AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Tutorials => Gunmaking tools and techniques- woodworking => Topic started by: okieboy on September 27, 2010, 01:50:23 AM
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I am building a new chunk gun and would like to document the process here.
After reading FG1's topic I decided to go ahead and get started. I an trying to photograph as much of the building process as possible and will try to post a photo representing each step. I build pretty much the way my mentor (Lee Good) taught me, but that's not the only way and I would welcome comments on the other ways of doing things.
Obviously, it all starts with a plan and the first question of the plan is the barrel. The barrel is a compromise between length for sight radius, weight for steadiness and manageability for 13 shots. This varies for every shooter, and my choice was 1" x 48 " x .45. This translates to 9 pounds of barrel, and I weighed it to check.
After the barrel is selected it time to start laying down the plan for the stock, so my first pic is me working on the paper layout. I have Ron Borron's drawings to help guide me as well as knowing the dimensions of my current rifle.
(https://i.ibb.co/0jjpHvj/DSCN0113.jpg) (https://ibb.co/KjjcTSj)
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Here is how I do a stock layout. I use two datums. A datum is a point, line, or plane from which things are measured. the first datum is the top of the barrel. The second datum is the center of the vent slightly ahead Of the vent. We start our first layout on posterboard (plywood later) by drawing the line of the top flat of the barrel completely across the paper, Line #1. We measure down 1" in this gun and draw Line #2, the bottom flat. Half way between these two lines we draw a line (that I managed not to label) and this is the top of the barrel channel.
.200" (3/16" rounded up) below line #2 we draw the broken line #3 that is the top of the ramrod groove. .400" below this we draw the broken line #4 that is the bottom of the ranrod hole (3/8 ramrod). .200" below this we draw Line #5, which is the bottom of the fore stock.
Across Lines #1 and #2 wedraw line A which is the end of the barrel. Then we draw line B which is the face of the breech plug. Then we draw line C which is the distance of the vent in front of the breech face. The circle represents the powder drum.
I know many people place the vent location right at the face of the breech, then notch the breech face. I have disassembled old originals and know that this was common, but I do not wish to do this. My powder drum threads are 5/16 (.312), so I placed my vent location .190" in front of the beech face (.312/2=.156+.031=.187 rounded even).
Next time we will work on laying out the wrist and butt stock from datum C. I know this is vary basic for some of the people on this forum, but some people are beginners without a personal mentor to walk them through this. Also this provides those with experience the opportunity to offer alternatives.
(https://i.ibb.co/Zdjvzxc/DSCN0260.jpg) (https://ibb.co/D4JmfQw)
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The next step in laying out is placing the lock. Let me explain: The vent establishes the location of the lock and thereby the location of the sear. The sear locates the triggers, and the front trigger locates the pull. The pull combined with the drop locates the buttplate.
So first we draw in the lock using a photo copied and trimmed from Track's catalog: bless the good people at Track for their full-size photos. We draw a line down from the sear and allign our triggers with the line halfway between them. The lock that I choose was a Davis Goulcher and the triggers are Davis #6. I chose the Goulcher because I liked the size and think it will be very fast.
Now we trace the triggers (the picture shows Sharpy lines to show up well, but the actual work is done with a pencil with a good eraser close at hand) with care on the front trigger. From the point on the front trigger we sweep an arc 13-1/4" long for my pull.
Next we draw a line 3" down from Line #1, the top flat of the barrel to give us our drop; small drop for a prone gun.
Using the pull and drop we sketch in the buttplate and draw a line to the thumb spur of the trigger to establish the top of the comb. likewise we draw a line from the toe of the buttplate to the end of the trigger plate to establish the bottom of the stock (belly).
Now we sketch in the top of the wrist and end of the comb. This is maimly by eye.
Please understand that some of these steps are done once, the eye judges them as "Not fair.", erased and drawn again until satisfying.
The nose of my comb is further forward than usual, but it looked right and can always be shortened.
(https://i.ibb.co/93kKydr/IMG-0664.jpg) (https://ibb.co/7NdMr01)
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Opps! Wrong pic. Thats me and Sweet Sue at a centers shoot. Hopefully here is the riht pic.
(https://i.ibb.co/HdHnDsj/DSCN0263.jpg) (https://ibb.co/xH7JS0N)
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Is 3" of drop too much? Well, first off, I put the 3" on the layout to show how a layout is done, not to recommend it as the "right" amount of drop. But that being said it is the drop that I choose for this gun, which is being made to fit my body AND my shooting style. I'm sure some of the better shooters can elaborate, but shooting prone isn't just laying down. The angle between the axis of the gun and your body changes how you connect with the gun. Also how you position your elbows, forearms and hands in shooting position affects how you connect with the gun. I suspect that discussing variations of elbow positions may sound compulsive to some. It is. Chunk shooting is a delight to the obsessive complusive. Let me say that I am not yet a winning chunk shooter, but I hope to be within two years and believe that matches are won on the practice range. To that end it is not unusual at a practice session for me to get in shooting position ten times with Coach (my wife) taking a photo each time and later study the photos looking for inconsistanies.
So, 3" may be too much for Billy and not enough for Bob, but hopefully about right for me.
Which brings us to our next step in the process. Having drawn and redrawn the profile on paper until we are happy, we carefully cut the paper pattern out with our favorite craft knife and retrace it on a piece of 1/4" plywood and saw it out. You will notice that it is full length and that I left all of the "barrel" in and left the "buttplate" on.
The first thing we are going to do with this pattern is trace it onto a piece of lumberyard 2x8 and saw it out, giving us (even left square) a decent prototype gun. We take our prototype, plop down behind our chunk and try out that drop and pull before committing to expensive maple.
Actually when I "saw", I saw wide of the line and then sand to the line with a small belt sander, there will be pics of these set-ups later in the process.
(https://i.ibb.co/k9RH2Lm/DSCN0111.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Sdhswkf)
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Now that we have a pattern that we like, we are ready to buy wood. For stock wood I decided that I wanted the plainest hard maple (sugar maple) that I could get. I like the density and consistancy of maple. I wanted plain for multiple reasons: I like plain guns, plain wood cuts with fewer suprises than fancy wood and though I am not on a limited budget for this build, money saved on wood can be directed to other parts of the shooting program.
I am fortunate that I live about 30 miles from Track of the Wolf. So, a Friday off, the pattern in the pickup and down the road I go. They showed me where the plain wood was racked and said pick what you like. So I pulled out all the pieces that were long enough, laid them on the floor, looked and fitted the pattern until I was satisfied with one. This picture is of me and the blank, which weighed 16 pounds.
If I were going to get my wood elsewhere I think that I would make a full size paper pattern to roll up into a shipping tube and send to the wood dealer, though I would suppose most of them would choose well enough just by knowing the planned length of the gun.
(https://i.ibb.co/grK50cF/DSCN0106.jpg) (https://ibb.co/p1FtHkr)
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So we have a pattern and a heavy clunky piece of wood. My next step will be to reduce the thickness of the blank. This will lighten it and get it closer to finished size, but importantly it is easier to saw and saw square thinner wood. The question is "How thin?" To answer this, we ask two questions: how wide is the buttplate and how wide is the barrel plus twice the thickness of the lockplate at it's fence. The buttplate that I have is 1.300" wide. The barrel is 1" and the lockplate is .265". .265x2=.530+1=1.530". I rounded this up to 1.600", which gives us an even .800" to centerline. This is obviously plenty of material for this buttplate, but a wider buttplate could have pushed our thickness higher.
Since I am a longtime, well tooled amateur woodworker I get to take the waste off with my 12-1/2" planer. I take small passes, .010-.015" per pass and take passes on both sides, but if I like the grain better on one side I will take more off the other side. If you don't have a planer, it is very possiple that someone you know does, but before I had a planer I tackled chores like this with saw and handplane. where there is a will, there is a way.
P.S. Saw the Bevel Brother's last article today in Muzzle Blasts: "After you feel like you've practiced enough, practice some more." I don't think that there is better shooting advice than that.
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Our blank now weighs about 9 pounds and has two smooth parallel sides. Time to trace the pattern. We lay the pattern on the lock side of the blank, carefully position it, and clamp it in place. The extra minute spent clamping can save a lot of frustration. We trace around the pattern creating a line that will be easy to see.
We remove the pattern, but as you may have noticed, my pattern is straight from the lock area to the muzzle; nothing cut out for the top of the barrel or bottom of the forearm. Here's why. We want a very good line marking the top of the barrel channel, so we measure over 1/2" (half a barrel) front and back and draw this line with a good straight edge(48" aluminum rule). From this line we measure over .200"+.187"=.387" rounded up to .400". The .187 being 1/2 of .375 since I am using a 3/8 ramrod. The ramrod drill is actually .390" for us obsessives. I draw a line 12" from the back of the barrel to mark end of the fore grip. Although we layout the bottom of the forearm now, we are not goint to cut it away now, but will cut according to the botton line produced by the pattern, This will leave the front of the stock stiffer and evenly stiff for letting in the barrel.
We are ready to go to the bandsaw. Mine is a medium sized Delta. I read some entries on the board about getting some helpers when one bandsaws, but I made a 72" auxillary table for the bandsaw, which will also get used on the belt sander and drill press. I think you can see in the pictures that the table has a notch cut in it to fit around the saw blade and has a cleat attched to its underside to stiffen it.
We will cut a little outside of our line and then trim to the line with a small belt sander, though we could trim with rasp and file.
(https://i.ibb.co/1Gm5jdX/DSCN0176.jpg) (https://ibb.co/DfRyT8M)
(https://i.ibb.co/4YVt2dC/DSCN0180.jpg) (https://ibb.co/mXcT08d)
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I am not sure why I sometimes have problems getting the right pictures to post. Oh well try again.
(https://i.ibb.co/jTcG8fj/DSCN0097.jpg) (https://ibb.co/t47cHK1)
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I have done a layout in scale concerning the cheek piece. It will have a cheekpiece and I think that there will be plenty of wood. Cheek pieces don't take as much wood as one might think, depending of course on the cheekpiece. My opinion of cheekpieces is that they are mostly visual and at best provide some "landmarking" for consistantly locaing your cheek placement.
(https://i.ibb.co/74yvnHy/DSCN0268.jpg) (https://ibb.co/JQknvNk)
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Our next step after sawing outside the line (how far outside depends on how well your saw is tuned and yourlevel of skill/confidence) is to belt sand to the lines. Here is a picture of my little Delta belt/disc sander. I want to comment on this tool. I've only had this a bit more than a year, but now I wish that I had had one long ago. I seem to use this all the time, squaring something shaping something, tapering something. When I made the wooden laps to radius the rifling to the face of the barrel I'm currently shooting, I made them by hand and eye on this sander. Some of the cutters and scrapers that will get used later in the build. Anyway we are going to clamp the auxiliary table that was on the saw to the belt table, support the front of the table with an adjustable saw roller stand that was handy( a sawed length of board clamped to the cleat would have worked too), check for level both lengthwise and across the table, and check the squareness of the belt support to the table with a good try square, twice!
Sand in long slow passes and don't hurry. If the sander seems to cut too fast, go to a finer grit. Go to a coarser grit if it seems to just be polishing or worse burning.
When this is done you can see that we have something with the flavor of a gunstock. What was originally 16 pounds is now 5 pounds even.
Please note that we have not cut any of the buttplate fitting yet and won't till we have the triggers fitted, so that we can control the pull.
We are getting close to letting in the barrel, but before we can do that we have to do the barrel prep work.
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The clamps are handy as they adjust to any length desired. Well, my main bench is 11' long, so I guess there is a limit to how long a gun I will build.
The clamps are Jorgensen #0, which have 8" long jaws, so they have a clamping depth of 4". The bases are 6 x6". To assemble, clamp the jaw fully closed upside down in your vise, drill and countersink through the base for the first screw. Install the first screw, then drill and countersink for the second screw. Install the second screw. I sometimes swipe screw threads with a block of bee's wax; I do not use soap.
Now remove the screws, paint the bottom of the drilled jaw with 2-ton epoxy( you want the jaws spread apart at this point) and "clamp" you glue-up by reinstalling the two screws. Let set 24 hours and you are equipped for gun building. At this point some someone is thinking "There was no need to install that second screw before gluing." I like to precut the threads and finding trouble with a screw after the glue is smeared is no fun at all.
Speaking of smearing glue, here is a tool tip for you. I mix epoxy and apply epoxy and wood glue using bamboo skewers from the grocery store. I actually keep two sizes, break them into handy lengths, trim different points and flats on the end as needed. They are also handy with a little cotton twisted on the end to make tiny or very long swabs.
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I have never been as excited about castoff as some people seem to get and as slowly and carefully as you get into position with a chunk gun I don't see it as contributing much.
I favor a pinhead front sight with a donut spotter. I make my own rear sights and the one on the gun I'm shooting in the pictures is about the fifth one I tried. The thing is that the spotter, the front sight and the rear sight have to work together, so a different sight may demand a different spotter and vice verse.
The next step is preliminary prep of the barrel before letting it into the stock. This means draw filing the flats and a first polish. The draw filing is done because it will change the size of the barrel. I know this will only be .002 or .003", but I did mention being compulsive. The quick polish with emery is mostly to make clear any area that needs a touch more file work. One could make a case that nothing needs to be done to the bottom three flats, except at the muzzle, as they will be hidden by wood and I am sure there is plenty of historical precedent for this, but it is just not how I want to do my work.
I won't get into the details of draw filing too deep, working at the bench will teach you better than my explanations. I will say that I like a new file, but more important than new is good quality, that means a Nickolson, Simmonds, Sandvik, Grobet or similar. Money spent on cheap files is money wasted.
