My cousin and I discussed making them for sale, but as we both have too much to do now, we decided not to do so. He is semi-retired and has turned the business over to his son, but he still goes in every day to either help out if orders get crazy or just to play. They have so much work right now that they have hired 3 temps to help out.
He and I do our own projects, but he does make a couple of gun related things to sell. One is a device he sells to Brownell's for the M1 Garand, M14, & M1A trigger groups to easily disassemble and/or assemble them back together. I made a prototype based on a US Springfield Armory design, and he then refined it, and Brownell's liked it so much they keep giving the shop orders for more.
He is also making a powder dispenser, made out of aluminum,
to dispense black powder, and has sold many of those to the black powder guys we shoot with. The Log Cabin in Lodi, Ohio is also buying them to sell in their store or online.
If you want to make one, it is easy. I bought the aluminum angle bar & flat bar from Home Depot. I cut the angle bar to approx. 7" in length and rounded the corners, placed the moon clip on the bar with enough clearance to allow a loaded clip to rotate without touching the back wall of the angle bar, and then drilled a 3/8" hole in the bottom flat, so a 3/8' inch hex head bolt could be used, as the 3/8" size fits the moon clip hex perfectly. I then used a 3/8" fibre washer, also bought at Home Depot, and placed that under the hex head of the bolt, used two washers on the bottom along with a 3/8" nut, and snugged them up enough to let the clip rotate with out binding.
I had a plastic handle that was approx. 2 1/2" in diameter, drilled a hole, threaded it for 3/8" X 16 (I think) coarse thread, and then spun the knob onto the end of the bolt and snugged it up against the nut, keeping everything tight, and still letting the knob/bolt assy. turn freely. It works great.
I wanted to help keep the .45 shells upright while loading them into the moon clip, so I used the flat bar to make a trough. It works, but in retrospect, I think the flat bar would be much better in controlling the ammo from falling over if it were about an inch thick. I can control the ammo with my one hand while tilting the tool enough to let the cases slide toward the moon clip and into position so the case will feed into the clip while turning the knob.
The other tool I made, was from a piece of scrap aluminum T-bar at the shop. I milled one side of the T off, and then thinned down the bottom flat as it was too thick. I also milled down the remaining top portion of the T to make it lower too.
We then milled a trough at the back of the angle for the cases to slide in, drilled the hole for the bolt, and used a scrap handle that had the 3/8" threaded hole already in it. I had to mill away the bottom flat enough to let a full moon clip rotate easily, and made the depth the same as the trough. This tool also works very well, but again, it would be better if the trough was deeper to help control the cases more easily.
Didn't take long to do at all, but then again, I love working with the mills and lathes. He has approx. 10 big CNC machines also, with another new one on its way, and even mentioned making up a program to produce the tool. As of now, though we don't want to commit ourselves as we like to shoot way too much to work in the shop all the time. We also can only use the mills when they are not being used for the shop's production orders.
Here are photos of the 2nd tool:
Bill
