Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Making a Safety for a Crosman 22XX/13XX

Looked at the safety on the Crosman 22XX guns many times and marveled at their simplicity and ease of use. For all it is and does, it's hard to make a case for something different. Nevertheless, I craved something else--probably because I have too many 22XX guns...

Started with a piece of 0.500" diameter 12L14 cold rolled steel.

Turned the body of the safety to 0.186".

And added two grooves for the ball bearing detent.

Turned down the end for the button head.

And cut off.



Test fit. Note: No trigger yet. Just eyeballing some dimensions, making sure it's reachable, and looking at it for a sense of balance and scale.



Started hand filing the notches.

Compared it to a stock Crosman safety and just filed away until everything matched up.

Uhhhh, done?

Test fit #2--with the trigger and sear installed.

OK, OK, so it's not done. The head was too plain. Clamped with some aluminum to protect the piece.

I didn't have a metal checkering file so I improvised with a thread restoring file. Used the 20 tpi side...

and patiently grooved the head.

Deepened the grooves with a small riffler file.

Test fit #3...

Blued with Van's.





Installed the safety (actually the entire grip frame) on a 2250 project gun.





It's a nice change from the standard safety and I like that it doesn't stand out. It looks just like the magazine release on old Colt series 70 .45 Gold Cups.

More stuff soon.

5 comments:

Ryan said...

Doesn't it stand proud of the frame when depressed? Could you add relief by "hollowing out" the underside, so the button presses flush to the grip? Or does it look good held away from the frame a bit?

Paul said...

That looks great, Derrick! Much improved over the look of the original. It appears the trigger is one of the newer version with a slightly wider profile than earlier models. What trigger shoe did you use on this wider profile?

derrick38 said...

The Crosman custom shop trigger shoe fit just fine.

Slinging Lead said...

Your safety looks really cool Derrick. You could have a cottage industry busting those out if you wanted to.

derrick38 said...

Yeah, this is definitely a part that people would buy if they saw it in the flesh. The blog makes this stuff seem like it just pops out of the lathe on it's own, but you didn't see the first two "prototypes" that weren't right for prime time. As for making runs of parts? Not gonna happen unless I need three of something.