Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors OT - BSA magazine project

It's a cold rainy day here without much to do and even thought the project is not done I can't so much with it until I get access to some shop equipment again on Monday so I thought I would show what progress I have made.

Several years ago I purchased a BSA pump 22, I felt it somewhat related to the early Savage 22's because it took a box magazine, something that is now quite common in 22 bolt actions and semi-autos but very rare in pumps - I know of only 3 companies other than Savage that ever made box magazine fed 22 pumps.

Unfortunately the gun I bought was missing the magazine (I bought another a few years later, also missing the magazine). I spent a lot of time trying to find an original, or any magazine that might fit, and finally gave up on that. Kiwi recently purchased a gun that had an original magazine and took the time to send me many pictures of the magazine that included details of it taken apart.

I finally got a good start on the project. I still have to make some special dies to form the feed lips, the edges of the slot and drill holes for the catch, but I was not going to do any of that until I was sure I had figured all the bend allowances for the body well enough that it would fit. The parts for the bottom are cut.

Here is one of the many pictures Kiwi sent me of the his original -


I am trying to make the magazine look as much like an original as possible, which makes it much harder.

One step was solved when I found a copy of a 1997 CAD 3D program on eBay very cheap, it was a program I used for many years at a place I worked so I just had to do a quick refresher to begin using it. It won't run with new versions of Windows but works well on my old computer using XP. Using Kiwi's drawing and measurements from the gun I drew up the magazine (some in 3D) and also drew flat layouts of the parts - these were converted to .DXF drawings and emailed to a local Laser cutting company to get them cut, by doing this the drawing does not need any dimensions on the complicated curves or even the size, the laser just cuts to the lines I sent them.

The drawing is full scale on heavy card paper so I can cut out parts of it to use a templates if needed, I actually cut out and formed a paper magazine body and fit it in the gun to be sure it looked right before I got any metal cut.

The body as shown here has been through 6 different forming set-ups that used several custom made dies and still will need at least 3 more operations with more special dies to complete the form, and then a welding operation (now you know why I put this off for so many years)-



link to more pictures including 1 video

The forming could probably have been done with a vise, a hammer & good pair of pliers but I opted for a 180 ton press-brake capable of forming 10 foot of 1/4" plate -


link to more pictures showing all the forming operations