Lets build up a Desert Eagle slide! :) |

mrblackcat
Member

Posts: 108

Lets build up a Desert Eagle slide! :) Mar 17, 2018 19:04:50 GMT

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Post by mrblackcat on Mar 17, 2018 19:04:50 GMT

This will be an on-going (few probably) thread of building up a Desert Eagle slide from new parts... with this rocky start, I decided I would share this experience with others for a more informed decision to possibly do the same.

The idea...
For years I have seen those two Mk XIX slides on Numrich/egunparts in the 230-250 range, offered finished and unfinished. ("in the white") I never thought about getting another slide except for a backup maybe, until last year when I got a 357 magnum bolt and barrels. I don't mind swapping a Desert Eagle bolt, but I don't like doing it in the field as I don't want to risk losing small parts. I have gotten it down to a one minute change now however, so I almost didn't follow this dream of having a .357 magnum slide already built up for an non-tedious caliber swap in seconds.

Pulling the trigger...
After a few months of not finding a slide to pursue this project, I decided I would build up my own for parts. So I dropped all the parts into a spreadsheet to see the cost... it comes up to about $650 including the bolt, which I already had. I also had the firing pin spring (is in the DE spring kits) firing pin, bolt retaining pin and a few other parts I had bought for potential future repair and testing.

Placing the order...
I got on Numrich and confidently added the "Blued" slide to my basket (not blued of course, but had some finish on it)... along with some other parts, totaling $404.00 or so. Done.

The First let down... minor. I noticed was one item out of stock and no backorder... the left safety lever. I can get that from Magnum Research (not on line though, so a call and CC information over telephone is required) so no big deal.

The second let-down... major.
The slide is new with the exception of having a sight mounted and removed which scraped off the finish... no big deal really because I have to re-finished the slide anyway. I will stop typing for a minute and just show you what I got.

This bare slide is not sold as any spec (new, used, stripped etc) and with Numrich this can mean anything. In fairness, the slide is new as the finish is perfect on the underside, where I am going to polish half of it off anyway. <sigh>

It will be ok...
So I decided to assemble the slide and see if everything else seemed ok, and it assembled fine with these caveats...

Caveats...
1. Rust. Maybe just save a few dollars and get the "in the white" version because you might have to re-finish the slide anyway.
2. The high-dollar ($10 EACH!) screws for the safety levers do not work with the two part Mk XIX safety drums, they are for Mk VII slides/safeties drums. (Numrich Product #: 966730 You can get the correct screws from Magnum Research web site however)
3. The slide really needs some finish work. The coating might just wear off, but I am going to do a couple of hours of polishing on very specific areas, just based on where my finished slides are worn.

I will keep posting as I work on this project to completion.

MrBlackCat

Last Edit: Mar 17, 2018 19:08:24 GMT by mrblackcat

I wonder why "Mass Shootings" don't seem to be happening at Police Stations and gun stores? Hmm... seems we have too many police stations already, so maybe we need more gun stores.

mrblackcat
Member

Posts: 108

Lets build up a Desert Eagle slide! :) Apr 22, 2018 0:56:39 GMT

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Post by mrblackcat on Apr 22, 2018 0:56:39 GMT

Update...
Status: Slide "painted" with Aluma Hyde II aerosol from Brownells. I am going to give it two full weeks to cure before any assembly. Aluma-Hyde is an air-dry epoxy. I have not used it before, so this is the test. I will get some images of that up soon also.

I was able to buy new plain black safety levers direct from Magnum Research (not from the website however) for $20 each, as well as the screws for $5.50 each. I have all the parts.

Again, this is only a test of Aluma-Hyde II spray epoxy to test for durability.

Here is how I did it... I did NOT use aluminum oxide blasting as recommended by the makers of Aluma-Hyde. For prep...
First I just blasted away the rust with crushed walnut shell. (fine grit)
Second was to wash it with spray brake cleaner.
Third was to bake it in the over to bring out any oil from the pores.
Fourth was a second wash in spray brake cleaner.
Fifth was a bath of acetone.

I then re-heated the slide to about 125 and heated the spray can with a hair dryer until it was about 105 Fahrenheit, while shaking it... took several minutes.

