It's common knowledge amongst gunneys that there is really no such thing as too much ammo...I mean, it's always better to carry too much than not enough...right??? Well, to help "arm" my ride with a few personal touches and cool details, I thought I'd bang out a few custom, one-off goodies and post them up for Tech Week. None of this stuff is difficult, because even I can do it! You just gotta use a good dose of imagination coupled with a little bit of mechanical ability! To mount my recently made handcuff gauge holder to the dash, a basic 1/4-20 nut and bolt would have done just fine...but it wouldn't have been anything to write home about! So, I decided that I wanted to tack a genuine .32 caliber bullet on there to make the right statement. Drilling and tapping live ammo is a practice best left to folks even crazier than myself...so I opted to make a perfectly safe "dummy" bullet. I began by cutting a piece of zinc plated 5/16" steel rod just a hair over one inch long and cleaning the burrs off of the edges quickly with a touch to the bench grinder. The next step was to try and center punch the exact center of the 5/16" diameter rod for drilling. That turned out to be quite a monumental feat...and I have a pile of "almost right" rejects to prove it! Eventually, though...I hit one damn close and proceeded to clamp the thing into my drill press. Since I was going to thread the bullet with 1/4"-20, I drilled the hole slightly smaller than 1/4"...I think one or two bit sizes down...just whatever looked good enough! (I know there are charts that dictate exactly what size hole to drill prior to tapping...but I just winged it and got lucky!) After drilling down about, oh...maybe a little less than 1/2" into the round stock, I pulled the piece out of the press and clamped it into my bench vice. Then, I used a 1/4"-20 tap to cut new threads into the hole. (Be sure to stop and take the round stock out of the vice to dump out the shavings every few turns...it's a dead-end hole and it'll fill up with debris long before you're done cutting you threads!) Once you've tapped a sufficient depth of the hole, use a 1/4"-20 bolt to check that it will indeed thread onto it. If everything looks good, then go on. If not...tap it again. I wanted a nasty looking hollow-point bullet design, so I treaded my short piece of round stock onto a short 1/4"-20 bolt, then sawed the head of the bolt off so I could chuck it into my drill press. Then, I used a file to form a blunt cone shape on the non threaded end for the tip of the bullet. Once I had the shape right, I drilled a small hole in the center of the flat tip, followed by a little chamfering from a slightly larger bit until I got the desired effect. A quick clean-up on the wire wheel side of the bench grinder and it was on to the next step. (Oh, sure...you could use a lathe to form the blunt cone-shaped tip, or even to round it off to a more conventional bullet shape...but I ain't got one, so I use the tools I DO have creatively!) Now, to complete the look, I bought a length of 11/32" brass tube, which has a perfectly snug 5/16" inside diameter. You can find this stuff in a small rack at most hardware stores and hobby shops. Cheap, too. I cut a piece of the brass tubing a little bit shorter than the whole "bullet" so that the proper amount of the tip would stick out. I used a cheap little tubing cutter to cut the tube, and also to get that flared-down look at the base of the bullet. The tube fit snuggly over the bullet, just like it was made to go there! A little crimp mark was added just below where the tip of the bullet sticks out of the brass using a few light rotations from the same cheap tubing cutter. This adds a little bit of authenticity to the whole thing, as real bullets are crimped into their brass shells. There ya go! Add a cut-down brass washer to the base area when you thread it onto something, and you'll have a neat little detail that you can find dozens of uses for! Anything from a handcuff gauge holder, to an air cleaner wingnut, to a licnese plate bolt or maybe onto carb studs??? Or...you could pop a 1/4" hole in the top of your dash, stick a short bolt up through the hole, then thread the bullet on with the washer so it looks like it's just sitting on your dash! It'll make a great...ummm..."conversation piece" for the next time you get pulled over!!!! See...nothing to it but ta DO it, folks...easy stuff!!
Very cool, I had a .50 bmg casing that was filled with aluminum and then threaded through the neck for a shifter. -Jesse
Too cool, Hack, too cool! This is for the car with the 'little' motor in it? Man, that's going to be a sweet ride. I never would have thought of using handcuffs for instrument bezels. MUCH better than wrist bruisers!
An add on here: "The next step was to try and center punch the exact center of the 5/16" diameter rod for drilling. That turned out to be quite a monumental feat...and I have a pile of "almost right" rejects to prove it! Eventually, though...I hit one damn close and proceeded to clamp the thing into my drill press." The drill press can do the centering for you! Clamp a block of wood (Or metal for closer work) under the drill; run a hole the outside size of the rod into it. Drop your piece of rod into the hole, grabbit with a vise grip or otherwise restrain it from rotating, swap drill bit to the size desired, and drill away--you're on center within the limits of your drill press accuracy. On hard stock, you can ust the drill press to mark the center for a real center punching if the work requires that, but for mild steel you can just drop the drill right in. Good tech--when I was trying to install a hollow-point into my dash, it always expanded too much to look good before it got there...
Hey Hack, Anytime you want to do some little crap like that you are more than welcome to use my mini lathe. It's at the Tatty shop; I use it for making body jewelry, so I have all different sizes of drills and taps/dies. I also have polishing equipment right there too, so you could give it a little more "bling" if you wanted to! Plus, it'd give you an excuse to come to Flint!
If you ever want to do anything with the primer ends of shells, I have fired brass of mostly every size from .32 thru .308, and 12ga that I use for projects too! (And don't you worry your pretty little head, there's PLENTY of firepower at the shop! )
The Jalopy Journal
