.45 Acp Derringer

I've watched a lot of Youtube videos about home-made firearms and got the bug to try making one myself. I had an old 1911 barrel sitting around, so I cut off the chamber and bored a new chamber into the muzzle end. Then I sleeved the barrel into a block of 3/4 inch think mild steel, ground and filed a lug on the bottom. The frame is made from three pieces of 1/4 inch 5160 spring steel and is not heat-treated. The parts of the center section were pinned and silver soldered to the right-hand frame. Internal parts were also made from 5160, and springs were made from used bandsaw blades.

Originally I intended to round and contour the edges, but found that I liked its 'blocky' appearance. The extra weight doesn't hurt in terms of managing recoil, either! There is no extractor; cases are driven out after firing by sticking a cleaning rod down the barrel. This can sometimes be a bit difficult (depending on the brand) since my makeshift chamber reamer left something to be desired...

The result was finished with Birchwood-Casey Super Blue. Making this without a lathe or milling machine has gotten me thinking about getting one or both of these machines!

How does it shoot? Pretty well, actually, though ignition can be unreliable with cheap range ammo. There is also a tendency to string groups vertically. Recoil isn't as bad as I expected- the combination of ergonomics and it's 22 oz. weight soak it up pretty well. The exception was PMC 230 Grain FMCRN ammo- this was hard to ignite, had the worst recoil of any load I tried and I got some bulged primers.

The mainspring is made from three nested sections of bandsaw blade, but I plan on replacing that with a proper clock-spring steel one at some point. This was a fun project and it has me thinking about doing some other more sophisticated guns.

I will say right up front- the gun is not for sale, and was made solely as a hobby project for my own amusement. It was never intended for 'serious' use, just to see if I could do it and for fun.

Michael, I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty to adjust the shadow detail in your photograph so we could see some detail on barrel.

Not at all! Thank you actually.

Very cool little project. It gives me a number of ideas I'd like to try myself.

Thanks for posting!

-Ron

When you get your mill you have plenty of room to make an extractor ,nice job if you polish your chamber the shells should come out easier, have fun keep up the good work.

Thanks! I have done some work on the chamber, but it clearly needs more. I had a target pistol based on the .45 derringer's mechanism about 1/3 finished when my shop burned down. Unfortunately that was my last .45 caliber barrel; I'll be on the lookout for another. The next project will likely be a similar .22; someone sent me a .22 barrel-liner and I'll buy a proper finishing reamer for that. I'm considering a plunger-type ejector for that one if I get set-up for milling in the new shop. That will very much depend on the insurance.

Michael Pearce said:

Thanks! I have done some work on the chamber, but it clearly needs more. I had a target pistol based on the .45 derringer's mechanism about 1/3 finished when my shop burned down. Unfortunately that was my last .45 caliber barrel; I'll be on the lookout for another. The next project will likely be a similar .22; someone sent me a .22 barrel-liner and I'll buy a proper finishing reamer for that. I'm considering a plunger-type ejector for that one if I get set-up for milling in the new shop. That will very much depend on the insurance.

Click to expand...

Nice hand work. What is the locking mechanism or does it just rely on the short barrel to prevent blowback?

There is a latch located on the frame ahead of the trigger that locks the barrel down and prevents it from opening too far as well.

Here's a picture of the internals. This was before I added the half-cocked notch on the hammer.