I also clean the file often with a metal bristle "toothbrush"(I like these better than file cards), and follow cleaning with chalking.
As for polishing flats, I simply wrap emery (wet or dry) around a soft pine block cut to suitable size and the edges broke.
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Still probs with the pics!
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I will brown all the hardware. This polish is at about 220 grit and I will have to re-polish before browning, because I will scuff things by handling during the build. When I brown, I am careful about cleaning and handling. I may put on 10 or more coats, generally every 12 to24 hours, and I card with a soft brass brush, I like a thick, dark, somewhat rough brown.
The tools are what I call smooth rasps. They are flat on one side and slightly curved on the other. They cut slow and leave a finish that takes minor work with 100 grit remove the marks. I bought them about 30 years ago at Wholesale Tool in Tulsa. They are the only ones that I have ever seen.
I am going to digress slightly from the build to tell you a little about who and what I am. I make my way as a metal working professional, specifically I am a Tooling Specialist. I am NOT a tool and die maker. I help choose, order, organize, store, maintain and preset cutting tools, tool holders and work holding. For someone to say they know ALL about tools, would be like someone saying they know ALL about long rifles, but I know fair amount about tools. I tell you this and show you pictures of some of my planes. Because in letting in the barrel I am going to show you how to make a scraper plane and its cutters. I want you to know that I have some experience to draw on; I have usually do it wrong, done it half right and finally done it right.
You can also see some of my hammers( I am proud of the rack for them).
(https://i.ibb.co/D9Y9pz9/DSCN0303.jpg) (https://ibb.co/n7B7C67)
(https://i.ibb.co/mbgVGv5/DSCN0298.jpg) (https://ibb.co/ckVS1bh)
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I am useing a 1" barrel, but any of this can be easily adjusted for other sizes. This is a straight barrel, and that is a good choice for achunk gun and I think a good choice for a starting builder.
The first thing that we want to do is to define the sides of the barrel in the top of the wood so that we can start removing waste from between the sides. The waste removal will be done mostly with a gouge and mallet, but defineing the sides, as final loction of the bottom flat and the two angled flats will be done with a sraper plane.
I actually made two planes for this build, the scraper that you see and a 45 degree cutting plane. I had always wanted to make a barrel cutting plane, but after completing it I could not make it function. It is now in the "raw Material" pile. The scraper plane works great though.
You will notice that the spacer plate is .300" thick, this is the same as the distance of the barrel to the face of the wood in our layout.
When assembling the plane don't forget to drill for the hex head bolt (I used 3/8-16) and to counterbore for the nut. The counter bore is drilled just smaller the the distance across the nut corners and then the nut is malleted in with a little epoxy.
The body pieces are epoxied to the spacer block. Be sparing with the epoxy as you will have to remove any sqeeze out fron the "poscket", the slot between the blocks. I did my glue up on a graite tile from the home store. The glue will dot stick well to the granite, though some times I put wax paper under a glue up for the same reason.
We don't just want to clamp the bodies to the spacer plate, we also want to clamp the body pieces down to the tile, so that they are even, flat and square. This involves some alteranate tightening, loosening and retightening of clamps.
This glued assembly is srcrewed, but NOT glued to the guide plate. We don't glue on the guide plate, so that if the next gun we build needs a .400" barrel set back, we can just add a shim.
Next time we will talk about the cutters, how they are made and how they are used.
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The multiblade is a commercial tool by GunLine with the rubber between blades. I pulled it through my channel a couple of times at the end in the thought that it was probably ground more accurately than my hand and eye grinds
To the blades. These are all made from 3/32 x 1" O1 tool steel. The O stands for oil hardening and it is a craftsman friendly tool steel. I always keep some O1 in material bin and recommend others do too. I keep 1/16. 3/32, and 1/8" thick and some different widths. The three cutters that we need are a sides cutter, a bottom flat cutter and a full form cutter. We start all of these by hacksawwing off a piece of steel and marking one end square with a try square and carbide tipped scribe. Sometimes blacking the material with black marker helps show the line.
The sides of a 1" barrel is approximately .420" wide, times 1/2=.210, so a line lay-ed out .250 back from the edge provides plenty of relief. We grind or file down to this line and start working out to form the cutting "ears". The narrower they are the easier they will cut. All of the shaping on these blades is done before hardening.
The bottom flat cutter is lay-ed out to cut .420 wide and has depth relief of greater than .500".
A lot of my laying out is done with a dial caliper. I can hardly imagine working without one, and I don't think that there is a tool for ones shop that is a much better investment.
For the full form cutter we did our layout by laying cut and squared piece of 1" barrel on our blank and tracing it with the scribe. On this cutter the bottom and 45s are sharp, but the sides are left "safe".
After everything is lay-ed out, we grind up to our marks from the back of the blade to give us sharp edges. The exact angles are not important, 30-45 degrees would be fine.
Now we are ready to harden. O1 hardens at 1475-1500 degrees, but in practice I just heat it to a nice bright yellow with a mapp gas torch, start back from the edge and work the heat up to the edge, with a vise grip handle. Then plunge it into a motor oil bath, moving it around until it is dark. Later we will temper the blades in the oven, set at 425 degrees for a half hour. I put in a picture of my oil quench safety set up. My shop is in the house basement and a metal container with a metal lid seems prudent. The can in the bottom holds the oil.
After all this we polish the edges of the cutters and the front of the cutters with emery lay-ed on our flat granite tile. Polishing the front flat will make the cutter plenty sharp enough.
Oh, did you notice the handy blck tape handle on the back of the cutter?
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pictures upload sites (https://imgbb.com/)
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A couple of things I forgot to mention, the fourth blade with the radius is a ramrod channel blade. Also, I get my tool steel from McMaster Carr, they have a huge selection and they don't have a minimum order.
Cutting the barrel channel with the help of the scraper plane. First we are going to start cutting the channel sides with the plane. My flats are .420", so the maximum depth of the sides cutter is .210". We don't start with the cutter at full depth, we start about .030-.060" deep and then start removing waste between the sides with a gouge. The picture with the caliper is to show how to set the cutter depth. Set the caliper for the desired depth, then lock it. Place the cutter in the pocket of the plane too deep, then push the cutter into position with the caliper, while gently but firmly pressing the outside of the blade so that it is backed into the pocket. Then tighten the lock screw snugly, but don't overtighten.
We alternate between using the sides cutter deeper and deeper and removing waste until we get the sides .210" deep.
Now we can start defining the bottom flat with the bottom cutter. The bottom cutter and full form cutter both have maximum depths of .500", but as they have larger comtact surfaces the adjustment increments are smaller, .010-.015". As we work down it is a good idea to check the depth of the channel. I use a depth mic since I have one, but a depth gage would work fine.
When we have the sides and the bottom defined it is good to switch from the gouge to a straight chisel to start roughly defining the 45 degree flats and start incrementally lowering the full form cutter down into the channel. As this cutter gets close to the bottom, the adjustments should get very small, as in .005". Draw a pencil line down the bottom flat and when the full form cutter "erases" the line you are at full depth.
In using the plane, most of the effort is directed at keeping the guide plate tight against the side of the stock, this is the critical part of creating good work with the plane. I should also note that, yes the stock has to be moved forwards and backwards in the clamps to get the plane to all of the side of the stock.
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Oh, the last picture is showing that I got tired of malleting the gouge and let my imaginary helper spell me for bit.
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At this point we have about 46.5" of good barrel channel, but that last 1.5" is tricky for me. It is easy to cut away more wood than intended. I should say,before we go any further, that I finish the channel at the breech square without the breechplug in, then fit the barrel with unbent breechplug, then bend the curve of the breechplug and finish fit it.
Back to that last 1.5", I made a special tool to do this job more accurately. The first pic shows the tool and yes it looks suspiciously like a piece of scrap 1" barrel hacksawed on a 45 degree angle and then sanded and polished till sharp.
The second pic shows the tool in the channel turned to do the bottom flat, but it will be rotated to the other 5 flats as well.
The third pic shows how the tool is driven; we hold the tool firmly in the channel, put a piece of wood behind it to give us a striking surface and drive it with a favorite mallet. This mallet is a Lixie with hard black and soft green heads. This hammer is about $40.00, but is
very friendly to gun building. Our friends at MC Master Carr carry this if you want one.
Using the tool does not go fast, you don't just drive it to the end of the channel. You alternate between driving it 1/16", cleaning the chip it has raised with a sharp chisel, rotating it, driving it 1/16", etc. As you get towards the end of the channel you have to start squaring the end of the channel. We check that the end of the channel is flat and ,square by puting transfer stain on the end of the barrel and driving it back using the same block of wood and mallet.
Here I am going to let you in on a secret that has never left my shop before. If you look to the right of my chisels you can see it. One of the best transfer stains is a woman's lipstick. They are not as messy as the commercial products, they are cheap, they come in a convenient applicator, and they are available in any color you want (such as something similar to the final color of your stock).
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Don't be shy, if you have questions.
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After the barrel channel is squared, I inlet the breech plug unbent, then removed it from the barrel, bent it, reinstalled it and finish inlet it. A case could be made for bending it and inletting at one shot. I may do it that way next time, as I had a difficult time with this one. My tang is 4.5" long and the longer they get, the harder it is to do a nice job. Also as the barrel gets heavier, it is more effort to manage. One thing I want to point out is the transfer marks where the barrel end butts the channel. We want to make sure to get a transfer here before we stop the tang inlet; in other words we want to make sure that the tang does not interfere with the barrel setting firmly against the end of the channel.
The first pic is of the tool I used to bend the tang. I am not sure if this tool started life as a fuller or as a hot chisel, but it didn't take much sanding to get it ready for this job.
The second pic shows the tool ready to use, with the tang inverted on vise jaws and a piece of brass or copper helping reduce dings on what will be the visible surface. The bending tool can be used as a hammer or used by striking with another hammer. This is one place where the advice "Wear your safety glasses or a shield." should absolutely be heeded.
The last pic shows the completed tang mortise. I will admit that I was not satisfied with my first inletting. glued left over stock wood into the back part of the mortise and inlet it again. By the time the gun is finished the repair will be invisible, but I want to be honest about things.
I have never cared much for putting much (or often any) taper on parts, but this might be the right place to do that, even if it means fitting the mortise by taper scraping the mortise sides. I would love to hear other peoples comments on inletting long tangs.
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I hope it is obvious that although I am consumed with chunking currently, that what I really want to do is demystify the build process. If a person did this same build with a 7/8 x 42" barrel, a plain general purpose Southern rifle would result. The rifle I am shooting in the pictures was built this way and it has shot offhand matches, chunk matches (I did change the sights), and took a lot of squirrels (.45 with about 20grains of powder) when I still hunted. It is also an easy build (as builds go) and one can progress to more complicated work in future builds. I hear sometimes that a beginning builder should start with a precarve and I am sure one would learn some skills, but at the same time would learn very little about the layout relationship between the components as it has already been done by someone else. I am not against precarves, but think they shine best for the guy who wants to build only one gun; wants to have a nice gun rather than learn gun building.
I want to thank my mentor, Lee Good again for teaching me, and thank you and the other kind readers for letting me pass this to someone else. As you learn, I hope you will share with someone else.
Greg Newcomb
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Ready... steady...
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This would be a good time to install the powder drum. The first thing to do is find and mark its location. I want the drum threads to not cut the breech plug face (please note many new and old guns have the powder drum intersecting the breech plug to varying degrees). We have to locate the breech plug face on the outside of the barrel. One way is to measure the length of the breech plug threads and transfer this measurement from the rear of the barrel. I chose to measure from the muzzle to the breech face down the bore and transfer this. I took a long (59") ramrod, hammered a pistol cartridge case onto one end to create a nice square end and put my homemade depth gage block on the other. The block is a handy thing to have, because you can take measurements as long as any dowel you create. It is just a block with a 3/8" hole drilled through it, a pinch slot sawed and a tightening screw installed. So I used this and scribed the breech face on the right flat of the barrel. My drum is 5/16-24, so I measured over .180 (.312/2=.157+.024=.180) and scribed a centerline. The .024" is just some thing between .015 and.031" that gave me a round number. Once this line is marked we cross it with a line .500 down from the top flat and there's the center of the drum. I punched this with a very sharp center punch and moved to the drill press.
As you can see the 72" axillary table is earning its keep again. I put a small center drill in the chuck and carefully found the center punch mark and center drilled. Next I pilot drilled through to the bore; a good rule for pilot drills is for them to be the same size as the distance across the main drill's chisel point. Next I put in the tap drill and drilled through. Finally I put my tap (usually this would be a plug tap, but I had plenty of clearance in the bore to use a taper or starting tap) in the chuck. I only hand snugged the three jaw chuck on the tap, so the tap was guided, but not pushed by the chuck; I clamped a small vise grip to the tap and started turning in and backing out the tap, letting it feed itself. This is a Rayl barrel and very tough, but with oil and chip cleaning I got through.
A couple of things; one, at this point the drum will not install to completely flush. The usual method of dealing with this is to chamfer the tapped hole till it does go flush. I chose to take a 5/16 end mill and counterbore about .060" deep. Two, the usual recommended tap drill for a 5/16-24 tapped hole is a letter I drill,.272", I used a letter G drill,.261. The .272 drill produces a 75% thread, the .261 drill produces a 100% thread. 100% threads are not noticeably stronger than 75% threads, but 100% threads do seal better.
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The next step is to pin the barrel to the stock. This barrel being long, I decided to use 4 pins.