Using a wire hook through the safety drum sleeve, I held it in bright light and misted a non-connecting coat of Aluma-Hyde on it. I then used a hairdryer again to just pass air over the spray with some additional heat. It skinned over in about 45 seconds, but I still waited a couple of minutes to add a coat. I repeated this three times, basically only spraying edges and hard to get to places. By the time I got those places to cover, the big smooth/flat areas were covered.
Finally, after the fourth mist coat cured (about 4 minutes) I put on a "full" coat kind of connecting the lighter "dustier" coats. I still used the hairdryer to cure it for a couple of minutes and then hung it up. I check it every day or two on the insides to see how "hard" it is... the first three days I was worried. After the first seven days, I was not worried. It is getting harder.

So here is the plan. I am just going to build up the slide as a .357 Magnum and shoot the hell out of it for the next couple of months and see how it holds up. I am going to use Hoppes #9 and gun oil on it every time I shoot it and see what kind of result we get from it.

If it fails, I am going to re-blast it and then coat it with Dura-Coat Ceramic engine paint like I did a Desert Eagle barrel a while back. It looks really good, and is really hard. It has performed perfectly so far, but it will take years to really sell me on it. I am no recommending it yet. I can tell you NOT to use however... I got a can of Rustoleum High Heat with Ceramic (2000F rated) but it didn't do well at all. It just never hardens and always feels like "paint". I tried a barrel and slide and different methods of heating/baking etc, but in the end, it just isn't hard enough for a gun coating. The Dura-Coat engine paint was so hard I used steel wool on it to clean it up. Adhesion seems to be more forgiving on the Dura-Coat also.

I tried pictures of the new slide after the application of Aluma Hyde II, but you can't really tell anything, so I am not posting them for now. It is a super dark/rich black color, so it doesn't look very Desert Eagle like really, but I am going to go with it for now. When I get the slide together and on a gun for comparison, I will come back and post pictures and note any issues along the way.

Edit: Here is an image of the slide with all its parts waiting for assembly next weekend. I just want to make sure the finish is as cured as possible.

MrBlackCat

Last Edit: Apr 22, 2018 3:16:40 GMT by mrblackcat

I wonder why "Mass Shootings" don't seem to be happening at Police Stations and gun stores? Hmm... seems we have too many police stations already, so maybe we need more gun stores.

glenr Moderator Posts: 199	Lets build up a Desert Eagle slide! :) Apr 22, 2018 9:56:33 GMT Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by glenr on Apr 22, 2018 9:56:33 GMT Interesting and will be interested in your results.
	"I am not ashamed to admit, that I am ignorant of the things I do not know"! Cicero I am not a lawyer, and never played one on TV! All the usual and standard disclaimers apply. Do not try this at home, use only as directed,

mrblackcat
Member

Posts: 108

Lets build up a Desert Eagle slide! :) Aug 25, 2018 15:10:40 GMT

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Post by mrblackcat on Aug 25, 2018 15:10:40 GMT

Update...

So finally the slide is together and been tested for a few hundred rounds of 357. It is REALLY dark black as you can see here... (this is Brownells Aluma-Hyde II aerosol air-dry epoxy in Matt Black)

The slide is working perfectly now... but how it got that way could have, and I believe should have, been easier... here we go.

Backing up to the top of the thread for additional information...
Last year when I got my .357 Magnum Bolt, I bought it new (old stock), in package. I even looked at the staples when it arrived, to see if they had been removed or replaced. Seemed completely legitimate. So I grabbed the old 1993 50AE MkVI and swapped out the bolt in a couple of minutes and was ready to go... I thought. I went outside and popped in a magazine and dropped the slide... which moved about 1/4 of the way to battery and hung up like a rock. Because there is already a thread about this, long story short, my 50 slide was not ground to be compatible with 357 magazines as the "real" Mk XIX slides were. See here...

Look at the size difference in the landing! This passes through the top of the magazine... or is supposed to. It won't fit through the gap in the top/back of the 357 magazine. These seems to be isolated to only really early MkVII 50AE's. The solution I chose was to grind the top of the magazines, right at the back, for clearance. Not optimal, but does not have any effect on function at all. You can see here where the slide and magazine have already taken damage from being forced over it. I smoothed it all out and all was well... almost.

So now my slide would operate fine, and the action would manually load and eject rounds fine.

