Model 1918 Aircraft Browning

Next up on the chopping block is a long awaited build for me. I am finally starting the 1918 Aircraft Browning after twenty years of collecting parts for it. It was a WWI style receiver box with the dovetailed bottom plate, it uses a slotted barrel jacket and the infamous ant eater booster which Lucky13 faithfully reproduced. They used a WWI 1917 water cooled barrel and I have a blued NOS barrel that has been tucked away just for this build.

Most all the parts are unique and pretty much impossible to find because Marlin Rockwell only produced a couple thousand of them and they were almost immediately replaced with the 1919 Aircraft Browning.
The bolts some of you may recognize because they converted all of the 1918 bolts for use in the 22 cal. trainers because they were already dramatically lightened and the 1919 aircraft bolt was entirely different so there was no use for them which is why they are very hard to find in original spec.

The firing pins are about 3/8" longer than a standard 1919 firing pin and the parkerized one at the bottom in the picture is a standard 1919 firing pin just for reference.
The sear spring was a very early milled design, again another unicorn that was a bear to find but Greaser hooked me up with this one.
The top cover latch is the early trophy cup latch.
top plate is an early milled pattern

The trunnion is like a 1919 trunnion but no provision for a front sight and the barrel hole is smaller to accept the water cooled barrel so yet another odd duck!
The spades well there are only two complete sets that we know about and 3 sets that are stripped. I have one of each and the complete set just came to me because of a member here and although I have the drawings I was not looking forward to reproducing the very complex parts in the stripped set.
I was able to score an original partial belt (346 Rds.) which was a 1000 Rd. belt when they first came out

I have a couple side plate chunks that are original Marlin Rockwell that I will be grafting to a semi auto side plate and the original left side plate will obviously need some welding done to cover the rear sight bracket and bottom plate rivet holes as well as reversing back to USGI spec but since I am bluing the gun none of the welding will show. Some of the parts are polished and ready for bluing so they are not in the pictures and while this is not a five minute build I will have it done before summer ends and I will update the thread as things progress.