Here is how I located the pin positions. I know that I want the front pin fairly close to the muzzle, I also know that the end of the ramrod channel is going to be 3.5" back from the muzzle (one Greg handwidth) and the front of the first thimble is going to be 4" from the muzzle. I sketch these in on my pattern and choose by eye to put the front pin 2.875 back from the muzzle. This doesn't interfer with any thing and leaves room for a nose cap if we want. I mark this on the top flat of the forestock, choosing this so that I can transfer the location to the stock side and the barrel, because we are choosing the pin locations and will mark the underlug locations from these, not the other way round.
Next we pick by eye a spot between the front of the grip rail and the front of the lock plate. We measure the distance between the two marks, divide by 3 to get 4 locations and come up with some goofy number like 12.384". We adjust this to something sensible, in my case 12.5", and this will be our center to center distance for the pins.
We erase the preliminary mark on the grip rail, and start measuring lengths of 12.5" from the front pin mark that we made first. I did this with a pair of trammel points, but a yard stick would work.
After the locations are laid out, we can transfer them. For the barrel, I had the breech out, so I just turned the bottom flat 90 degrees to the side and and scribed a mark. For the stock I took a small try square and made a line on the side of the stock. Now this is important, we don't cross the lines to tell us how far down to put the pin hole. Any lines you see running parallel with the barrel are stock bottom lines. How far down the pin holes go is not determined by the stock, but determined by the barrel, and we will use this in our drill press set up to get the pin holes in the right place.
We will get to that, but first there are the underlugs to make and install.
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There are a lot of different commercial underlugs and different ways to make your own, here is mine. I don't know anyone else who does them this way, but wouldn't be surprised at others doing the same. My lugs are not tee shaped. they are just flat with 60 degree ends. Since they only have their thickness to generate their strength I make them a little thicker, 1/8" to be exact. I came up with these when working on a very thin rifle and wanted to set the pin high as possible and these made the depth of the dovetail in the barrel useable space.
These lugs were made to go with 5/64(.078)" pins. They are 1/8 x 3/16. I only had 1/8 x 3/8 on hand, so I ground a small piece down on the belt sander.
I have made a little 60 degree miter box to make it easy to cut accurate angles to match the dovetails. The dark notch across it proves room for a small c-clamp to hold the material.
The second pic shows it in use, clamped in a bench vise. You might take note of the piece of material with the taper on one end. It is a piece of the original material, ground, case hardened, and sharpened into a mortising chisel exactly the same width as the lugs. This is handy when inletting the lugs.
The hand vise is handy for any file work on the lugs when fitting them to the dovetails.
Next time we will make the dovetails.
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Chunk drill.
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I shot these and placed a 12" rule in so you could get a feel for the size. This is just lumber yard pine. I did put a coat of finish on it and a piece of leather on the bar to make it more comfortable for Sue. This would still meet York rules that the gun be able to move forwards and back and side to side.
Please note the scale on the inside (of both sides) to help judge adjustments and help rough level it. Not a bad idea though to have a torpedo level in your box when you get down to shooting for money or pies.
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Sorry guys, totally forgot to show you the built in wrench pocket. The wrench has the box end cut off to make it a single end wrench. The measurements are : 15" high x 11" deep x 16" inside to inside. I didn't want wing nuts for this particular application, but it is probably 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.
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It is easy to find instructions for hand cutting dovetails, so I won't go into great detail. I made the basic slot with an end mill in my drill press, holding the barrel in the cross slide. The marks that we scribed on the bottom flat of the barrel are used to center the end mill from front to back and then a series of progressively deeper cuts are taken across the barrel until the slot is deep enough. This barrel has lots of meat, so I made the slots about .065" deep. I checked my progress with a depth micrometer since I have one, but a caliper would have been fine. A drill press is not a milling machine, so each of my passes is small, .010-.015" at a time. What I like about this method is the nice flat bottom produced. I have cut plenty of dovetails with just a file, but getting an even depth to the slot can be trying.
The picture is of the drill press setup, though in the picture the slot shown is the front sight slot, which is handy to cut now as it is the same setup.
The second pic shows the dovetail angles cut into the slot using a homemade dovetail file ground smooth on one side. I re-polish this smooth side on a diamond sharpening stone from time to time.
The final picture shows the installed underlug. I fit up by removing material from one end of the lug, filing small start chamfers, tapping it in and fitting some more till it seems right. I fit the lugs pretty tight, driving them into position with a punch and small hammer, check the centering carefully and then peen down the edges of the dovetail on both sides of the lug.
We will look next time at inletting the lugs, but let me mention now that I install one lug, inlet it and then the next and so on. I start at the breech end and work towards the muzzle.
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Inletting the lugs is pretty straight forward. I mentioned that we start from the breech end, we "stain" the underlug, place the barrel in the channel, tap the muzzle with our mallet to seat the barrel's breech end, then tap the barrel's top directly over the lug. This should give us a good transfer. It is not unusual for me to sometimes highlight the edges of a transfer with a sharp pencil to make things easier to see.
Now we can do substantial material removal with the mortise chisel that we made from the lug material. I see no harm in making the lug mortises a bit long front and back.
We can check our progress reasonably well with a depth gage, and as we get close to depth we deepen the mortise by scraping. Although there is no real harm in cutting through our .200 web allowance to the ramrod groove, it is nice craftsmanship not to.
In the final fitting we need to have stain not just on the lug, but on the barrel bottom flat. When we stain the bottom of the barrel channel, we know that we have mortised deep enough. When coaxing pieces together like this, I sometimes tap with a mallet (in this case a Lixie) and sometimes clamp with a small c-clamp.
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Now we get to drill the pin holes through the underlugs, this is an operation that causes some people to hold their breath, but the way we are going to do it is pretty foolproof.
I use a drill press with a vise. As you can see in the pictures, I am the proud owner of a $30 cross-slide. Before the cross-slide, my regular drill press vise cross-slid by way of my mallet!
The vise has two jaws, a stationary jaw that is part of the vise body and a moveable jaw that we tighten to hold our work. We are going to adjust the location of the stationary jaw in relation to the drill such that when we clamp the top flat of the barrel tight against the stationary jaw, the drill will pass right along the bottom flat of the barrel.
I made my setup by clamping a piece of 1" barrel in the vise (we could have used the actual barrel, but a short piece does the same thing and is easier to handle). The bottom flat of our piece is blacked by a felt tip; the pin sized drill is in the chuck, we turn the motor on and start adjusting the barrel towards the drill, simultaneously making the drill go up and down, until we see that the drill has rubbed against the barrel, making a shiney mark. In machining we call this coming to "scratch". Now we lock the vise/cross slide to prevent changes of location in this one direction.
Now we can put the barrel/stock assembly in, top flat against stationary jaw and drill any number of pin holes, all at the bottom of the barrel.
As to specific drilling technique, I start by putting a center drill in the chuck and use this as a center point to move the assembly muzzle to breech direction, until aligned with the layout lines we drew earlier. Then we drill a start with the center drill about .060-.075" deep, stop the motor and change to the pin sized drill and drill away.
Once we have drilled the first hole, we unclamp the movable jaw, switch back to our center drill and do the same thing for the next hole.
It is not important to drill completely through the stock, in fact it is probably a bad idea because of drilling into your vise. It is good to get through the underlug though. Later, on the bench we can complete the holes by holding our pin drill in a pin vise (another little tool that is hard to live without) and turning the drill with our fingers. Not fast, but sure and this enables us to drill a hole very nearly as deep as the overall length of our drill bit.
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With the under lug pin holes drilled, there is one small task before starting on the lock. That is making pins that are easily removable while we are working on the gun. I make my pins from music wire, which is a very hard wire that is bendable. Music wire is generally 1095, which is a hard spring steel. Music wire is handy for pins, springs, and tiny chisels. I bought an assortment of music wire out of a hardware store back when there were nonfranchise hardware stores, now one has to go to an industrial supply or specialty metal supply.
Place the wire in your vise about 1/2" above the jaws and bend it to 90 degrees with your favorite hammer. Cut it off with the corner of a grinding wheel, put a good chamfer on the end and you have an easily removable pin.
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I hope you guys caught the pattern for making a mallet that I put on Mattole's topic "cost of tools".
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With the barrel pinned in the stock, the next step is inletting the lock. The first step in inletting the lock is disassembling the lock, so that we can prep the lock plate and inlet it first.
The first step in disassembly is to have some lidded plastic storage containers on hand in the shop, the cheap ones from the grocery store are fine, but you are advised not to skip this step!
The next step is to put the lock on full cock and snug your spring vise onto the main spring. You want to make sure that the vise has a good purchase on the spring. I actually ground the angle on the top of my vise to make it fit better. I would advise not trying to substitute something like a visegrip for a spring vise.
Once the vise is snugged up, we trip the sear, push the hammer forward and wiggle the main spring free. After it is out loosen the tension on the vise till the spring comes free and put both in the small parts storage container. Disassembly work is a good time to have your bench neat and orderly.
Next loosen the sear spring screw, pop the sear spring loose from its mortise, then finish removing the screw and spring. You may notice that I am using gunsmith screw drivers and these are tools that I wish I had bought sooner.
Next we remove the bridle screws and bridle, being careful as this is when we remove the detent from the tumbler.
Turn the lock over and remove the hammer screw.
In removing the hammer from the tumbler we don't pry the hammer, we punch it loose. It is handy to have a punch block, which is just a scrap of wood with a suitable sized hole through it. We choose a punch which fits inside of the threads, not on top of the threads and tap the tumbler free with a small hammer. The punches that I am using were expensive, but not as expensive as the frustration and damaged work that cheap punches produce.
Next we will prep the lock plate.
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Before inletting the lock plate, we prep it a little. This consists of removing the casting surface by flattening the outside face of the plate and squaring and smoothing the edge of the plate(as I have said before I do not favor the draft angle on the edge of parts to be inlet as some others do).
The face of the plate is flattened and smoothed by flat sanding on a granite tile after being rough flattened with a file. Aluminum oxide paper worked much better on this casting than wet or dry.
The edge of the plate is filed square with a smooth file and will get draw filed and polished with sand paper wrapped around the file. What I want to show though are the two different ways of filing an edge. Simple straight cross filing works well on the straighter portions of the lock, but when we get to the rounded ends laying the plate down on a flat piece of scrap and turning the file up on edge gives us much better control to produce smooth curves without facets.
I also want to show how handy a woodworkers clamp is. By clamping it in your vise, you can raise the work up and you can clamp at 90 degrees to your vise.
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I will try to explain this being my preference (altough I don't presume to think it is right for everybody else).
First let me say that on the tang tapering might have made it easier, but I don't consider not tapering to be the root problem. I consider the root problem to be that handling a 9 pound 48" long barrel is difficult and that the tang being longer increases any errors that handling produces. Meaning, that I should have used more care and worked more slowly than I did. For me not as much the wrong technique as poor execution of my chosen technique. There is no excuse for the poor execution.
I should also say that the tang issue is with one side, the back of the tang fits up simultaneously with the back of the tangs front tap and the back of the tang does have a draft angle because of the geometry of the tang. Please note that the back of the tang and it's angle run perpendicular to the grain of the wood. That is an important distinction for me.
There are two problems for me with tapering parts and these problems apply more to thick parts like tangs, trigger plates and locks, less to very thin parts like decorative inlays. I have drawn an exaggerated picture of my two objections.
One, tapering means that the bottom, which you trace to inlet is smaller than the the top, so as you deepen the inlet, you must also make it wider, this is difficult to do accurately by chiseling down, but might be done well by scraping the sides of the mortise. Is that what you do?
Two, tapered mortises on thick parts that are later "snugged" with screws act as wedges applying wedge force in line with the grain. If we want to split wood, such as kindling, we apply a wedge (hatchet) along the grain. Now think about where most of the cracks are located on old rifles that you have handled; often they emanate from the lock mortise or tang mortise.
I think you would find most of my inlets quite acceptable, my lock is already inlet and the plate fits closely enough that it has to be pulled out. When I inlet I mark the part edge closely mostly using very sharp Exacto knives, but then I "set in" with special inletting chisels. These are completely flat on one side (flat side to the outside) and thin as razor blades. I tried to show the thinness in the picture, but most of what you see in the side view is shadow. You may also notice that there are four different cutting widths. As the cutting width gets narrower, the chisel can deal with a more curved line. The narrowest cutting width can go around a suprising small curve (very slowly), without producing faceting.
I have tried to take a picture of the line being cut for the trigger plate, but it is not easy to see.
I hope this makes some sense of my approach and would be glad for you to take exception to any and all of it.
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In relation to inletting depths, I will go ahead and show you this tool that I made to control mortise depth on my lockplate inlet. Yes it looks suspiciously like a depth gage from Sears that has had the stem shortened and sharpened. Let me warn you that it isn't perfected yet, it did not want to cut when pulled as a scraper, so I slid it from side to side and it cut thin little witness marks, giving me an indication of needed material removal.
Maybe I've got it too sharp, or maybe the "cutter" needs to be narrower. If you make one of these to try out, be aware that the surface of the wood in contact with the gage base can get scuffed up a bit.
(https://i.ibb.co/M1FwHfL/DSCN0395.jpg) (https://ibb.co/8x1vwbV)
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The typical taper on sides of parts being inlet is pretty slight. It doesn't create any substantial wedging effect. What it does is help create a tight fit on parts. Give it a try. It's the way to go. As far as marking the outline to cut, here is a technique to consider. Taper the edge of your part appropriately. Put part in place and outline with a sharp scribe. Outline slightly inside the scribed line with a small veiner. Stab in outline with appropriate gouges and chisels by placing the cutting edge directly in the scribed cut. The veiner channel allows a place for the wood to be displaced in the stab in process. Done well, this process creates a tight fit with often little or no further fitting on edges.
