Brocock conversions

 

I'm feeling the water on this one.

On eGun you get a lot of live fire guns converted to brocock tac

One of the members on here is an RFD in the UK, but moving over to Spain shortly. As well as being an RFD he is also a top notch gun smith.

We were discussing the idea the other day about if fire arms can be converted to fire the brocock air cartridges and he said if there was interest from people, he would look into whats fully involved in the conversions along with getting some idea of time etc taken to do them.

If anyone is interested or wants any more idea, please post on this thread.

 

Lee,

So I understand you ....

... are you going to bugger up perfectly good 'real' firearms so they can shoot air rifle pellets ?????

...it has been hot lately here in Espana !!!! ....

I suppose one scenario where it might be a good idea....if someone had an off ticket shootin iron maybe the conversion would make it an air rifle and thence legal ...maybe ...??? ...I dunno....

(I was assuming the conversion rendered the firearm incapable of firing normal rounds ???....I suppose if it didnt affect normal function it could be a cheap way of backyard practice with your favourite 460 Weatherby Mag !)

Is that the idea ?

 

The gunsmith is toying with ideas on how to earn the odd extra penny here and there and he is one of the best gunsmiths I know.

If there was not a need for this type of thing, would Brococks ever have come to life in the first place?

Plus air gunners are brain dead, hence my own interest

 

Lee,

I can see the prob for your mate.....of all the Spanish shooters i know here...none are tinkerers...whilst in Oz and Blighty.....i think most shooters are....more oppotunity for a goodsmith with custom work...etc...

A Spanish friend asked me to go try out a Savage 110 .30.06 he was thinking of buying....the seller had some RWS ammo I brought along sand bags.....as we only had a 70m 'range'...(old farm building backstop)...I thought the rifle should put 3 shots into an inch.....
.....with the meopta 2 x 7 wound up ...it grouped about 1 1/2 inches ...but 6inches low and to the right !!!! no wonder he wanted to sell it....he probably never hit anything at any range over 50m !!

1 1/2 inches aint that good at 70m but I could cook up some hand loads .....

 

I'm the gunsmith\mug who is considering this idea

Basically back in the UK before the Brocock ban I was making one-off rifles for people who didn't want the hassle of an FAC, but wanted something more functional than a deac.
For example I built an L96A1 replica which used a real AI stock and chambered the old brass Saxby Palmer cartridges used in their Herald and Enfield rifles.
Another project was a Nesika Bay style single shot rifle, all stainless, with a heavy barrel.

There were only two people in the UK doing this sort of thing to my knowledge, and the other guy was and still is a good mate of mine. He built an air cartridge AK47 which was commercially marketed, but it all went wrong because the company selling it took orders knowing full well he couldn't build them that quickly.

It wasn't a big market because the guns were very expensive. Due to legal reasons you can't convert a deac into an air gun in the UK, so I machined bolts, receivers, etc from scratch. Virtually the only things I didn't make were the barrels ( although I still had to chamber them and machine the blank ) and trigger units ( I used Remington 700 triggers ) Put it this way, the L96A1 was well over four figures.

Of course the Brocock ban buggered everything up and that was the end of that.

Now in Spain I can't see a legal impediment to converting a deac into an air rifle or pistol. Immediately that lowers the price of the finished article because I don't have to make it all from scratch. Secondly the Spanish idea of deactivating a weapon is usually a complete joke, so I've got most of the parts there to work with.
The shape of the TAC cartridge is the limiting factor, it's very blunt nosed and going to have to feed out of a magazine it was never designed for. This would limit the actions and calibres suitable. I'm actually mainly thinking of the Micro Tacs in .380 or 9mm pistols. The full size Tacs would go well in .38 special revolver actions.
Maybe a nice Kar98 sniper using the Saxby Palmer Tacs if I can get any.

At the end of the day it's an expensive toy, but a very cool toy which doesn't have stupid sanctions on it's ownership.

I don't know how it will all unfold though because our house sale has fallen through and I'm going back to the UK in a week.

__________________
When I was here I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle.
I've been here a week now. Waiting for a mission, getting softer.
Every minute I stay in this room I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush he gets stronger.
Each time I look around the walls move in a little tighter.

 

It was one of those things that come up in conversation, asking Sid how easy it was to convert a real gun to an airgun, after seeing similar on egun.
eGun

Sid then explained what would need to be done and asked if there was a market for anything like that.

This was dipping your toe in the water as such and seeing what kind of feed back there was.

If you have an idiot breaking into your house and they know that real guns are legal. They are not going to stop and ask if the AK47 being pointed at them is real or a Sid conversion. And if it goes bang, they will run just that bit faster

They will be more interested in a sharp exit to change their pants.

