Vee Twin Autococker

[woouulf]

Awe heck, I just loved these... Mines off to Mozak Machine to get some sort of crazy milling and then hopefully to Mario for anno.. I hope to get this pattern done...

[Lt. head-shot]

Got mine in today! Thanks again Doc.

What is everyone running for regulators? I had planned to use an Inception, but after 3 hours of trying to get the damn thing to stop leaking, I slipped with a wrench and torched it when it seized to the vasa. I have a CP reg, but it appears to only hit 550 PSI and I don't think that's gonna cut it. Palmers is the only other one I know that makes a really high PSI reg.

[Chuck E Ducky]

I went with an AKA 2L+ They are known to flow really good.

[Lt. head-shot]

Ahhh forgot about AKA. Thanks @Chuck. The Sidewinder looks to go up to 800PSI so I went with that.

[DocsMachine]

The reg was leaking, or the gun was leaking?

Doc.

[Lt. head-shot]

Regulator! When I did finally change regs, there was the tiniest hint of a leak in the barrel, but that seems to happen sometimes with inception cup seals. Usually goes away eventually.

[Trbo323]

Got mine in today! Thanks again Doc.

What is everyone running for regulators? I had planned to use an Inception, but after 3 hours of trying to get the damn thing to stop leaking, I slipped with a wrench and torched it when it seized to the vasa. I have a CP reg, but it appears to only hit 550 PSI and I don't think that's gonna cut it. Palmers is the only other one I know that makes a really high PSI reg.

You might have an lp piston in that CP, you might be able to flip one of the bevels to get more pressure out of it

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[Lt. head-shot]

Never tried that before, but It looks like I would flip one to "shorten" the stack? Or do I have that backwards.

[DocsMachine]

Flipping a bellevile washer isn't to make the stack shorter, it makes the spring stiffer.

Doc.

[Siress]

Flipping a bellevile washer changes the length inversely proportional (in direction, not magnitude) to the stiffness of the stack. It's not a safe assumption to think that you can safely change the length of the spring and not suffer consequences, such as over-pressurizing your gun or damaging the reg seat. I don't know which will provide more output pressure in a given regulator, but I suspect it's the longer configuration.

[DocsMachine]

Has anyone else emailed me and not gotten a reply? For some reason I'm still having issues with Headshot, here, and earlier there was some difficulty with Seth's. Is my server's antispam getting a little too aggressive, maybe?

Doc.

-Update: Yep, confirmed that that server antispam has been blocking some messages. I shut off auto-delete last night, and in amongst the flood of spam, viruses and boobs (hey, it's not all bad ) I got a couple false-postive marked messages.

I'm talking with my host at the moment to see if we can adjust the settings- should be easy, I just don't know how- but for the moment I'm just going to have to manually pick the wheat from the chaff. If you've emailed me at some point and haven't gotten a reply, assuming the question is still relevant, feel free to hit me again.

Doc.

[Lt. head-shot]

Just got this approval photo from Arc. Can't wait to get it in and put together!

[maggot]

Cool! You got a sight rail? Neat choice.

[NONOBLITUS]

That’s going to be so cool.

[FullContactUSA]

Damn, that is pretty sweet.

[Lt. head-shot]

Back and assembled, just need to dial her in!

Doc's Machine V-Twin #06 aka The Two-nicorn

[maggot]

Amazing! I'm so scared for this to fall off the deck though!

[DocsMachine]

Mind if I snitch a photo or two for webpage, advertising and general drooling purposes?

Doc.

[lew]

I'm not even a pump fan, but that's damned hot!

[NONOBLITUS]

Damn ! That is amazing.

[DocsMachine]

Now THAT is awesome! Hopefully I can gt around to finishing one for myself.

Doc.

[Lt. head-shot]

Blessed by the maker himself! I am honored. I can shoot you an email with the high res versions of these photos if you’d like.

[DocsMachine]

I'd appreciate it if you would. Been meaning to make a page on these, and hoping to get a finished pic of all the ones in this thread.

Doc.

[automeister]

Beautiful work, I need to find a good anodizer myself. Who has reasonable prices these days?

[Lt. head-shot]

Reasonable vs awesome can be two opposite sides of the coin. For something truly crazy/custom, Arc and Caustic seem to be the go to. But when I had my Godzilla cocker built by Hellion, he used Annotech metal finishing and the cost was really good, quality for the work was good as well.