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The inletting tools in the aboe post are made from 1/16x1" O1 tool steel. You cut off a piece about 4.5" long, then cut it into two diagonally. Most of the work is done previous to hardening. Patience is required at the belt sander or grinder not to overheat the steel, never wearing gloves is helpful in this. When it is too hot to hold comfortably cool it in water; if it sizzles, slow down.
Harden at 1450-1500 degrees, I just heat it to a bright yellow. Get the heat up back from the cutting edge and then work it up to the edge. Quench in motor oil, there is a picture of my safety first oil quench set up earlier in this topic. Oven temper at 425 for an hour. Be sure and wash the oil off before tempering if you have a wife. Expect hardness of about 58/60 Rockwell C.
When you sharpen and polish after heat treating, do not forget to flatten the flat side in case there is any warpage and it needs to be polished anyway for proper sharpening.
The Home Mechanic's friend McMaster-Carr supplied my O1 and I keep some various 18" long flats on hand in my shop as it is so easy to work with and useful for so many little things. One of the things that I will make at the end of this build is a small flat nipple wrench/ turnscrew for pouch or patch box.
Let me know if you make some of these, they are only used for setting in, but they do excel at that.
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Now that the lock plate is ready we can start inletting it. The bolster goes in first. I put in a powder drum, extend the line of the top of the forestock with a pencil, lightly stain the bottom of the bolster, bump the plate against the powder drum, align the top of the plate with the line of the top of the forestock and give the plate a rap with a mallet to get a good transfer. Removing wood from the bolster mortise (after removing the powder drum) goes fairly quickly as the final depth is set by the side of the barrel. Note the cotton in the tapped hole keeping wood chips out of the barrel. Pretty obviously, when you get to the point of cutting through the wood to the metal of the barrel it is a good idea to have an "abuse" chisel to spare your good tools. This can be a cheap chisel or even just a sharpened piece of steel; I have a bunch of salvaged steel leaf rake tines that are handy for such tools.
On a percussion, making the plate support the drum makes the impact of the falling hammer transfer into the plate, reducing stress on the drum. I have read that some people install the plate first and then locate the drum from it. My plan is to locate the plate mortise from the drum. You can see from the clamps in the picture that I went to some bother to pull the plate against the drum. Also, the barrel is pinned in place, but the tang screws are not in yet; when the tang screws are tightened, they will help pull the barrel and drum down onto the plate.
I outlined the plate onto the stock with a knife and in some places an inletting chisel. I remove the plate an set in (deepen) the line with inletting chisels. Now I start removing waste from the mortise.
(https://i.ibb.co/VScyx6H/DSCN0361.jpg) (https://ibb.co/zRTcFd8)
(https://i.ibb.co/Z8LNv37/DSCN0344.jpg) (https://ibb.co/MV29KbQ)
(https://i.ibb.co/tzFZ042/DSCN0356.jpg) (https://ibb.co/m0gvnGy)
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Someone put the effort into teaching me much of this; I have tried to grow from those basics and consider it a privilege to pass this on to someone and hopefully, they in turn will share with someone else.
On to building! With our bolster inlet and the plate traced, we concentrate on getting the stripped plate let in to depth. We roughly lower the bottom with a small bent gouge and carefully work around the out line with small very sharp chisels and in certain parts of the work, small scrapers. I will post some tips on making small scrapers and considerations in sharpening them in a separate entry, but will mention now that scrapping mortise bottoms can be done nicely by holding a chisel low on the blade at 90 degrees to the wood and pulling it along the wood. It is best if the chisel is very sharp.
Some things to note. The plate can get very tight in the inlet, at first there is space under the bolster for some gentle prying, but later I fit a little hardwood dowel to the tumbler hole to help lift it out. There is no problem removing some wood under this hole as the tumbler and bridle are going to require wood removal from this area.
If we want to remove some of the tightness from the mortise, we can do this slowly by scraping the sides of the mortise, but we should be more aggressive on the top (powder drum side) of the mortise and less aggressive on the bottom. this will help keep the plate snug against the drum.
With some careful measuring and simple math, we can determine how deep the mortise should be from the nice flat side of our stock. Then we can set our depth gage/scraper to that depth and check our work. If you look, you can see witness marks made by this tool. I can remove material until the marks start disappearing, mark again, remove wood again until full depth is reached.
(https://i.ibb.co/3C9M2pB/DSCN0397.jpg) (https://ibb.co/LZXJmxn)
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Now that the bare plate is let in, we start adding parts to the plate and staining and inletting them. We start with the "shorter" parts like the sear spring, then the tumbler, then the bridle, then the sear, and finally the mainspring.
I inletted the lock "stationary", at halfcock without the hammer, then inletted the triggers, then went back and finished the "dynamic" lock inlet with the hammer and moving through fullcock to full down. It surely doesn't have to be done this way, but it seemed pretty handy. During most of the dynamic inletting the triggers were not installed, a small dowel being used to push the sear.
I wanted to show how pencil marks are used to help define the edges of the relief cuts. I also used my crank drill (every body calls them "egg beaters") and a 1/4" brad point bit to deepen the sear hole, the tumbler axis, and quite handily the front end of the mainspring mortise. These crank drills can generally be had for $5/$10 at flea markets. The fact that they can go faster or very slow under complete and immediate control makes the a great tool for our work. A lot of my countersinking is done with a crank drill. The sear hole, by the way, ends up being square by the use of a 1/4" bench chisel. I think the square hole is easier to check for interference and works well with the trigger mortise.
One thing that I wanted to say, but don't want taken the wrong way is that because this is a heavy stock with plenty of wood (because of the 1" barrel) I feel that I can be a little bit more liberal in in my reliefs for the moving parts of the lock and triggers. I am not suggesting sloppy work. This is a competition gun and interferences with the moving parts can't be tolerated. Also all the mortising terminates in radius-es, we will leave no pointy terminations, that is we leave nothing that might easily generate a splinter to baffle us at the big shoot.
I threw in a picture of the benchtop and tools at the time of inletting.
Next we will locate the triggers.
(https://i.ibb.co/0QHdCBH/DSCN0410.jpg) (https://ibb.co/JCDMvxD)
(https://i.ibb.co/b7sL1Cx/DSCN0413.jpg) (https://ibb.co/M9cpntb)
(https://i.ibb.co/MhH23kj/DSCN0419.jpg) (https://ibb.co/JdTBMjb)
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I think you are looking at the old Sargent handled scraper. This has a four position blade, though I currently sharpen only one edge. I sharpen this like a chisel, not like a cabinet scraper. though it could be done that way.
The angle of the blade to the handle can be adjusted. Hopefully the disassembled picture makes the ball joint understandable.
I have never used this on gun work, my intent was for furniture work. Although one can use a tool on anything one pleases, I believe that the most common use of this type of scraper was scraping the tops of butcher's blocks.
This tool is vintage, but Lee Valley sells a similar new tool.
(https://i.ibb.co/qkx0WfM/DSCN0482.jpg) (https://ibb.co/3BkfMqy)
(https://i.ibb.co/zmQhJvK/DSCN0485.jpg) (https://ibb.co/wdBNsmD)
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The triggers are located by the sear. I am using a set of Davis #6, which are double lever and the adjustment screw marks the center of the two levers very well.
I did a rough outline of the trigger plate on the bottom of the stock and then within this outline cut a narrow mortise down into the sear mortise. Then I could install the lock, see exactly where the sear was and mark a line with a pencil.
After this I calculated the distance from the edge of the stock to the edge of the plate, set a marking gauge and scribed a line a little shorter than the length of the plate and started setting in. I choose this way because the plate is thicker in the middle. I could locate the second side of the plate from my scribed and relieved line, and work the middle of the plate into the stock, then carefully maintain the adjustment screw hole on line with the sear line as I let the rest of the plate in. During part of this work I found it handy to clamp a stop onto the stock to easily maintain positioning.
From there it is just like the lockplate, plate to depth then add a part and inlet for it. Finally when all of the trigger is inlet, set and trip the well stained triggers and look carefully for interferences. After this try them with the lock to assure ourselves that we have a functioning system.
(https://i.ibb.co/nDLBSdj/DSCN0463.jpg) (https://ibb.co/gDRdCqJ)
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tumblr om (https://imgbb.com/)
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I forgot to show you the secret trigger plate removal system, which is very handy to use as the plate gets deeper in the mortise.
(https://i.ibb.co/PWN66Dw/DSCN0515.jpg) (https://ibb.co/wQRzzcM)
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I want to show these pictures related to triggers. The trigger plate did not quite match the curve of my wrist, so I decided to tweak it a little. First I put the back portion in a wood vise and closed the vise a couple of times, making no discernable change in the plate. Then I put part of it upright in a wood vise and tapped it with a Lixie mallet. No change. Tap a little harder. No change. Tap a little harder yet and I got the "change" you see in the photograph. Surprisingly, I chuckled about it (not always the case with me).
Although the plate looks machined from barstock, it is an investment casting which "can be adjusted slightly", so I guess I adjusted it slightly too much.
If you order the replacement plate, you get the raw casting shown, which I will work on some other winter. I ended up just getting another set of triggers. I improved the fit by shortening the plate from the back and will have to do some minor blending of wood and steel.
(https://i.ibb.co/1LXzZkH/DSCN0520.jpg) (https://ibb.co/47S1WHB)
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From your pictures it seems there is a shrinkage voide on the casting. This coincides with the gate location and based on the part geometry, it is likely the last area to solidify. This is where shrinkage voids often occur. Bottom line is that your original part and the replacement with this condition should have never been supplied.
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You make a very good observation. I went back and examined all 3 plates and tried to make a better photograph as I think the ones I showed may be somewhat misleading. There is a void there, but all of it appears by design to incorporate the wire front trigger spring used. I would prefer the old flat style spring that secures by the mainspring screw, but that isn't how this trigger set was designed.
This is the best photo I could get of the cast in pocket, what do you think?
(https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi55.tinypic.com%2Ffamsk2.jpg&hash=561a1e8949cff1d79220f68cdd35a7ece952e4b0)
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With the triggers inlet, we can move to installing the tang screws. The tang gets two screws, one into the trigger plate and the back one is a wood screw. First we are going to find the spot where the screw will come through the trigger plate. The trigger plate is going to get three screws, the tang screw,a screw to hold the front of the trigger guard on and a wood screw at the back.
We mark a line on the trigger plate just ahead of the most forward sweep of the top of the front trigger. Then we position the trigger guard (this is not a roomy trigger guard) such that the inside of the back of the bow misses the rear trigger (in set position) by about .100". I didn't notice till tonight that I placed the guard against the wrong line when I set up the photo. Please imagine the guard one line forward of where the photo shows it. So we have the front of the trigger plate divided into two areas, one for the tang screw and one for the trigger guard screw.
We transfer the two lines onto the bottom of the stock and " wrap the marks a little onto the lock side. the little circle between the two lines marks where the tang screw will come out. You can see that I have clamped a die makers square midway between the two lines to wrap the line across the top of the stock and the tang. In the last photo you can see the top of the stock and square. The latout line on the tang will get marked with a carbide scribe. The other line that you see on the top of the stock represents the location of the back of the lock bolster.
Now all we have to do is cross the scribed line with a line dividing the tang from side to side and mark the intersection with a sharp center punch and we have our location.
You might note that the square is flat rather than the more common beveled die makers square, which makes it handy for going around from one side to the next. I believe that I got this one from MSC some years ago.
I apologize again for the trigger guard being misaligned in the photo, I've taken over 500 photos by this point, so I suppose I was due.
(https://i.ibb.co/BszgGHf/DSCN0473.jpg) (https://ibb.co/kcHhJVG)
(https://i.ibb.co/TWmtN6s/DSCN0476.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Y0phVmx)
(https://i.ibb.co/D7ZTLX0/DSCN0479.jpg) (https://ibb.co/WcLjs9m)
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I deepened the punch marks with a center drill in my crank drill. I am going to drill for the tap screw by the point finds point method. I must admit that I have never used this before, but its logic is simple and elegant. The drill point is the"top" point and my "bottom" point is a center punch epoxied into a block that I can put in a drill vise. In setting up the drill, I roughly line up the drill and punch, then adjust the distance between them to about 3/8" more than the stock wrist is deep (1.900+.375=2.275). Now I align the two points precisely, Turning the drill's chisel point back and forth 90 degrees. Finally I set the depth stop so that the drill stops about 1/2" from the punch. I will drill with the tap drill first(a #21 for 10-32), so I place the center drilled tang hole on the punch and line the center drilled trigger plate hole up with the drill. I had Coach Mary supporting the barrel end and moving it small increments to achieve alignment. Then I drilled , in and out as rapidly as possible. Then I changed to the "body" drill (a #10), turned the gun tang side up and repeated the process. The results were quite good. However the need for an assistant and depending on their steadiness is a drawback, but I don't think that I could easily have managed this without a helper.
Next I moved the gun back into the clamps and tapped the trigger plate using the body hole through the tang and stock to align the tap.
As the wood screw hole does not go through the stock, I drilled it with my crank drill by hand and eye. I also used the crank drill to do the 82 degree countersinks for the screw heads. I started with a sharp countersink, but it gave me faceting chatter so bad that I hunted down my dullest countersink and it worked much smoother.
(https://i.ibb.co/tYSxGrJ/DSCN0495.jpg) (https://ibb.co/BTmrpMC)
(https://i.ibb.co/nwFPj55/DSCN0511.jpg) (https://ibb.co/NFMTKHH)
(https://i.ibb.co/sv7JTyM/DSCN0507.jpg) (https://ibb.co/hR01GDt)
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With the tang screws installed and tightened (pulling the drum tight against the lock plate), we can put the lock screw in. I layout the location for the screw on the front of the lock plate and punch it with a sharp center punch. Then I put the plate back in the stock and set it up in the drill press. You can see that I used my extension table and little jack stand to support the barrel end. Every thing gets checked with a small level. We add a set of clamps to seat the plate in its mortise and locate the center punch mark with our center drill. You can see all of the tools for this job at once in the third picture. There is a center drill, tap drill, body drill. and the tap in a tap handle. If you don't usually use center drills, I advise you to try them, they are very stiff for making the initial drilling go where you want it to, and they eliminate a lot of drill walking, especially in difficult drill operations.
