Will have some time today to machine on this, but I wanted to get some ideas down first.

Milled a bit on the chamber today...

These cuts will reveal the crystal and mount, and I'll fit some piping to conceal my wiring in the recess at the base of the chamber, and through that piece of conduit I have in there.
Those three holes in the section underneath the clamp are for clearance for the three cap socket screws I have holding the retainer plate on. I'll replace one of them with the longer latch plug once I get it made.

I might open up another window on the back to view the crystal a bit more, as this main window will be full of art guts and wire conduit.

Cut some wire channels for the LEDs, installed the main wire conduit, and have been fiddling with the chamber details a lot.

So I drilled a hole for a piece of broken 3/16 drill bit through the stock (now modified) Russrep center section,

lathed a point onto one end of the drill bit, and turned the other end down and threaded it for 4-40 to replace one of the 4-40 retainer ring screws.  Then dipped both ends into Birchwood Casey super blue to oxidize them to match the rest of the rod.  Shown here is a bunch of aluminum grit I need to clean off...

Not sure if I will use this for any kind of locking mechanism yet.  Still wavering between having the cone knob be a chamber release or the recharge kill key.

But this allows smooth rotation-locked travel for the grip/emitter section.  And I reckon it's straight enough, no binding at all when closed.

I got some work done on the radiator element last night, Trying some aluminum fins this time in preparation for the radiator section of the 2013 commission.  Had to run some 4-40 allthread on either side of my 1/16 piping, to keep it all straight.  Will machine some kind of thing to make that look ok once I get closer to being done with this.  I'll only need five fins, the other two were just extra in case I mess something up.

I'll also machine some 4-40 spacers out of those nuts, or something thinner.  Also, not sure if I like the copper or the brass yet, but I couldn't find 1/16 aluminum rod/tube.

Coming along... new milling machine gets here tomorrow, so I'll do some more work on the chamber then.  Till that happens, I have some stuff in here that needs cleaning up and straightening, but it is taking shape.

The chamber release also works great.  That wedged cylinder engages the latch that pivots on the clamp lever.

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