[maggot]

I am so flipping excited for this... just waiting for the anodizer to do their thing and send me a bill for 1 billion dollars. The trio are getting the same ano.

[zinger565]

Lt. head-shot I have to ask, any anno issues where Doc "plugged" the valve holes? I always wondered if mis-matched aluminum, even just the grain structure, would be visible.

[Lt. head-shot]

Lt. head-shot I have to ask, any anno issues where Doc "plugged" the valve holes? I always wondered if mis-matched aluminum, even just the grain structure, would be visible.

There are actually. It doesn’t bother me since the splash is very random, but there are some spots. Not 100% sure if it would show on everything, or maybe it was a polishing issue.

[DocsMachine]

Lt. head-shot I have to ask, any anno issues where Doc "plugged" the valve holes? I always wondered if mis-matched aluminum, even just the grain structure, would be visible.

-The "plugs" are the same 6061 as the rest of the body. Not the same "billet", of course, but very much the same alloy. You don't start getting coloration issues unless you use different alloys- the famous one being older 'Cocker vertical ASAs. Those I think were made from 2021, and due to the increased copper content, don't take the color the same way. (No issue with black, but gets more obvious with lighter colors.)

I try to smooth them up as best as I can, but there will always be some trace visible. I will say on Headshot's, it looks to me like the polisher got WAY too aggressive with the buffer.

The ports can't be easily drilled from underneath (and still have a valve retaining screw, which, with an 11/16" valve, is the only thing holding the valve in place) and if I TIG welded the holes shut, which I could easily do, the welding appears as a "stain" in the anno. Anyone who's ever owned a Blazer, especially one annoed a bright color, knows about the little 'cloud' stain where they TIGged the inner air passages closed after drilling.

Wait'll you guys see Sethzilla's. Not fancy anno, but a little extra milling.

Doc.

[zinger565]

"and if I TIG welded the holes shut, which I could easily do, the welding appears as a "stain" in the anno."

Okay, that's what I've seen before, especially with eye-hole repairs. I figured if it's the same alloy it'd be nearly indecipherable.

[Chuck E Ducky]

Welding changes the density of the material making it take Ano differently even if it’s the same exact material. It’s why patched markers never come out perfect. You could take a piece of the same material tig it together re grain polish and just the heat will make it look different.

[zinger565]

Having flashbacks to my materials science classes...

[DocsMachine]

A million years ago, I made an "L" stock for an early 'Cocker I had, to mount a tank ring to hold one of the early Paintball Mania FW-71 HPA tanks- the old flat-bottom bottle.



(Sorry about the size, that pic is literally 25 years old, and dates back to the 640x480 monitor days. I've been meaning to do a fresh photoshoot and write-up of the gun, which I still have. The idea, by the way, was based off of how Dave Youngblood had his set up on some of his guns- and, point in fact, he used the same tank and a very similar stock for the famous ESPN games.)

Anyway, I didn't have a way to cleanly bend the bar to make the tail, so I made a separate piece, and had a local shop TIG weld it on. The guy did kind of a sloppy job of it (and it later cracked for lack of penetration) and lord only knows what rod he used. But I was able to sand and file it smooth (which admittedly didn't help the strength) and it looked pretty much like one piece when I was done. But, when I got it back from anno:





The weld is obvious- and in the second photo you can see the crack, which I repaired by putting a screw in from the back. I'm not sure it's so much a difference in density, there shouldn't be a significant difference, really, but it's definitely a difference in alloy.

In this case, the two bars I used were 6061, and the rod used to weld it was probably 4043. I'm told that 5356 makes a better match, but really, the weld will never be "invisible". I recall Glenn saying they tried several alloys for the Blazer, and settled on the best of the lot, but even those welds are still visible.

For the Vee-Twin, an option might be to press in a close-fitting pin, and peen it in place. If any of you have watched Clickspring videos, you'll see him do that a lot in brass, and the hole and plug vanish entirely. In this case, however, there's no easy way to support the underside of the tube when the plug is being peened into place, and that the plug is really only being held in by friction.

If done right, it should be a good deal of friction, and there's no pressure on the backside trying to push it out, but either way, I tend to prefer the security of a mechanically-retained threaded plug.

Doc.