So we center drill, then change to the tap drill. With the tap drill, we drill down until we drill through the tang, then we switch to the body drill and drill all the way through the stock. When the drill was getting close to breaking through I held a piece of scrap wood against the stock to prevent chip out, but as there will be a side plate, this is a not a big problem anyway.
Finally, I put the stock back in the clamps and the lock plate back in the stock and ran the tap through the stock to get perfectly aligned tapping. There are simpler ways to do this job, but this method is pretty much foolproof.
(https://i.ibb.co/tXT1jRM/DSCN0532.jpg) (https://ibb.co/5FgJpZW)
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With the lock in place, I decided to go ahead and install the nipple. I used a nipple install jig (first time) and it worked fairly well. The instructions say to draw a guide line across the end of the powder drum to align the jig, but I cut a piece of dowel the length of the nipple less threads and stuck it in the hammer face recess. Then I lowered it onto the drum, traced it with a felt tip, and later drew a cross across the traced circle and lined the jig up with this looking down the jigs drilled hole. I ground some off of the barrel side of the jig to bring it on line with the untweaked hammer and figured "The closer to the barrel and charge the better!", as long as I could wrench the nipple in and out.
Next, the drill bushing is placed in the jig's bore and we drill for the tap. We want the tip of the drill to just touch thefar side of the clean out hole. I placed a short piece of skewer in the clean out hole and when it wiggled, I knew that the drill was breaking through and I slowed down. I don't particularly care for the look of a clean out powder drum, the final judgment on chunk guns is made at the scorers bench and being able to clean the channel (I always clean my flintlocks vent) seemed like a good option.
With the hole drilled, we remove the drill bushing, place the oiled tap in the jig and tap till we bottom out. Finally we remove the jig and screw the nipple in, checking to make sure it screws in deep enough.
(https://i.ibb.co/T44GQfd/DSCN0548.jpg) (https://ibb.co/JvvTY1g)
(https://i.ibb.co/MCYbfBN/DSCN0551.jpg) (https://ibb.co/RDx1NjH)
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(https://i.ibb.co/S7Mc0sH/DSCN0556.jpg) (https://ibb.co/BKQGjzv)
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With the lock and triggers in I decided to go ahead and install the trigger guard. After a little careful bending, I lined the trigger guard up on the triggers being careful to leave enough room for the back trigger to set. I adjust the guard onto centerline by measuring the width of the tang, subtracting that from the width of the stock and dividing by two. Then I set my caliper to this distance and push the tang into place under the lightly snugged clamps. As the front and back tangs are different widths, the calculation must be done for each.
When everything is satisfactory, I tighten the clamps and mark the outline with a sharp knife. Please note that I do taper the front and back ends of the guard noticeably. From there it is inlet, stain transfer and inlet some more.
One thing about this inlet though; this is a long piece fitting into a big curve. so my work proceeds with the front tang work controlling the rest of the inlet work. As we start we are paying attention to the gap just behind the rear trigger, this determines where the front of the front tang ends up. We start the guard a little too far back and work it forward to final position. After the front tang is in final position then we can adjust the back of the back tang as the tang inlet deepens to its final depth. As all this is being done the triggers go in and out several times.
Also take note of the line with arrow heads and the one back of it; this marks the area that will receive the screw that holds the front of the trigger guard on.
The final pic does not show the finished inletting, but shows "minding the gap" as the work proceeds.
(https://i.ibb.co/mcrnDGm/DSCN0563.jpg) (https://ibb.co/HHLcFV0)
(https://i.ibb.co/HTXyDwy/DSCN0576.jpg) (https://ibb.co/1GbNfyN)
(https://i.ibb.co/ZBTg6Hc/DSCN0579.jpg) (https://ibb.co/x15gSmz)
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With the trigger guard mortised in place, we need to fasten it. The front of the guard will be screwed to trigger plate and the back will be wood screwed directly to the stock.
The first step is to remove some metal from the trigger plate or the front guard tang or both to bring them into correct depth relation to each other.
I ended up removing metal only from the trigger plate, but each build is something of an individual case. I roughed some of the metal away using an end mill in my drill press and then final fitted with files, but the whole job could be easy enough done with files only.
Once the two pieces fit nicely, the location for the front screw gets marked and punched. We will be using two drills for each screw, a tap drill and body drill. I then drilled through the guard on my drill press with the tap drill. I used the drill press because that's the way of doing things that is comfortable for me, but it could have been drilled with a hand drill while clamped in the stock. Next I clamped the guard in place over the trigger plate and drilled through both pieces with the tap drill, plus about 1/8" into the wood to give some clearance for the tip of the tap. You can see my professional metal worker's drill stop. Now we tap through both pieces till we feel the tap bump bottom. We use oil on the tap and I had to reverse the tap every 1/4 turn as my guard casting was rather hard. I used a 5-40 screw size.
Now we remove the tap, remove both pieces from the stock and rerun the tap through the trigger plate to assure that we made it all the way through.
I next took the guard back to the drill press, aligned the hole by putting the tap drill in the chuck, then switched to the body drill, drilled through, switched to the countersink and did most of the counter sinking. This is a good place to point out that countersinks are available in different angles. For Imperial screws and wood screws, the correct angle is 82 degrees included (metric screws are 100 degrees).
I put everything back in the stock and tuned the length of the number 5 screw and the depth of the countersink. i then proceeded to the wood screw. Note that I do everything on one screw and then everything on the second: there are two drills for each screw, all different, and it would be easy to pick up the wrong drill.
The wood screw proceeds in the same way, marking the back tang about midway, drilling with the "tap" drill, then enlarging the hole in the guard with the body drill and countersinking. Tighten the screws and we are done with this step!
(https://i.ibb.co/yQRKM6M/DSCN0597.jpg) (https://ibb.co/vjBfr3r)
(https://i.ibb.co/t2x8NYd/DSCN0599.jpg) (https://ibb.co/R6BzMQ5)
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We are getting ready to go back up on the bandsaw to cut the front of the forearm for the ramrod groove and saw the rough form of the buttplate into the butt. The forestock is easy to layout, we allowed .200" under the barrel and allowed .400" (large 390") for the ramrod hole, half of which is .200". So, .200+.200=.400"+1.000"(barrel)=1.400" from the top flat of the barrel or more easily .500 (1/2 of barrel)+.400=.900" from the top of the forestock wood.
The buttplate though is not so easy, at least for me. This is the place where your "Build a Muzzle Loader" book usually says "Trace the buttplate...". I do not find it easy to trace a buttplate. Maybe any early flatter buttplate would be a little easier, but a dished Southern or Hawken buttplate I find challenging. I decided to make a pattern off of the buttplate. First I glued a piece of wood, as wide as the buttplate and fitted to the area where the two parts of the plate come together, to a piece of plywood. This gave me a repeatable datum, so that I could place pieces of wood against different parts of the plate, remove the plate and pencil mark the end of wood. Bit by bit I generated a reasonable outline of the buttplate. I know that this is a bit of a bother and maybe overkill, but it felt worthwhile to me. I would be glad to hear other people's approach to this.
How far forward the pattern needs to be on the stock is determined by ones pull. I am a short man and consider pull length as critical to my shooting; too long and the gun becomes hard to control. I made a simple tool to mark the pull accurately. My tool is 13.250" and that represents the finished pull length, I make a mark on the stock with the tool and slide the pattern forward until I can just start to see some of the pull mark (the curves are in opposite directions). Since the pattern represents the inside of the buttplate and the buttplate is about 5/16" thick, this will give me about 5/16" of material to remove during fitting. That's probably a little much, but it easier to remove wood than add it, and I've got plenty of rasps and scrapers.
When the fitting starts the pull tool will be used reversed, with the wooden peg "hung" on the buttplate and fitting continuing until the pencil point lines up with the front of the trigger.
(https://i.ibb.co/qp4VLCG/DSCN0614.jpg) (https://ibb.co/KWQScDZ)
(https://i.ibb.co/X87v4dM/DSCN0622.jpg) (https://ibb.co/3zpLs8Q)
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I got somewhat obsessed with the buttplate outline and relayed out the outline of the entire buttplate on paper, starting by laying out lines and points taken from caliper measurements and end with tracing the inside and out side curves with a carpenters pencil that I modified into a better tracing pencil. I think the paper pattern is better. it verified that the wooden pattern was OK, but by being able to trace the entire butt plate in its final location (the blue ink lines) I could draw my cutting allowance lines (the red ink lines) much closer to the finish surface.
With that, it is put the auxiliary table on the band saw, check the blade for square, and carefully cut the forearm and butt. This of course is done with the barrel out.
In the final picture you can see that it is beginning to look like a rifle.
(https://i.ibb.co/f4t04vz/DSCN0628.jpg) (https://ibb.co/5BvcBFg)
(https://i.ibb.co/n1t7HpX/DSCN0632.jpg) (https://ibb.co/s1zK07T)
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(https://i.ibb.co/HYNZ57X/DSCN0636.jpg) (https://ibb.co/rMb9Dkv)
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With the band sawing done, I want to square up the front of the grip rail where the ramrod hole is going to go. I start by squaring my layout line around the stock with a small try square. (Aside: They are called try squares, not tri-squres, because they try the "truth" of an angle. This makes them symbolic of honesty, as in "square dealing".)
I am going to do my trimming with that colonial workbench favorite, the Japanese back saw, but keep an English back saw at hand in case the HC Police break in.
One little trick, to get best control over starting the back saw cuts (one from each side that meet in the middle), I make a couple of small nicks with a bench knife or chisel. After that it is just proceed carefully bring all the kerfs together, stopping an checking progress as is prudent.
This area will be more precisely squared before the ramrod hole is drilled in order to promote the drill running true.
By the way, my squaring line is 12" ahead of the barrel end, which is the maximum length that I will make it, regardless of how long the barrel is.
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The forearm entry is squared up, but when I sawed, I sawed outside the line. Now I am going to remove wood to the line. To do this, I move the auxiliary table to the belt sander, put on a 120 grit belt and gradually sand to the line. As I have parallel sides and caredully squared the table to the sanding belt support, I only use the one layout line on one side. If I were going to do this job with rasps, files, and scrapers, then I would want a layout line on each side of the stock.
After the belt sander work is done, I give the surface a light sanding with a long flat homemade sanding block to flatten any unevenness. A long flat block like this is handy to bring flatness or straightness lots of places. Before using the block, I made a quick squiggle down the surface with a soft pencil, which disappears rapidly from the highspots and thereby shows the lower spots.
At this point, I am anxious to do ramrod work, but rough cutting for the butt plate has left the toe of the stock as a more fragile area, so I will fit the butt plate next.
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I wish that I could tell you a simple trick to installing a butt plate, but roughing the shape with a saw, then fitting up slowly by strain transfer using chisels, rasps and scrapers is the only way that I know. The one trick that I do know is that if you notice yourself reaching for a much more aggressive tool with clenched teeth, it is coffee break time!
When the stock was planed to thickness, I set a marking gage to centerline (.800") and it is left set until the project is done. I used the gage to remark the line and darkened it with a pencil to help guide the work. This line will be remarked multiple times, because our fitting up will remove it. Then I place the butt plate in location as close as possible, trace it, then look to make sure that every thing looks right. Taking time to look as you go, that the top of the butt plate lines up with the top of the comb, and that the toe stays centered on the centerline is as important as taking material off.
The tools are just chisels, rasps, and scrapers; maybe a sanding block at the end.
One thing that is important is to get the stock positioned such that you can best see what you are doing and have good control of your tools. I show the stock set on an angle with the end of the stock (it still has extra wood on the end) touching the floor, but for some parts of the work, I may move it back into horizontal.
The plate is moving down and forward all at the same time, but I think that at the beginning of the fitting getting the plate down to where it is even, or just a smidge below the comb top predominates. As the fitting gets closer and closer, the tools get less aggressive, with the rasps going back into the tool rack and even the scraper being used with a lighter touch.
The last picture is of my router, it is just an old Stanley and except for flattening and edge polishing, it is just like it left the factory. It is not being used to fit the butt plate, but I put the picture in because Don expressed an interest in it.
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I wonder how many have the same thoughts as I do when fitting a butt plate. When I first put it up to the rough sawn shape, I think "This looks like a train wreck!" Then after I have scraped and fitted for a while, I look at it and think "This looks like a train wreck!" Then at some point it seems to fit up pretty good, seemingly all at once and I think "How did that happen?" But thankfully it did.
So we are fitted up and I wanted to show you a handy tool. This is the Light Pressure Contour Conforming Clamp System, also know as elastic material. I used to use surgical tubing as a clamp, but find this flat band generally preferable. This comes from the fabric store. The sewing store and the craft store have a wealth of things to offer the builder and chunk shooter, although they are often mislabeled. For instance the rotary doughnut circle spotter cutters may be labeled as "quilt circle cutters", etcetera.
So anyway the band clamp will be more important when we drill the holes, but keeps things steady while we layout and mark the hole locations. I did this by eye, but if you are new to building, be warned not to put the bottom screw too far down.
After making them, they are punched with a sharp center punch and a light hammer. From the last picture you can tell how enthusiastic I am about the "retractable" Sharpie over the old Sharpie.
