

And, I just so happen to have a .22(Mag) revolver thats already a project gun, and a .22 barrel blank laying around… 😀  I already can’t shoot the revolver since the last time I worked on it, I ruined the ejector housing… SA guns are a pain to shoot without a easy way to eject fired cases. And the barrel blank is one my Dad bought cheap 10+ years ago for some small single shot pistol and rifle projects that we never got around to doing.

SO, if I mess this up, I’m not losing anything!

I’ve never understood exactly why short barreld rifles are illegal, and yet long barreld hand guns aren’t… I mount this barrel and leave the pistol grip, and I’ve made what they call a Buntline, usually sold with a 12” to 14” barrel….   But anything with a buttstock and less than 16” of barrel is a SBR, and requires a $200 fed tax stamp, and different registarion paperwork etc…   But the overall length/concealability comes out about the same give or take a few inches!   The biggest thing is you can’t have anything with a shoulder stock with a barrel less than 16”; Thus putting a shoulder stock on a pistol also being illegal. 

But anyway, to stay within legal specs of a shoulder fired firearm, I cut the barrel at 16”(OK, actually 17” in case I screwed up the first mounting attempt)

SO the final form of the gun is within all legal specs. Except the serial number is still from a pistol. If I find out that that still makes the gun illegal (regaurdless of actual applicable physical dimensions and handling), I’ll reverse this project and put it back down to a 5” or 6” barreled pistol.

UPDATE; I have been reading ATF regs and letters of law. Dirrectly from the ATF site archives too, to rule out any errors or misinterpretations by others.    As far as I can tell, and I am 95% certain of it; You Can NOT convert a firearm orginally made as a rifle to have less than 16” of barrel, or be less than 26” overall length with out NFA reclassification(as in illegal without the tax and registration/paperwork etc). You Can NOT have a pistol with a butt stock, IF it has a barrel less than 16”  without NFA reclasification.  YOU CAN however convert a reciever ORIGINALLY designed and sold as a Pistol into a rifle, with a butstock IF the barrel length meets the 16” requirement AND it meets the 26” overall length requirement.  

https://www.atf.gov/files/regulations-rulings/rulings/atf-rulings/atf-ruling-2011-4.pdf

https://www.atf.gov/files/publications/download/p/atf-p-5320-8/atf-p-5320-8-chapter-2.pdf

The basics are you can’t convert a receiver designed and sold as a rifle into a pistol, but you CAN convert receiver designed and sold as a pistol into a rifle IF the legal lengths are maintained.

Which explains all the kits I’ve seen out there that come with a longer barrel and a stock that will mount on a 1911…  And everyone building legal AR pistols… Its legal if you buy an Pistol designated lower, and convert back and forth…. Not legal if its sold as a Rifle lower. 

Or to quote someone more eloquent than I am(this is more understandable to me, more than my own wording above…lol…) 

“”The BATFE has made it very clear that once a receiver is built into a rifle, whether by a factory or by you, it is always a rifle and converting it to a pistol is illegal.

However, it is perfectly legal to build the receiver into a pistol first and then convert it to a rifle. If the receiver is built into a pistol first, you can configure it back and forth from handgun to rifle and back again as much as you want. However, you must be vigilant to ensure that the less than 16&Prime barrel is never on the receiver at the same time as a stock”” 

Remove barrel…

Short barrel revolver anyone?   Accuracy would no doubt suck, but its balanced nice, and feels/points great!

New barrel turned to fit, back tapered, and forcing cone cut;

Mounted;

This is a comparatively easy barrel mounting since its not threaded in, it slip fits, then has two cross pins. I mamnaged to break a drill off in the frame when drilling one cross hole, so I need to fix that somehow later, but the other pin went in perfectly.   I lucked out too, the outside diameter of the blank is Exactly the same os the original barrel, so it fits on there well, and I had enough material to turn the needed shoulder on the barrel.

The previous two barrel lengths this gun has had;

Its actually ironic if you think about it, originally I wanted a shorter gun so I took it down from 4–5/8” to 3–1/2”… Now I’m extending it to 17” 😉

Gonna need one heck of a long holster for this thing like this, and my fast draw is gonna need a LOT more practice!! 😉 😀

Carbine teaser; (remember the runined forestock from the 25–20? yup… it fits this barrel contour pretty good! )

Doing stock design and layout;