Restoring a Panzerfaust

[Danmark]

Hi guys ( and Gals )
I recently came across these photos that I took a while ago of a panzerfaust 60 restoration I did for someone I knew.

These things are banned here in Australia unless you are a museum or collector with a specific license and of course they must also be inert - so while I will unfortunately never own one myself, it was a great chance to do a ‘sympathetic’ restoration for someone who COULD own one and learn a bit about how they actually worked. ( and to say I've actually held one of the beasts! )

The whole project took several weeks to do and sadly I haven’t got the BEFORE photos – they have been lost somewhere but these are the AFTER ones.

Firstly what he sent was the tube but it had no trigger or sight. Luckily I did have these parts ( the only faust items I had ) and donated them to the restoration …. don’t worry, we did some bartering for other stuff so I came out OK.

My treatment was to firstly soak ALL the parts in an oxalic acid bath for 4 hours to get rid of the major rust, then neutralised in a baking soda solution, and surprisingly a little paint still remained on the surfaces. After this, they were sealed with matt clear epoxy enamel and set aside to dry.

The warhead – well, what he sent me was a lot of bits, the body ( dented and rusted ) the reverse hollow cone for the shaped charge, and the hollow nose cap … that’s all. The tail with some remnants of nailed-on spring steel fins I already had in my collection.

To join all these parts together, I machined up on a lathe a laminated wood ring that was glued / screwed to the goblet and the nose pressed in to hold these pieces together as the original metal rings are seldom found usable and he never had a good one for me to work with.



I machined up a tube to replace the missing stub of the body and brazed it into the “goblet” after beating it back into shape ( it was quite squashed ) and made a strip catch from flat sheet and riveted that on the goblet side. ( this locks the warhead onto the tailpiece )



I painted black those things I replaced ( so as to clearly show what was new but not to detract from the overall look )

For the pressed metal bracket that holds the sight, slide and trigger to the tube, it was badly rusted and so required extensive patching and grafting of new metal to what was left to make everything fit back together and all articulate correctly.





As I cleaned up the mechanism and rebuilt / replaced some of the rusted metal and grafted it into the old I thought ( for those interested ) to explain how these crude weapons actually worked.

Note - the heads are not shipped with the primer / fuse in them and these have to be fitted in the field, but once armed this is the firing procedure.....

First off, you remove the pin holding the front sight down and raise it fully up. This allows the safety slide locking bar to move forward and frees up the trigger section, allowing it to be depressed. What you can’t see ( and I didn’t end up making one ) is a spring steel flat plate that has a pointed pin at one end and rests on a bar at the back of the trigger, directly above the percussion cap. ( see illustration )




When the trigger is pressed down, this spring slides off its rest and strikes the percussion cap under the hex nut setting off the black powder charge and propelling the warhead.

You can see that this tube has been fired by the depression in the cap – the FIRST thing I went looking for to make sure it was safe – for me!!



So here it is as I gave it back to him – a sympathetic and COMPLETELY SAFE restoration of a unique German weapon.



It may not be mine but at least I have the pictures and memories …..

[reneblacky]

I'm now looking up the AFP telephone number! Nice work though!

[MAP]

Awesome job Dan. Looks great.

Now I have to check mine to see if the percussion cap has been fired! LoL

[sweersz]

Very few people in the world can say that they've restored a Panzerfaust. That is awesome!

[AZPhil]

Shoot That Sumbitch!!!

Looks awesome!!!

Semper Fi
Phil

[BodhiEtheridge]

Beautiful restoration job! Shame you cant have one over there.

[Danmark]

Beautiful restoration job! Shame you cant have one over there.

Well you can Bodhi - if you jump through enough hoops. Some states are more lenient than others .....
I'm just not prepared to ... so I'll stick with the safer collectables .....

[Danmark]

They even get snooty about edged weapons, yet more people get stabbed with kitchen knives than bayonets!! Go figure?

[BodhiEtheridge]

One day I’m sure I’ll try and find one. There was one on eBay of all places awhile ago (just the tube, but complete) but unfortunately I didn’t have the cash at the time and didn’t realize how good of deal it was due to it’s condition although it was still a relic.

Don’t worry about the kitchen knifes, I’m sure they will ban those some day too.

[Chrish124]

What a fantastic restauration