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First screws and tools. The top of the butt plate is getting #10 screws and the bottom a #8. Each of the screws has a pilot drill and a relief or body drill. I like a center drill to start the hole off of the punch mark, but a lot of people would skip this tool. And finally there is an 82 degree countersink.
For the bottom hole I cut a piece of scrap pine and did it in the drill press. I know that this is over the top fussy for a lot of folks, but it was what felt comfortable to me and added about 3 minutes to my build. All the other work was done by hand and eye with the butt plate on the stock and using a cheap variable speed corded drill. This is where the butt plate bra earns its keep. I did the bottom hole first and then ran a screw in it for added stability while I did the two top holes. Drill the pilot holes to full depth and then drill the body hole through just the steel, that's simple, but pay attention to which drill you are using where as the pilots are only .015" different. after the holes are drilled, run screws in all of them and check your work.
Next, pull one of the screws and start countersinking. Remove some material and check with a screw. At first, you can check with the screw held backwards, but as you get closer, you will have to run the screw in and see how it is fitting up. Once one part of the screw head gets level with the surface, you stop and will blend the part of the screw head that is still sticking out with a file to form a smooth surface. I don't do this yet, because likely as not I will put fresh screws in the holes late in the build.
I think that I mentioned before that I use a mix of bee's wax and lemon oil as a thread lubricant. I actually coat the inside of the hole using a skewer to distribute the lubricant. It is amazing how much easier this makes the screws go.
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tumblr image hosting (https://imgbb.com/)
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With the butt plate screwed on, I can move to providing the groove and hole for the ramrod. To me this is one of the most exciting parts of a build, as in "Hold your breath!"
I am going to use my scraper plane to cut the groove. Before having the scraper plane, I would lay out the centerline plainly, deepen it with a small veiner, enlarge this with a small gouge, enlarge this with a larger gouge, then straighten and tune the groove with a round file and a dowel wrapped in sand paper. I'm not really sure that the scraper is less work or any faster, but it does control depth and consistency of depth very well.
You will notice that I am working from the back, because the lock side is our datum for the centerline of the scraper. I could obviously have turned the stock in the opposite direction in the clamps and worked from the front, but this seems comfortable.
When I made the blade, I made the cutting section the same width as the diameter of my drill bit. I also took some pains to grind it on center with the main part of the blade; that is important so that the blade may be turned one direction or the other or both in the plane for dealing with the direction of grain runout.
In use the scraper requires some patience(Like there's something I'd rather be doing.) as it works best with small adjustments of the blade downwards. I use my caliper to adjust it 1/64"( about .015") at a time, and will probably go to .005" adjustments at the very end.
The end of the groove going into the stock has to be extended using a gouge first and will be tuned with a special round chisel that I will picture in my next post.
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On the scraper blade above: One side is flat, the other the other is sharpened at about 20 degrees included, so that it is sharp enough to cut in both directions and is kept sharp by polishing the flat face.
With the ramrod channel scraped to depth or near depth, we tune the channel with the tools shown: a round chisel, a round file with a bend for a handle, and a dowel and sandpaper. The round chisel is just a piece of steel about .400" diameter from the junk bin with one end sharpened. I sharpened it to 30 degrees, so it would cut/scrape, but not too aggressively. In use, you hold it down with your thumb and tap it along the groove, rotating it on different passes. This tool is only used in the 1.5" in front of the grip rail where the scraper won't reach, and only used after a small gouge has done most of the work.
The use of the round file and sandpaper wrapped dowel are pretty self explanatory. I will point out that that by cutting the sandpaper extra wide it provides its self with a handle by which to drive it back and forth.
If you want to know how much web you have left, you measure from the barrel top, over a rod, then subtract the barrel and rod from the overall measurement. In this case, it is 1.000+.400" subtracted from 1.600" equals .200" web.
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There is one last important small task, before we start drilling the ramrod hole. We need to square the face that the drill will cut into so that we start as straight as possible.
I squared by staining the back side of a combination square blade, making a stain transfer, and scraping away the high places, until I got a nice uniform contact.
Another way to do it would be to square the end of a 13/32(.406)" rod or drill and using that end in the groove to stain transfer.
Now we are ready to get that drill going.
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I used two drills, a new 48" drill with a gun drill point for most of the hole, and when it ran out of travel I replaced it with my old 54" twist drill. This is my first time using a gun drill point and I'm not certain yet what I think about it. The hole went perfectly straight, but the drill had to to be pushed harder than I expected before it would cut. Maybe I'll try to polish that cutting edge.
A funny thing that went a little wrong was that before I bought the new gun drill, I had bought a 48" brad point drill. I bought it thinking "a 3/8" ranrod drill of 13/32"", well when I got ready to use it I discovered it was a true .375"! I checked the web site from which I had ordered it and it was described clearly as a 3/8" drill. Oh well, should be just the ticket for a tapered ramrod on some other project.
The drill is guided by blocks drilled 13/32" and then split and sanded smooth. The tricky part is getting the tension on the blocks right, firm, but not too tight. A couple of rubber bands on each one turned out to be good. By the way a bag of strong rubber bands from the office supply is a normal supply in my shop, it is surprising how often they come in handy.
I turned the drill with an old cheap 3/8" drill motor. I like this motor, because it turns the drill fast enough and it doesn't weigh much. I start the motor and begin bumping the drill against the stock. The first 1/16" of the hole going straight is the most crucial and it probably took me 20 minutes to get the drill in that deep. After that I drill in increments of about 1/4", stop and clean the wood chips off of everything.
As the drill gets deeper I use a piece of tubing from the hardware store to blow chips out of the hole. As the drill gets deep I check the stock, feeling for heat and looking in the lock mortise for break through. Thankfully the drill did not break into the lock mortise. My Plan if it had was to force it side ways with a piece of steel clamped against it. I placed a piece of skewer in the tang to trigger plate hole hole (I call this a "wiggler"), and when it wiggled I stopped. My hole goes 49 " deep from the end of the barrel and ran perfectly straight as near as I can tell. What a relief! This is the part that I worry about most. Its all fun from here on out.
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The ramrod groove and hole are finished, now the ramrod pipes can go on. One in the front, one in the back, one half way in between.
I am going to do the front pipe first and I made a layout of the front of the forearm, because multiple things are going on there besides just the pipe. A muzzle cap will go on, the front of the ramrod groove will stop somewhere, the pipe will be located, and this gun will have a cant block area left. You will notice that the cant block is only drawn in in pencil, as it may be tweaked some on the fly as we conture the stock.
This "block" will simply be an area where the bottom is left square: the bottom of the sides will be left straight, but the top of the sides will conture to the barrel flats just like the rest of the forearm. This was done this way on some old chunk guns and some respected chunk guns didn't bother with this at all. The Jake Keedy gun for example has no built in provision for a cant bar, whether any separate cant bar ever got "bolted" to it I can't say. I think an 1-1/2" flat will be sufficient, but if not, then we can always give it a prosthesis.
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The next step is to transfer the layout onto the stock itself with a pencil and a square.
The tools for fitting the pipes are shown in the next photo. The large store bought scraper is ground to approximately the same size as the outside of the pipe. The smaller scraper fine tunes small areas. The small chisel is home made from music wire.
I start by inletting the pipe upside down till the inside is flush with the groove in the stock. Then I cut a groove for the tab and start final fitting the pipe, which is mainly trimming the tab until the pipe fits flush.
We will do the entry pipe next, but it will be done slightly differently.
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The entry pipe is not a tailed entry pipe, but just a pipe like the other two, however so that there is no gap at all, we are going to drive the pipe back into the ramrod hole 1/16".
To do this, I made a simple tool, which is an extra pipe that has been shortened 1/16", had one end sharpened on the inside, and has had some of the tab removed.
First we inlet the "tool" just like a regular pipe, butted up against the ram rod hole. This will put the front of the mortise in the right place.
Once we have the tool inletted, we start tapping it straight back into the ramrod hole. We drive it back a little, then remove it and clean the wood that it is curling. We may do this 3 or 4 times to get the depth we want. There are several ways to detach the curled wood that is being created. We can slide a drill bit back and forth, using the edges of the flute. We can get at some of it with a curved blade knife. A scraper made to cut on its sides is very good for this.
Finally we install the real pipe, look it over and then check its function with a ramrod.
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The middle pipe is easy, we just measure the distance between the front and entry pipes, subtract the length of the middle pipe, divide by two, and mark that distance from the two pipes already installed, mark lines, and inlet just as we did the front pipe.
With all three pipes inlet, we can mark locations for pins. We square a line from the front of each pipe around to the side. Then we mark a line 3/4"(.750) back from this. 3/4" in this case, because the pipe is 1-1/2" long. We put a mark on this line (I use a circle) so that we know this is a drill location. Marking designations like this on your lines is a good habit to get into as you will find out the first time you drill a hole on that "other" line.
These lines locate the hole locations along the length of the barrel, but not in relation to the top or bottom flat of the barrel. I'm going to talk a little extra about this, because of the interesting topic on pinning that has been up. The pin holes for my barrel lugs and the pin holes for mt pipes are not at the same distance from the bottom of the barrel.
I want the lug pins as high as possible, and since the lugs that I use don't have side tabs, I can take advantage of the depth of the dovetail, so that the drill would rub against the barrel bottom if the dovetail wasn't there. I am using all 5/64"(.078) pins so the drill's center is .039" below the bottom of the barrel.
For the pipe tabs, I want the pin to go through the middle of the web. My web is .200" thick, so the drill point is .100 below the bottom of the barrel.
I drill my pin holes in a drill press. By placing the top of the barrel against the non moveable jaw, we control where the bottom of the barrel is all the time, even with or without the stock. But how do we accurately locate .100" below the bottom of the barrel?
One way to do it is to take the barrel (or in my case a piece of 1" barrel), tightening it in the vise with the bottom flat blackened (thank you Sharpie) and putting a Number 7 drill (.201") in the chuck. We adjust the vise until the .201" drill rubs, and then we know that the axis of the chuck is very close to .100" from the bottom flat.
We switch the .201" drill for a 5/64" drill, align our marked layout lines with the drill point and drill with confidence.
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My next step is the toe plate. Even with a good pattern, the bottom of the stock is a hair over a1/16" below the bottom of the butt plate. I want a nice straight bottom to the stock, so i must adjust a little.
To draw a guide line, I find the point where the straight part meets the curve, square a line across the stock and clamp a block on. next I measure the distance from the bottom edge of the butt plate to the edge of the stock (.070") and mark this distance on the side of the stock. I put one end of a straight edge against the block and the other edge against the mark. I mark along the edge of the straight edge with a scribe and then darken it with a pencil.
Next we turn the stock over and repeat the process on the other side. Now a little time with a smooth rasp and we have a straight underside that blends into the curve of the wrist and aligns with the bottom of the butt plate, ready for the toe plate.
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The bottom of the stock has been rasped to bring it even with the bottom of the buttplate.
I measured the buttplate at the toe and then cut a strip of steel about .100" wider than this and 8" long. I slid this 8" piece around on the stock till I decided that 5" looked good to me and trimmed it to that. The steel is .070" thick, this might be a little heavy for some, but I wanted the plate to give good support and I do not like the butt plate and toe plate riveted together.
The way that I have done toe plates in the past, and how I had planned to do this one was was to rough chamfer the wood down to outside the final bottom lines and then mark the thickness of the plate, and rasp down to that. I ended up not doing it that way as you will see, but that is why I next marked rough guide lines for the bottom of the stock. The final lines will be laid out from the back tang of the trigger guard, but here I just bumped a flexible straight edge against the front tang as it is wider, lined the other end up with the outside of the butt plate and drew a line. This worked pretty well. The clamp wasn't used, it is just for taking the picture. It is sure handy to have flexable straight edges.
After I drew these lines and was laying the plate on the stock to see how everything looked, the thought hit me, " You could just inlet this."
The way I usually do it requires care to end up flat and square, but by inletting I had the bottom of the stock to control the bottom of the mortise from. I drew a line around the plate a little shy of the full 5" so that I could tune the length towards the end of the work. Then with a small gouge and mallet I removed most of the waste. No, I wasn't overly careful about the sides of the mortise.
Once I had the mortise roughed out (here is what some of you have been waiting for), I set my router and and flattened the bottom of the mortise square with and parallel to the bottom of the stock. This is the first tine that I have used my router on a gun build, but for this spot it was just the thing.
After routing I tuned the length of the mortise with a chisel and filed the end of the plate to match up against the butt plate.
I would like to hear if anyone has done this the same way. It seemed to work well for me.
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famous poems about mothers love (https://poetandpoem.com/mother)
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Finishing out the toe plate assembly is straight forward. I paint some felt tip ink on, mark the centerline of the stock, then eyeball the locations of the front and back screws (not too far back on the back one as the wood gets thin rapidly) and mark the middle location halfway between.
I am using #6 screws, so after center punching them, I drill them on the drill press with a 7/65 (.1094) pilot drill. I then place the plate back in its mortise and use the holes to guide a 7/64" drill in my old eggbeater drill.
Back to the drill press to drill the screw shank holes, 9/64" (.1406) and countersink with an 82 degree countersink. After this the plate gets re flattened with sandpaper laid on on a marble tile.
Shorten the back screw a tad, wax the threads and screw everything down. They actually look better than the picture does, but they are still proud and will get tuned when the toe plate is narrowed with a file.
There are only four more pieces to go on the gun (ramrod doesn't count): the side plate, which will be the only decorative element, the nosecap, the front sight, and the back sight. The side plate and nosecap will go on after most of the contouring and the sights will go on last.
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okieboy , where did you find that nifty little plane for doing toe mortice ? That is cool !
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FG1, the little plane is a Stanley # 271 router. Some people call them "hand" routers since they don't have a motor. Stanley no longer produces these, but they are not to hard to find on eBay or at the flea market. Lee Valley/Veritas makes a version of this that is probably nicer, but also more expensive. These cut more like a shave than a plane.