Part two... Now it works.
So it worked at this point, and even with consideration of the 357 being a far weaker round than 41, 44, and 50, it seemed really weak operating the slide, or at least ejecting spent shells, and wasn't very reliable. Ten shots without a failure was average. Just a little of everything, FTF, FTEx, and FTEj. I decided to find out why. First, the chamber of the 357 barrel I got (new current production for 2017, 6 inch) was too tight in my opinion and compared to my other Desert Eagle barrels in other calibers... so I polished it. This made a lot of difference and reduced failure to extract a lot. This was great, but still something wasn't right. I polished the bolt face and basically removed any edges that the rim of the shell slides across as it passes up the bolt face and under the extractor claw. This helped also, but wasn't enough.
Then I took a break for a few weeks to do other things, like shoot fun and reliable calibers in the Desert Eagles and other guns. I try to shoot every day, and I had spent too much time "working" with this 357 addition and it wasn't fun anymore. Too many issues.

Getting long, will do part three in the next post...

MrBlackCat

Last Edit: Aug 25, 2018 18:15:56 GMT by mrblackcat

I wonder why "Mass Shootings" don't seem to be happening at Police Stations and gun stores? Hmm... seems we have too many police stations already, so maybe we need more gun stores.

mrblackcat
Member

Posts: 108

Lets build up a Desert Eagle slide! :) Aug 25, 2018 18:00:56 GMT

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Post by mrblackcat on Aug 25, 2018 18:00:56 GMT

Continued...
Part three... Back to this thread.
Now we are caught up to where this thread began in the first place. Because it is inconvenient to swap a bolt in the field, I decided to build up a new slide, which is the subject of this thread.

So a few weeks ago, I finally get the new slide ready (less rear sight) with its new bolt, and new everything. It is a little tight on both of my frames, but seemed fine in operating position. I had been accumulating many different 357 rounds of the higher factory loadings I could find, so I was ready to get this thing working well... but it didn't work "well" with 158 grain stuff getting into the 1500fps range. Something had to be wrong. To test the ideas of "something is wrong" vs ".357 is barely a Desert Eagle capable caliber), I used a tighter gas piston I made for another barrel, and it didn't seem to help.
Ok... so you might be wondering what wasn't right... so an example was sometimes the ejected casings hit me on the foot, or rolled off my hand, or were actually thrown forward a few feet. It always seemed weak, but I wrote this off as 357 caliber, because had anything to compare it to... until I watched video on line of several people shooting MkXIX Desert Eagles in 357 without these weak ejections.
The tighter gas piston didn't make enough difference to matter. I changed the extractor spring (nub) for a new Israeli (coil spring) type... then there were extraction failures... so I modified the extractor to negative rake. This helped, but wasn't a cure, so I removed the extractor real-spring, and shorted a polymer nub to my liking and re-installed it. Zero extraction failures now, but still not right.
I got serious now... I got some Buffalo Bore ammo (about $2 a shot) that was loaded for bear... and or buffalo I suppose. This stuff would cramp your smile muscles, while killing your budget, but guess what... weak ejections... with something that bottoms out the slide. This isn't "an opportunity for improvement" anymore... irritation approached and then attacked me.

Part four... now its personal.
How can I enjoy shooting my other guns knowing this 357 project is so messed up with well over $1000 in it, and massive time? I couldn't. It was time to resolve it.
I just knew it was drag... so I re-honed the chamber which is now slicker than boiled okra... all jokes aside, if you insert a round into the chamber and tilt the barrel about 3 degrees, the shell falls out. This is a higher polish than my other guns, and the bathroom mirror. I started looking to the slide for answers. I removed the bolt and polished the inside of the Bolt Cylinder and the Guide Pin Cylinder. I de-burred and polished the bolt guide pin. I polished the inside of the locking lugs at the chamber. I polished the back of the bolt lugs. I dyed the slide rails, the bolt body and lugs, then sanded (1200grit) and re-polished them at any concentrated point of friction. It was ridiculous, but I didn't know what else to do at this point.

It didn't really make any difference, except that with a modified piston, I could bottom out the slide WITHOUT Buffalo Bore ammo. No need for over-sized piston for sure.

Now I knew something was wrong... but what? For some reason, I got up every day and had a bowl of stupid for breakfast and didn't see how easy this was to see in retrospect. I am not going to beat up on myself because I had swapped every part but one... because I only had one of them. The bolt itself.

Part six... The happy ending.
So now I had the smoothest operating Desert Eagle I have ever seen, if not the smoothest gun I have ever used, and it wasn't enough. You can only hear the spring "sing" when you retract the slide, no grating sound... it's weird. While I have and keep a lot of parts around, a second bolt isn't one of them, for 357 anyway, but that was all that I didn't have for a part swap to test.

