Martin Baxter wrote:
Nav and Doug, I may be a little late getting in here but I've beeen out
sailing;

Good! I have spent most of the past week traveling the interstates.


The Canadian version of the FN-FAL was also semi-auto only, the emphasis
being on
marksmenship rather than volume. Our FNs could be modified to full auto
by the simply placing a strip of
thick paper made by folding a paper match book cover under one end of a
leaf spring located under
the breach block, (and yes Nav, a court-martial offence in the Canadian
armmy).

Hmmm... how long would this work? Does this mean that you could "file
(or grind) a little off the sear" and make it full auto? It sounds like
it would be fun but a bit less functional, possibly damage the weapon.
It also sounds a far cry from converting a semi-auto to a selectable
full or semi-auto.

Here's an example of synchronicity for those who believe in it... I had
a close parallel of this same conversation... "can you make a full auto
weapon out of a semi-auto SLR with a very simple modification" just the
other day.

The ones I've seen claimed are a Chinese copy of an AK-47, which
requires filing or grinding away part of both the sear *and* the feed
lever, then adding a new easily fabricated part and a different
spring... and a recoil operated .22 (Arm-A-Lite's wonderful AR-7) that
required fabricating a slightly different sear and changing the hammer
springs... I used to have a book that detailed this and gave part
numbers for the spring and machine specs for the "improved" sear.

However my favorite home-brew machine gun was a kit that mounted two
Ruger Mini-14s on a tripod with a spade handle and small crank to work
both triggers. I assume the same kit was (may still be) available for
other military style SLRs. Should I tell Joe about this? It'd be perfect
for discouraging those 3rd-world (ie texas) pirates!

DSK