The last photo shows how to set the depth by setting the router on your piece and letting the blade fall to a flat surface and then tightening the screw. Do use a screwdriver in the screw slot if you want your adjustment to stay in place.
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We are getting ready to conture, so drawing a few guide lines is in order. A fun one to start with is the cheek piece. There is real variety to original cheek pieces, I like the longer ones myself. So, after meditating on the Golden Mean I sketch it in. What you see in the picture is the final result after sketching, viewing, erasing, and sketching again.
I draw a line for a 1/8" lock panel and then extend it front and back to 1/4" by eye. An easy way to drew an even line from a mortise is to use a pencil compass, hanging the pivot pin in the mortise.
I crosshatch the area at the front of the forearm where the bottom will be left for a cant bar.
I mark 1/8" from the barrel on forearm. A piece of 1/8" keystock from the hardware store is handy for this.
Finally, I mark the taper of the comb from the width of the front of the butt plate down to little of nothing at the wrist.
These are just guide lines, as the work proceeds every thing will be refined and re refined.
This is probably my last post till I get back from the York, hope to see some of you there.
(https://i.ibb.co/KwtsrWL/DSCN0903.jpg) (https://ibb.co/QdWHKMC)
(https://i.ibb.co/bbxdQkW/DSCN0905.jpg) (https://ibb.co/GHXPnqx)
(https://i.ibb.co/MsCpzwm/DSCN0908.jpg) (https://ibb.co/f2xt36s)
(https://i.ibb.co/p3sKW8d/DSCN0910.jpg) (https://ibb.co/fCKN85H)
(https://i.ibb.co/hXf88PW/DSCN0913.jpg) (https://ibb.co/YDZjjzk)
(https://i.ibb.co/VBmMpyJ/DSCN0915.jpg) (https://ibb.co/q15mFG7)
(https://i.ibb.co/74YmJ2J/DSCN0919.jpg) (https://ibb.co/2Nn47g7)
(https://i.ibb.co/kDBmGV9/DSCN1046.jpg) (https://ibb.co/dpMmfsL)
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Just got back from Tennessee last night, had a great time at the York.
Will get a new post together soon. I got asked at the York whether my gun was done and I was making installments with the posts, but no each picture is up to date. I had multiple people at the shoot express interest in my tripod, so I will post about it at some point.
(https://i.ibb.co/GQf6Mwt/DSCN0922.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Qv7gHBC)
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Contouring is considerably harder to "explain" to someone, because it is mostly hand and eye and at the end of it a lot of the judging is through finger tip feel, but I will try to make it as unmysterious as possible. Please ask questions if I am not being clear enough.
I think of contouring as similar to peeling an onion layer by layer to get to the size and shape that you want. The first layers are rough and thick, but each proceeding layer gets smoother and thinner. This is where handling originals is really helpful, but as an alternate, I will show how to draw cross-sections to help guide our work. First though, we will just start removing some of the waste wood.
I have started by using gouges to start following the guide lines that I drew earlier. You can see that there are various sizes of gouges and so different sizes of mallets to drive them. The mallets are all homemade because I like square or rectangular mallets and I can vary the size to my tastes. Note that I am not cutting on the guide line, but cutting up to it.
(https://i.ibb.co/1spb5RQ/DSCN1043.jpg) (https://ibb.co/z8LNYPx)
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I am continuing to roughly remove material on the lock side of the gun. It has been somewhat difficult to take photos that show the work as clearly as I would like as the flash removes all shadow, but I think you can see that I am gouging out the area where the comb will join the wrist. I am rasping away the butt in a roughly curved surface. And, I am rasping the side of the forearm down to 1/8" from the side of the barrel.
Guns built specifically for chunk shooting generally carry a little more wood than their Pennsylvania cousins, more like a plains rifle. Sometimes they are considerably thicker especially the ones with a diamond character to their cross section. If you were to examine "Old Scaley", you would find that the fore stock is about 1/4" to the side beyond the barrel; that is, with a 1-1/8" barrel, the fore stock is close to 1-5/8" thick.
I am using a Sureform for a lot of the rasping and switching to my old and beloved pattern rasp as I want to smooth out a little. This is the first time that I have used a Sureform and I like it. It removes wood rapidly, but not too rapidly and leaves a better surface than my coarse aggressive rasps.
You will also notice that the stock is getting repositioned a lot to get the right angles to work on different areas.
(https://i.ibb.co/4gHXkCK/DSCN1048.jpg) (https://ibb.co/jZSQtqb)
(https://i.ibb.co/zQ8CKS5/DSCN1053.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Xjy6mz4)
(https://i.ibb.co/vsRNKCL/DSCN1055.jpg) (https://ibb.co/LQHT2D9)
(https://i.ibb.co/RTzpp2S/DSCN1063.jpg) (https://ibb.co/yFWnn0R)
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Now that we have some of the wood off of the right (lock) side, we are going to rough some wood off the left side,
I had already drawn a check piece in freehand, but I want to mark the rough outline of the panel, to keep our initial roughing back from it.
We will do this by transferring a rubbing. First we get apiece of card stock and a punch set that was made for leather working, but is generally handy. We choose the smallest punch that will slip over our lock screw and punch a hole. Then we usethe screw to position the paper over our roughly defined lock panel. Yes, I clamped it, it moves around a lot less that way. I rubbed the paper with my fingertips (slightly dirty) to start some rub marks and then darkened and sharpened these by rubbing with a carpenter pencil.
We then lay the paper on our cutting mat, improve the lines with a sharp pencil, and then make a series of cuts through the paper with an Exacto knife.
We position the paper on the left side using the lock screw and the clamps, and transfer through the cuts with a sharp pencil. You may be able to see in the last photo that I was careful to color outside the lines this time.
When the lock panel is finished, we will repeat this process.
(https://i.ibb.co/tbrS19z/DSCN1071.jpg) (https://ibb.co/NLBXGMr)
(https://i.ibb.co/7VqLsmb/DSCN1074.jpg) (https://ibb.co/HYj358X)
(https://i.ibb.co/kyrwcf9/DSCN1077.jpg) (https://ibb.co/0XW6JSF)
(https://i.ibb.co/dBfKQ9L/DSCN1084.jpg) (https://ibb.co/sjg3FS6)
(https://i.ibb.co/k98khRM/DSCN1085.jpg) (https://ibb.co/X3sNzhV)
(https://i.ibb.co/yFqcfFF/DSCN1082.jpg) (https://ibb.co/SwB4sww)
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We are taking rough wood off the left side of the stock. Lets look at the forestock first, because it is straight forward and I want to show you a minor trick.
We have guide lines on the top and bottom of the stock to help us get to 1.250" total thickness. As we rasp this wood off it is difficult to keep square, so we work a little out of square till we get down to the line on top. Next we reposition the stock to work from the bottom side. At this point we draw a line along the top edge from lock to muzzle with a soft dull pencil. As we rasp from the bottom, we try to not cut this pencil line.
After we have rasped down to the line on the bottom of the stock, we try to remove any crowning by "aiming" our rasp flat at the area halfway between top and bottom. When the rasp starts leaving teeth marks in the limiting line that we drew, we stop and call it good.
Now this won't be "perfect", but it will be what Lee Good used to call "Close enough for folk music."
Square as it is the forearm is starting to remind one of a gunstock. I also am posting a picture to show that even though I like an organized benchtop, it does get covered in chips and dust during the work.
(https://i.ibb.co/dKFPHRv/DSCN1059.jpg) (https://ibb.co/ZT5Bb0r)
(https://i.ibb.co/s10NpR5/DSCN1101.jpg) (https://ibb.co/dpdVsMb)
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We continue removing wood from the areas outside of the cheek piece. The first picture shows removing wood by making a series of cuts side by side with carving gouge that is about 3/8" wide, but has only a slight curvature to it. This shows up well here, but will be more important in trickier areas as we get closer to finishing, because it gives good sculptural control.
The next picture is just of chips and coarse rasp dust to show that this is rough, fairly rapid work.
As we are getting closer to our belly guide lines, we take the time to file the toe plate at the point that it meets the butt plate until the file shines the butt plate. We then redraw our belly guide lines more accurately than they were before. First we draw with the toe plate on, using a carbide scribe for the steel toe plate, then we pull the toe plate off and pencil the lines on the wood. We use a flexible rule or straightedge to draw the lines, with the front of the lines connecting to marks about .100" outside of the trigger guard's back mortise. They are more evenly spaced than it looks in the photo.
(https://i.ibb.co/ZYtbYZP/DSCN1094.jpg) (https://ibb.co/GtBrthL)
(https://i.ibb.co/Y8MnfCP/DSCN1115.jpg) (https://ibb.co/DkycwJz)
(https://i.ibb.co/hDB9gnx/DSCN1114.jpg) (https://ibb.co/syKRgDp)
(https://i.ibb.co/kMz9WDr/DSCN1122.jpg) (https://ibb.co/b7Y28vy)
(https://i.ibb.co/xqs4tbc/DSCN1148.jpg) (https://ibb.co/3msJ9b8)
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This is a good time to discuss drawing cross sections. I will start with the grip portion of the forearm, but the process for other areas is very similar.
We start by laying out in the square what is already there. The dimensions were determined in our original plan. I took a short cut by tracing the octagon from a spare piece of barrel. Pretty obviously, our profile has to fit inside of this layout, but that still leaves room for lots of possibilities. A main resource for me is a group of 11 rifle drawings of southern rifles. These are Southern Originals 1 (5 prints), Southern Originals 2 (5 prints) and the Hershel House Foxfire Rifle (not an original, but I like it and it has seven cross sections). These are available from the Log Cabin Shop. I refer to them repetitively; it is nice to have one drawing, but with several you can compare different ways of doing the same feature. For chunk gun fans Originals 1 has a drawing of the best known old chunk gun, Old Scaley.
In keeping with the spirit of this project, the cross sections are going to be kept towards the plain and simple. We are going to generate the curves with drafting templates, so even the drawing impaired should have no trouble. The first curve is a goodly(1/16" radius) radius to the side of the barrel. We do not want the wood tapered to a thin point on a chunk gun as this area provides the base for our shader. I actually thought about leaving a flat at the top of the stock, but decided that was just going overboard.
One of the things that I notice about longrifle contures is that there are few true radii, but many of the curves seem to be segments of ellipses. An ellipse is a curved line in which every point is equally the sum of the distances from two points. The common method for schoolboys and craftsmen to generate an ellipse is to drive to brads, make a loop of string to go around them and hang a pencil in the loop. By varying the length of the loop and the distance between the pins limitless variations may be produced. Fortunately for me, I have three different ellipse templates which handle most of my needs. The specific ellipse that I am using here is 1.750" from a 45 degree template (I honestly do not know what degrees have to do with describing ellipses). I think you can see that we skew the template to get a pleasing line that contacts the 1/16" radius and the bottom center point of the stock.
A couple of things to point out, we are drawing on card stock and we do NOT draw on our original layout, we make copies of our original layout (also on card stock) and work on them. Not only does this allow us to make more than one variation, but the same layout will be used for the cross section of the forward forearm and the stock nose area.
The cross sections have two purposes, they help us envision where we want our conturing to end up and they provide templates for us to make form scrapers if we like. For the scraper templates, we make a copy of our cross section and cut it out with an Exacto knife. I will show you the scrapers that I make out of junk hand saw blade when they are done.
(https://i.ibb.co/f0wFtd1/DSCN1166.jpg) (https://ibb.co/h8z9HF7)
(https://i.ibb.co/BZL9GdS/DSCN1131.jpg) (https://ibb.co/fpMs9BP)
(https://i.ibb.co/gwgDzVq/DSCN1133.jpg) (https://ibb.co/XpJzS80)
(https://i.ibb.co/kysrrwm/DSCN1134.jpg) (https://ibb.co/mBVYY2N)
(https://i.ibb.co/G2p8nTH/DSCN1136.jpg) (https://ibb.co/1qQP76z)
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How do you transfer that cross section to the stock now? Is it just for looks to compare to?
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Wetzel, as I am designing my rifle, not copying it specifically from another gun, drawing the cross section allows me (or forces me) to decide what that profile will look like. The shape that I chose is about as simple as you could get and not unusual, but there are plenty of other contours that could have been chosen. The cross section is mostly to give me a sense of where I am going as I remove wood.
I did however use the cross section to grind and file a couple of form scrapers, which you see pictured here. The scrapers won't actually do much wood removal. They will help indicate where high spots are as wood is rasped and then filed down and at the end of shaping may help keep the conture the same along its length.
I would not be surprised to hear that more experienced builders than me plan and draw cross sections. As to form scrapers, it would be interesting to hear what other people do, but I don't think that finding a scratchstock on a workbench would be anything unusual.
Scrapers which you DON"T see pictured here. There seems to be a problem at TinyPic. I will try loading the picture later.
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Here are the scrapers.
(https://i.ibb.co/SXjdwGp/DSCN1167.jpg) (https://ibb.co/LzFJdHf)
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Although I will make some more scrapers as I go, I should show you one more That I'm using now. This is a simple .625" radius (1.250" diameter) scraper. 1.250" is the approximate final width of the forearm. It is also a bigger radius than the bottom of the ellipse that we are working toward in shaping the forearm, so it could be thought of as a roughing radius scraper.
