Stens made in metalshop classes?

[Dreaded Claymore]

I can't remember where I heard this, but I think I heard that during WWII, British kids taking metalshop in school would sometimes make Sten submachine guns for the war effort. I've always heard that the Sten was designed to be very easy to manufacture, so this sounds somewhat credible. Does anyone know if this is true?

[Noobert]

could be, the sten is rather simple

[asme]

I'd believe it.

Quite a few resistance groups in Norway, Denmark, and Poland made them themselves with plans and sometimes small parts supplied by the British.

[TKM]

Lots of Stens went out of the back doors of bicycle shops across Europe.

[joelukehart]

I bet alot of stens were made in the USA with parts kits and template receiver tubes.

[norcal77]

Sounds plausible to me. Would be hard to prove though..Britain probably won't admit to using child labor.

[The Custard Pirate]

There might have been instances where kids made parts but not entire Sten Guns. While they are simple to manufacture, that doesn't mean they can be manufactured with simple equipment. Most machine shops don't have sheet metal forming or welding equipment so no receivers or magazines could be made. Drilling the barrel requires specialized equipment not normally found in a machine shop. This is not to say a machine pistol of some sort could not be cobbled together in a machine shop. But mass produced arms like a Sten require more facilities and resources than would be found in most machine shops of the WWII era.

[CALI-gula]

There might have been instances where kids made parts but not entire Sten Guns. While they are simple to manufacture, that doesn't mean they can be manufactured with simple equipment. Most machine shops don't have sheet metal forming or welding equipment so no receivers or magazines could be made. Drilling the barrel requires specialized equipment not normally found in a machine shop. This is not to say a machine pistol of some sort could not be cobbled together in a machine shop. But mass produced arms like a Sten require more facilities and resources than would be found in most machine shops of the WWII era.

Not really. Very little specialized equipment is needed at all and the Sten does not have a lot of parts. The magazines could be improvised from other guns or shared in design (and were ). The Sten receiver is essentially a pipe, nothing more. Some of the simpler versions during the war took only a few man-hours to make, with very little welding and machining, and the work that is required CAN be done on simple machines most any light-manufacturing shop has on hand. I could make one in my garage right now with the minimal tools I have.

As far a standards for the barrel - during war-time, standards take on less importance. One made in an improvised shop may not have been very accurate - but it shot something and often that is all that mattered.

War encourages ingenuity when weapons are needed. One of my favorite examples was how WWII Resistance groups smuggled in lipstick to use the brass casings for cartridge shells, merely trimming off the top as the dimensions were very close to the ammo of the time.

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[dunndeal]

My father was pressed into government service as an engineer in England during the war, he designed the silencer for the Sten gun.

[Spiggy]

the STEN is a pipe with another pipe and a slug of steel running in it. You could hammer them together.

As the war progressed, the STEN was simplified three times for ease of manufacture.

In the end, all you needed was rivets for a pre-welded tube.

[89 Vision]

I have a Sten parts kit that I've been wanting to build on for the last few years. Hopefully one day I'll get around to it.

[Rukus]

I have a Sten parts kit that I've been wanting to build on for the last few years. Hopefully one day I'll get around to it.

Same here, I've got 2 sitting in my parts bin, waiting for that day to come.