Well, I contacted the Austrian company about doing a barrel on a 7.62 blank instead of 9mm. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and they'll be able to hook me up
. They said it's CNC, so I wouldn't think the job would be any different for a different bore size, since it would be left unchambered, but who knows if their tooling or business model could accommodate it
It's a good thing that wedge isn't needed for anything but returning the gun to battery (it's no rougher than firing the gun with no recoil spring --that is to say, not terribly damaging if not done as a matter of course), because I'm certain they either got lost or thrown away by soldiers with bloody thumbnails on occasion.
I found some old ammo on clips for sale, so hopefully this guy will be getting a workout fairly soon. I also found my barrel may be in better shape than I'd thought
. Apparently many of these guns are rotted nearly smooth on the inside, just like worn Broomhandles, but mine does actually still have what I would call "interrupted rifling lands"
. If only the bore was in as good a shape as the rest of the gun; I guess the action does a really good job of keeping all corrosive junk out of everything but the barrel.
TCB