Enter, new 357 Bolt.
I pulled it out the package and without anything other than a wipe down and a few seconds of visual comparison, put the unpolished, sharp cornered out of place looking bolt in the slide. Then I loaded some magazines with three different rounds, and went out to the range. First shot changed my perspective of the last few months of Desert Eagle .357 Magnum struggles. The ejected shell arced upward and to the right about a foot higher than my head, and landed at about 5 o'clock, at least five feet behind me. (This was 158gr American Eagle ammo by the way, not Buffalo Bore ammo) All the ejected brass, was inside an 18" circle, from all three magazines in the end, just like all other calibers I shoot in my Desert Eagle.

Post Mortem... Why.
What was the issue? Improperly made Ejector. Because this was the first and only 357 magnum bolt I had assembled at the time, I had nothing for comparison. The ejector looked just like the ones in my 41/44/50 bolts, but it wasn't supposed to. The INSTANT I compared the two bolts it was painfully obvious what the problem was. I SO wish a thread with these images had existed for me to find many months ago. It would have been so obvious.
See the problem?

Can you guess which one has the issue? Ok, from the polish maybe, but the ejector is actually ground wrong. I took them both out and the first bolt I got is simply ground way too short. The over-all length is off a lot, it isn't stuck down like I first suspected when I saw the difference. If ONLY I had a 357 ejector in my parts to compare them, I would have seen this issue instantly. The ejector is different for 357 than all other Desert Eagle calibers. You can bet I will have a spare now. I still run my original bolt in the 50AE and the ejector has never been replaced, and doesn't need to be. It looks fine compared to the new one I have.

I am not sure how to look at this yet... is this a failure of Magnum Research? I think so. Is this typical? That is hard to say. I am really happy with the function of any original Desert Eagle I have experience with... but there seems to be some issue with all of these convertible parts and barrels. They are always SO close, but just miss. I have nothing negative to say about any Israeli guns, barrels, parts I have owned or have experience with. All the things I call "issues" with Desert Eagles have been American Made.

I am heading out to shoot this .357 Magnum for a bit, then I will send one of the barrels off to have a brake put on. As 357 is already "light" in the Desert Eagle, a brake should bring it down to near rimfire levels! Ok, certainly an exaggeration, but it will be fun to see "how low can you go" with a Desert Eagle.

I hope these images save someone else some of the hundreds of dollars in parts and test ammo, as well as some time that could be better spent shooting rather than working on their Desert Eagle.

Happy shooting.

MrBlackCat

Last Edit: Aug 25, 2018 18:42:00 GMT by mrblackcat

I wonder why "Mass Shootings" don't seem to be happening at Police Stations and gun stores? Hmm... seems we have too many police stations already, so maybe we need more gun stores.

glenr
Moderator

Posts: 199

Lets build up a Desert Eagle slide! :) Aug 26, 2018 1:24:53 GMT

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Post by glenr on Aug 26, 2018 1:24:53 GMT

Glad you got caught up and finished it I was wondering what happened. But I know that life can get in the way of fun stuff and hobbies. I just got the paperwork work finished and turned in on a 1918 colt Army its a 100 years old and shoots well. along with a Walther P-38 9mm from a German officer. The Colt Army sent to the promised land. Or so the story goes, that he told for many years. After he died 20 years ago, Both guns were in white socks in a shoe box in his wife's closet till she died and her daughter found them. Because of the condition slight rust and a name scratched in the Walther the only prices she got were really stupid low.

"I am not ashamed to admit, that I am ignorant of the things I do not know"!
Cicero
I am not a lawyer, and never played one on TV!
All the usual and standard disclaimers apply. Do not try this at home, use only as directed,

ErickQueft Guest	Lets build up a Desert Eagle slide! :) Aug 28, 2020 17:41:30 GMT glenr likes this Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Back to Top Post by ErickQueft on Aug 28, 2020 17:41:30 GMT

Lets build up a Desert Eagle slide! :)

Post by mrblackcat on Mar 17, 2018 19:04:50 GMT

Post by mrblackcat on Apr 22, 2018 0:56:39 GMT

Post by glenr on Apr 22, 2018 9:56:33 GMT

Post by mrblackcat on Aug 25, 2018 15:10:40 GMT

Post by mrblackcat on Aug 25, 2018 18:00:56 GMT

Post by glenr on Aug 26, 2018 1:24:53 GMT

Post by ErickQueft on Aug 28, 2020 17:41:30 GMT

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