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Good Fellow Gentleman,

I'm Wess from The Netherlands, a couple of years ago I decided to become a parts designer and specialize in hard to find parts.
About 3 years ago I've started on the Beretta 1951 & Helwan as a project, more specifically the locking blocks.

As most of you may know the locking block has been the Achilles heel of the design, especially the Egyptian made ones.
It took me two years to find two locking blocks to use for reverse engineering.
The first one I've found on a German auction website, The seller did not know what he had luckily.
The second one came from a collector in the USA which agreed to help me out because he was just as enthusiastic about the project as I am.
Up until today I'm very grateful for his help, I couldn't have done it without him.

When the two locking blocks were acquired I was able to create a solid model using a Atos 3D scanner.
This type of scanning equipment captures the full geometry of any component accurate to 0.001 MM.
Since no manufactured machine parts are the same at such levels I needed to to acquire the perfect measurements.

The results were just as I expected, original locking blocks are not parallel in any means especially the Egyptian made ones.
So all the design flaws were removed and the design was made parallel, this ensures longer service life..
Think of it when you have one flat tire and one full tire on your car, which one is going to give first..

The next step was implementing stress relieve radius cut under the wings, just as modern locking blocks have.
Beretta did not figure this out up until the 90's so the Beretta 1951 locking blocks did not have this feature.
The last question what remained was the metallurgy, what to use ?

I've done this by acquiring a modern 92FS block and get it examined by a company here in The Netherlands which specializes in examining the conditions of metal constructions like bridges and such.
When the block was cut in two the levels of hardness could be determined from surface to core, and from there the metal composition could be determined with the help of a optical emission spectrograph.
The report that came out was surprising, modern 92 blocks use a relatively low carbon steel.
I assume this is because the locking blocks are cold forged and than perfected using minimal milling operations.

After acquiring this info I was able to make the choice in material, and I've chosen a metal which exceeds the strength requirements of the modern 92FS blocks.This was completely unnecessary since the modern 92 Blocks go a long way, but keep in mind that the 92 blocks are much bigger and can handle way more abuse because of it's size.
So my blocks are made out of a material which is know for great performance, when exposed to a lot of stress and hardened to a level of a hard outside surface but a flexible inner core to prevent ripping the wings off.
One of the applications of the material is being used to manufacture the dies for cold forming.

When designing another surprising fact came to light, Egyptian made locking blocks are not interchangeable with Beretta made ones.
The wings of the Egyptian ones are 1MM longer that the Beretta made ones, I except this was done in an attempt to improve service life.
So two had to be variations had to be made, the first variation that I did were te Helwan locking blocks which have been up for sale for a couple of weeks now, And the Beretta made versions are available 10 days from now.

If any of you have anymore questions feel free to send me a message.

Friendly greetings, and have a nice day!

(Special thanks to Jeff! )

helwan 01.jpg helwan 02.jpg helwan 03.jpg helwan 04.jpg
 
Hello Wess. Some on this site are ladies, not gentlemen. Welcome from the gun-totin old broad contingent.
 

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