The Tommy gun that almost drove me mad

I was working my day job when I got a phone call about a tommy gun that needed some fixing. The details were unclear and I prefer it that way because I figure things out best visually.

After a trip to retrieve the beast, everything looked ok.

Except, in trying to fix the gun themself, the owner removed the pivot pin which hold everything together. Unfortunately they removed the pin without taking the gun apart so now everything was just floating around inside the gun AND there was something bigger wrong with it too that I had to figure out after fixing this near impossible task of fishing out the parts without taking the gun apart or drilling into it.

All wood removed. I made a bet with my wife that I could get the parts out without drilling into the gun.

You can see the lower being held open with a screw driver punch bit. See the trigger rising up? That’s under spring pressure. There are a dozen more parts inside doing the same and so it’s just a puzzle of days trying to slide the lower off while moving parts.

I forgot to take a pic of the lower removed because I was too excited but hey! I did it! Notice the pivot pin is back in place and I’m piecing it back together. At this point I wanna do a functions test to see how things go.

Things didn’t go. The gun wouldn’t fire and the rounds kept jamming and not seating all the way forward. There was no logic to this. Usually when a cartridge doesn’t seat correctly, it’s called “out of battery” and it usually required adjusting head spacing but tommy guns don’t exactly have a way of adjusting head spacing without a brand new barrel and then, also, there is no way a tommy gun can suddenly go out of battery. This puzzle got worse and worse and thought it was beyond my abilities. I spoke to experts who had no explanation. Tommy guns eat ammo. They don’t fail like this.

Sitting on the toilet one day I thought “what are the odds that there is a clog of some sort inside the chamber?” But anytime I checked I could see right through the bore. I even ran a cleaning brush and it still wouldn’t work. But then I had an epiphany. What if I couldn’t see the clog because it was a shell with the back blown out and it was just hugging the walls of the chamber!? Sure as shit. Pulled it out with one of my wife’s crocheting hooks.

I was gonna post a video but I shouldn’t have been wearing the shirt I was so sorry about that! But it worked! I put 50 rounds through it and it worked beautifully.

Cleaned it up. Soaked the wood in mineral spirits.

Nice scrub and clean and then rubbed some boiled linseed oil into it like it would’ve been.

Letting her dry.

Filled in the engravings with white wax (crayons).

Used a steel brush attachment on my cordless drill along with some oil to clean any rust off. Wiped it dry and did some spot bluing on any exposed steel. Filled in the remaining engravings with wax and made sure it was nice and oiled.

All prettied up and ready for action. Like a brand new gun. Customer was quite happy and I am quite proud to have been able to work on a piece of history.

Now to finish this new stock for my buddies 1903A3 Springfield.