Thank you folks for the comments. It's much appreciated.
Well, while this project was going on, Ian happened along one day. He was asking me what the various parts weighed and how much the tube weighed, and what the total would weigh, he even asked me how much the muzzle brake weighed, and he. . . seemed to have weight on the brain. And so I asked what was what.
He started telling me about his Form 1 project he had in the hopper, he even showed me a titanium muzzle brake he brought over. So I guess the gauntlet had been thrown down.
Time to shed some weight.
The most obvious was the K-baffles. K's, by their nature weigh a lot. If you recall these Ks were in process before I had finalized the design. Going with that notch design left a LOT of meat on the plate. So they had to go on a diet.
Soooo, time to make another mandrel, LOL. I started by turning down some aluminum barstock to a 60* angle and threading the end. Then I tuned out some backing plates. The idea was to sandwich the K baffle on the end so that I could turn off the excess material.
That didn't work worth a darn! I absolutely could NOT get the baffle tightened down and running "true". I needed a square flat surface. Back to the drawing board.
That was MUCH better. Now I just turned off some material at the same angle as the inside. The idea was to make sure everything was no thinner than .08 inch.
And here's a side by side to show how much was taken off.
I decided to leave the first K-baffle alone for the sake of strength. Here's a lineup off all the baffles. 2 cone baffles and 4 K-baffles.
Now on to something that had me rather befuddled. My design had the front endcap with a cone of it's own on the inside. Most silencers end with just a flat endcap, or a profile similar to the plate of the K-baffle. I wanted something better and the cone seemed good to me. BUT, it left a large section where the bullet would be passing down with walls all the way around it. That could generate a "pre cursor pulse" and had me concerned. I kinda put it out of my mind ans was just going to "go with it". And I probably would have if not for the prodding from Ian.
Here's a refresher on what the endcap looks like:
I wanted to carve out some of the innards of that last cone, essentially making another "baffle" inside the endcap.
That would require a very special tool. Back to the grinder. . .
This made for a VERY tight fit.
Ok, the tool was made. Now how do I do this without being able to see. The normal operation when carving an angle is to lock the carriage down, work the compound manually to cut, and move the cross slide a few thousands making your cut a bit deeper as you go. Well, because I was working inside a hole, I could not move my cross slide, I'd have to move the carriage. The problem with that is that he carriage has no measuring dial on it, it wasn't meant to work that way. My solution was to mount a dial indicator on the drip tray indicating on the front of the carriage.
Now my problem was to know when to stop my compound advance as I cut material away. I couldn't use the dials on the compound because the amount fed in would change everytime i moved the carriage down. The solution was a dial indicator mounted the the carriage and indicating on the back of the cutting tool.
I'm sure the above was really clear as mud so let me try to explain a bit better. I have to put this cutting tool down a hole, and at some point I have to start advancing the cutting tool into the side of the hole at a 60* angle. I have to stop advancing the tool at the same point every time so I end up with a nice shelf at the end. I cannot see any of this cutting and have to rely on a dial indicator on the front, and a dial indicator at the back to tell me where the tool is inside that hole. Simple right?
Continued. . .