Help! Gun cradle is twisted!

[8683jb]

I bought my 30/50 cradle a couple of years ago together with the trolley and M49 ring but I haven't done anything with it until today. When I tried to mount the gun, I noticed the arms are twisted. The rear pin is nowhere near parallel with the rest of the assembly. Does anyone have any tips for straightening cast steel? I really appreciate any help or advice. Thanks.

Jon

[Tapper02]

Ouch....not cool.  If you need a straight cradle for measurements or to compare, let me know and I’ll bring mine over.

-Tom

[8683jb]

Thanks Tom. I'll let you know if I need it.

[RB-058]

Ouch indeed! I've never bend cast iron... You can try and ask a blacksmith, I figure they would know how to.
Keep us updated!

Rob

[brit plumber]

I think the first thing to do would be to work out how and where it has been damaged. If you put steel rods into each locking pin hole to extrapolate the distortion you can probably work out where the twist is. If it happened with a gun in situ the chances are it’s only a small piece out of alignment. If it’s all twisted I would expect it’s been dropped or something dropped on it. I expect its forged steel so a small twist could be fixed with a cold bend. A large twist will likely require heat in the correct place.

Hopefully fitting steel rod into the mounting holes and using those as levers will realign everything.

[8683jb]

Thanks guys. The arms are odd-shaped and being a casting it's a little hard to tell exactly where the bend starts. I'm thinking I'll bolt up a spacer in the holes so the arms don't just spread and then make up an offset pry bar of some sort to try tweaking it back. I'm hoping to be able to do it cold. We'll see how it goes. I'll let you know!    Jon