Then you have the novelty value. I have a Uberty Yellow Boy here which is fully authentic down to weight etc but fires the Brocock tacs as opposed to live ammo. Great for wall display, plus fun for the garden.

So you then have a display item which is not a deac, goes bang but don't kill

There was an M16 on egun once that had the blow back or what ever you call it, fully functional with the tacs.

Imagine the grin factor of something like that

Sid is a top gunsmith and very respected for his work in the UK

 

Well, I'm not so sure about that. I've never had my work faulted, but I've got a lot of enemies because I can't keep my mouth shut and say what's on my mind

I wouldn't promote a Tac conversion as home defence. It might look the part, but the system is self limiting to about 16ftlbs muzzle energy, there just isn't enough volume in the Tac to get any higher velocity, and if you up the pressure the seals blow out. That won't even stop a rabbit unless you hit it right, let alone some scum sucking Morrocan high on crack.

You could make up some sleeves which put a .22lr round inside a dummy Tac, you might even fit a .22 WMR in there, but it's not exactly a manstopper.
There was an unsolved murder a few years ago near where I live in the UK. A 'legitmate businessman' ( AKA ten bob gangster and smack dealer, ex-bouncer steroid monster type ) got popped about 8 times in the head with a .22lr by a hitman and the victim still managed to get out of his Porsche and walk to a neighbours house before he expired.

I did a lot of experiments converting Tac rifles to fire real rounds ( very low pressure ones ) just before the ban ( I wasn't breaking any laws, being a licensed gunsmith ), thinking that there might be a market for such once they went on FAC , but the detail of the ban - Section 5 and limited to 12ftlbs as a condition knackered that idea.

My opinion is that if you are in a bad enough situation that you are pointing a weapon at someone then it had best be fully functional.

A rifle converted to fire Tacs is going to cost you about 700 EU from me, quite probably more. A baseball bat is 12 EU and they are both essentially blunt weapons in a real fight

 

Something you have just said there has just disproved what was posted on another forum a year or two ago.

The guy, from memory, chilled some tacs, then filled them and left them in the sun.

I think he was talking 30ft/lbs from a pistol.

Did you ever get your brocock para working on blowback?
Again, memory is going a bit, but I seem to remember you had an early version of the brocock para.

Mines the later version, which is bloody pointless. Fire, re cock via the slide each time

 

Thanks El Cid for a very informative reply.....

.....four figures does make for an expensive toy !! (esp in pounds sterling !!!...i multiply that by 2.4 or so for Aussie dollars !!!!....)

....when I first got to Blighty I initially thought deactivating fine weapons like Thompsons, Brens et al was sacriledge.......but after doing the rounds of the Militaria Fairs.... Military Odyssey and the War & Peace shows.... I thought it was better than having them totally destroyed (like what happened in Oz after Port Arthur) .......

I am warming to the idea of the Brocock thingeys !!!

..just for interest sake..... what do they do here in the deact process ?? I've got a fair handle on the old spec /new spec differences in the UK...

Cheers

by the way good luck with the house selling ...I'm sure you'll get it sold...

 

He was talking out of his arse - even window licking cat-shooting airgunners can't manipulate the laws of physics to such an extent

You can download the patents from the web for the various Tac designs, they were intended to be self limiting right from the start.

I tried a chamber with an O-ring seal to get more muzzle energy, and that was in a 17" barrel. Theoretically it would prevent gas leakage, but it didn't translate to higher velocity over a chrono. Honestly, I experimented with Tacs a lot and the only way to make any significant difference was to stuff a .22lr inside one

The Brocock Para is always rumoured to have been a semi-auto originally, but this is an urban legend. The way to prove this is to take a Para, remove the recoil spring and fire it. The slide won't even move, there just isn't enough energy in those Micro-Tacs to do more than flirt a .22 pellet out at about 2-3ftlbs. It's difficult enough sometimes to get some .22lr actions to cycle properly with subsonic ammo ( providing 120ftlbs )

One exception was an EXTREMELY rare pistol made in the late 1980's by an Italian company called Valtro, who's main business is producing monkey metal blank firers. It was a Berreta 92 clone intended for military and law enforcement firearm training and used a special air cartridge which fired a blue coloured 7mm teflon bullet. The cartridge sort of telescoped outwards when fired and somehow provided enough energy to cycle the thing semi-automatically. Very, very clever engineering. The muzzle velocity wasn't too good though, you could spit further, made an airsoft pistol look like a .357 magnum
I actually owned one, but sold it just before the ban for a truly stupendous amount of money