(https://i.ibb.co/F4dDpsd/DSCN1176.jpg) (https://ibb.co/7t01hg0)
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hi
can you tell me how you put the radius cut in the steel scraper blade ? is it cut with a grounding wheel or a barrle shaped sanding wheel ?
thank you
Richard Westerfield
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I do most of the work with my 1" belt sander. There are two tricks to this. One: You work on the sides of the belt, often above the the steel guide that is behind the belt. Two: you have to do a little work and then let it cool, then do a little more. I usually work on something like this when I am doing some other task. I also have my marble tile that I use with sandpaper for flattening right beside the belt sander, so I lay my hot pieces on the tile and it works as a heat-sorb to cool pieces quickly.
I ran up this .750" radius scraper to photograph the process. The belt is not running in the photos, so that the lens would not be exposed to the grinding dust.
If a scraper needs a little touching up, I do this with a needle file, but they cut hard. It does work fairly well to smooth the radius however, to take a halfround needle file, turn the scraper crosswise to you, and draw file the cutting edge.
(https://i.ibb.co/YBYbnyr/DSCN1184.jpg) (https://ibb.co/hFhCQZq)
(https://i.ibb.co/kcJKrs5/DSCN1186.jpg) (https://ibb.co/LprSqXY)
(https://i.ibb.co/93mLHLR/DSCN1189.jpg) (https://ibb.co/h1xjFjp)
(https://i.ibb.co/6gPfFbk/DSCN1192.jpg) (https://ibb.co/r461HMV)
(https://i.ibb.co/16KBJhq/DSCN1194.jpg) (https://ibb.co/rsMqfT6)
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Right now my shaping efforts are concentrated on the forearm. My layout of the front forearm is done right on top of a copy of the layout of the forearm grip area, so everything flows together.
Documenting what you are doing makes you think more about what and how you are doing things. Although I don't have a set order as to how I shape, it is apparent to me that I am working from the ends towards the lock/wrist area and that the last part will be blending the wrist to the lock panels and the wrist to the comb.
Not only am I concentrating on the forearm, but on the bottom of the forearm. you can see in the second photo the line that I drew to let me know when my rasping is getting to the high point of the profile.
The rasp moves in an arcing motion on every stroke. I will work the top of the curve rasping up, and work the bottom of the curve rasping down. After some wood removal, I turn the stock to the other side and repeat, trying to keep everything reasonably even. This happens multiple times, always getting closer to the layout profile. Occasionally I may smooth out an area so that I can see better how it is coming.
The last two pics show where the work is presently. The last pic is the area by the cant block, which is taped off to keep me from getting into it.
(https://i.ibb.co/Sw5Cjsn/DSCN1201.jpg) (https://ibb.co/JjmJ1B7)
(https://i.ibb.co/YhSVR8p/DSCN1177.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Fz1dxJg)
(https://i.ibb.co/4MWR39h/DSCN1181.jpg) (https://ibb.co/82MgtT1)
(https://i.ibb.co/w0cjfFP/DSCN1182.jpg) (https://ibb.co/qyJVv3c)
(https://i.ibb.co/PG7cmqK/DSCN1198.jpg) (https://ibb.co/tp7qmVg)
(https://i.ibb.co/ZTgtK1w/DSCN1199.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Th0pRqn)
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I continue rounding the forestock. I "scratch" the high spots with a profile scraper, draw line from the stock edge and then round till I "erase" the mark. Then turn the gun over, do the same thing to the other side, then start the process over again. I am not fast at profiling and my process is not fast, but it is steady, sure and well controlled.
I forgot to show the simple little gages that I use to mark the lines along the stock. These work much better than a combination square and are much handier. The reason that there are two is that when I started rounding I worked "lower" and now that that the profile is becoming more defined, I am working "higher".
Although there is still wood to be removed, I have started making the "blends" into the ramrod entry area and the front and back of the integral cant block. I want a quick transition at the entry hole, so I am blending with a round file. I am blending the cant block with a curved rasp, but I am not sure that yet that that I will leave the transition so gradual. I may decide to sharpen it up similar to the ramrod entry area.
Back to my onion analogy, I hope you can see that we are slowly removing layers down to a curvier final shape and that one set of curves are starting to transition into others, rather like the old "Connect the Dots", except in three dimensions.
(https://i.ibb.co/cKBxyrh/DSCN1213.jpg) (https://ibb.co/KcPm5rx)
(https://i.ibb.co/KbVJ42s/DSCN1214.jpg) (https://ibb.co/jb3S0yw)
(https://i.ibb.co/vDhZVzJ/DSCN1211.jpg) (https://ibb.co/qxCk71R)
(https://i.ibb.co/Wyct8QW/DSCN1204.jpg) (https://ibb.co/gTDVqGM)
(https://i.ibb.co/BVkP477/DSCN1205.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Y7gWDKK)
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The forestock is getting close to final form, not done, but close. I removed the bulk of wood from the nosecap area. I started by cutting a groove with a round file and then rasping flat everything in front of the groove down till the bottom of the ramrod channel almost disappears. Now I know that I am going to get some head shakes if not out loud laughter for my little wooden file guide and stop, but it works quite well for me.
I decided on a medium transition to the cant block and used a half round file that I have that has parallel sides, rather than tapering along its length. The transitions look a little austere now, but I think that with sanding they are going to be about what I want.
The last photo is just to show a new scraper handle that I found at Woodcraft. It comes with 5 blades of various shapes, but the photo has one of my homemade ones installed. A handle really makes the scrapers more effective and easier to use, I like this one real well.
(https://i.ibb.co/zxXLcBP/DSCN1218.jpg) (https://ibb.co/02CWN6Y)
(https://i.ibb.co/CW8V6zy/DSCN1219.jpg) (https://ibb.co/zNxPFrg)
(https://i.ibb.co/M8WMDZS/DSCN1236.jpg) (https://ibb.co/DGs5DzW)
(https://i.ibb.co/JCKGSmq/DSCN1238.jpg) (https://ibb.co/HXVb9BC)
(https://i.ibb.co/ZNpx5p7/DSCN1231.jpg) (https://ibb.co/251dx1H)
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With the forestock so far along, I've started back to work on the butt and with starting to push both ends up to the panels. Here are a few photos to show where I am at. I am bringing the wood off along the butt plate, working down towards the bottom flat, starting to flatten between the tang/trigger plate and the panels, and roughly starting the curves that will define the ends of the panels. The wrist still needs to get thinner from side to side and I have not started rounding the very top of the comb. Your comments are welcome.
(https://i.ibb.co/gJ1rmv5/DSCN1253.jpg) (https://ibb.co/cQ5ykbG)
(https://i.ibb.co/M9rZFMw/DSCN1254.jpg) (https://ibb.co/DLhz05c)
(https://i.ibb.co/gMntcbx/DSCN1255.jpg) (https://ibb.co/tMdY1w9)
(https://i.ibb.co/zZwP8zQ/DSCN1256.jpg) (https://ibb.co/XtTFyqj)
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HI
please tell me where you got the templates from and what size are they
thank you
Richard Westerfield
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Hi Richard. You want a Timely T-92-B set of four for $20.00 plus $2.00 shipping direct from Timely, www.timelytemplates.com.
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I'm working on the butt stock right now, but took a small photo set of one of the scrapers to show you how it functions. I crosshatched the stock with a pencil to make things clearer in the photos. As you can see the scraper is not cutting a full profile, though it will at the very end. What it is doing, is showing me the high spot of the profile, so that I can easily guide my rasp work. I penciled the scraped groove, also for photo clarity. Notice how the groove starts drifting to the bottom of the stock as it gets closer to the panel. That is telling that the stock is thicker than the straight portion and needs thinning. I will rasp down until the groove disappears and then draw the scraper along again. This directing of the rasp work (rather like using a stain transfer) is the main job of the scraper. This is still rough work, though its getting fairly close.
There is also a photo of the current state of my butt stock.
(https://i.ibb.co/DM8Zs57/DSCN1277.jpg) (https://ibb.co/X53qNSz)
(https://i.ibb.co/wBZxWcz/DSCN1281.jpg) (https://ibb.co/xXKRjF7)
(https://i.ibb.co/x6bm9v9/DSCN1284.jpg) (https://ibb.co/kXT3bnb)
(https://i.ibb.co/ZVnGPGN/DSCN1286.jpg) (https://ibb.co/80WNpNX)
(https://i.ibb.co/St0VtRt/DSCN1292.jpg) (https://ibb.co/y65g6W6)
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As I have been working on the back end of the gun, it became apparent that the wrist was too thick from top to bottom, it measured about 1.800". Although I wasn't happy about changing it this late in the build, it just wasn't satisfactory. So, I pulled the barrel, bent the tang a little from the front screw hole back. Then I deepened the tang mortise on a taper starting at Zero at the front screw hole and going to an additional .150" at the end of the tang. Reinstalled the barrel and with rasp and file re profiled the top of the wrist. It now measures 1.650" top to bottom. That's still plenty heavy but considerable wood came off and even without it rounded, it is much more comfortable to grip.
I did a quick cross section drawing to see what would contour to. This drawing won't be used for templates or scrapers, I just wanted an idea of how much roundness I could get from the new dimensions.
(https://i.ibb.co/PDRqRgx/DSCN1296.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Sf2F2BN)
(https://i.ibb.co/TPXcCmk/DSCN1301.jpg) (https://ibb.co/1RVZS8L)
(https://i.ibb.co/41MXCqC/DSCN1294.jpg) (https://ibb.co/QDnThgh)
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One of the difficulties with trying to photograph and explainshaping is that you mostly don't do a lot of one thing as much as you do a little of several things together. I will try to show this on the lock side of the butt.
First, flattening between tang and panel with a rasp.
Then improving the flattening with a scraper.
Then general rounding of the main butt, hand and eye being guided by lines that mark the belly and the butt plate.
Next removing wood from the transition area between the comb and wrist with a round microplane. Note that the clunky moulded handle that comes on the tool has been sawed off and replaced with a hardwood dowel handle the same diameter as the rasp.
Now checking the side for "hills and valleys" with a rasp with the handle removed. The next picture shows the high/low results.
And finally pushing the wrist into the lock panel with a halfround file.
All of this integrated together in one relatively short work session. It is pretty much more work to describe this than it is to do it.
(https://i.ibb.co/xqPvWS5/DSCN1304.jpg) (https://ibb.co/1GhV1f2)
(https://i.ibb.co/SBTkJ1S/DSCN1308.jpg) (https://ibb.co/jDKCHxt)
(https://i.ibb.co/qRQcmh1/DSCN1312.jpg) (https://ibb.co/LC7c9Bp)
(https://i.ibb.co/103Z94x/DSCN1313.jpg) (https://ibb.co/WHQncR1)
(https://i.ibb.co/9cWK22f/DSCN1315.jpg) (https://ibb.co/0mr4ZZW)
(https://i.ibb.co/dKFB2Rk/DSCN1320.jpg) (https://ibb.co/DKh4CZw)
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Coming at the butt from the top rather than bottom, I am thinning the combdown towards the center line. Later it will be rounded starting by picking up the radius of the butt plate and the radius getting smaller as it moves forward toward the wrist.
The last picture shows gently removing wood behind the cheek piece with a scraper. This area seems one of the harder places to work in for me. There is not enough wood left to use gouges any more and rasps can't get at a lot of this area. I have some midsize rifflers arriving next week, maybe they will be helpful. Suggestions for your favorite tool for this area are welcome.
(https://i.ibb.co/PTRfk7R/DSCN1321.jpg) (https://ibb.co/pWg9qtg)
(https://i.ibb.co/s699HpN/DSCN1325.jpg) (https://ibb.co/yYFFSmZ)
(https://i.ibb.co/G0XP62S/DSCN1332.jpg) (https://ibb.co/mGmzjqW)
(https://i.ibb.co/j6dQ6F9/DSCN1335.jpg) (https://ibb.co/xCyBCQK)
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I am currently going up and down the gun with smooth rasps and second cut files continuing to remove wood and starting to smooth surfaces. I am transitioning from rough work to finish work in some areas. The stock is actually becoming trimmer than I ever imagined for this type of gun.
Here are a couple of pictures showing the butt stock losing wood in curves that originate with the butt plate profile and reduce in radius size as they proceed to the wrist area. You can also see that the panels are starting to form, but both panels are still high by around 3/32"(.090").
Keep safe.
(https://i.ibb.co/nLYtPWz/DSCN1333.jpg) (https://ibb.co/P6P0DSw)
(https://i.ibb.co/dBd6ySJ/DSCN1344.jpg) (https://ibb.co/9nF2jJ3)
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I decided to go ahead an cut the "line" in the cheek piece. It seems a little early, but there is not much wood left in this area, I was happy with my penciled line and decided to make it permanent to mark the upper cheek piece from the lower cheek piece. I went down my line with a small V-tool (kinda roughly) chasing it with a very small mallet. I then niced it up with the edge of a small crossing file.
(https://i.ibb.co/17ZLWXW/DSCN1345.jpg) (https://ibb.co/k5KxCDC)
(https://i.ibb.co/41Sp65Q/DSCN1353.jpg) (https://ibb.co/y4kqwb3)
(https://i.ibb.co/bvp869j/DSCN1356.jpg) (https://ibb.co/X5mvWRf)
(https://i.ibb.co/MSr9qFz/DSCN1360.jpg) (https://ibb.co/B3bw80h)
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I had purposely left the cant bar area long, because I wasn't sure where I wanted the front of it to end. I had looked at it in relationship to the front thimble, because I use the front thimble to locate my gun on the chunk. I hook the chunk with the thimble and then move the gun an inch forward (York rules are that the gun must be able to move on the chunk, left or right, forwards or backwards). As things proceeded I decided to leave the cant bar capturing the front thimble, the long look appeals to me. The area ahead of the cant bar seemed too busy with the step between "ramrod half-shrouded and ramrod un-shrouded". I decided to just take the step out so that all of the transition is at the front of the cant block. I think this looks much cleaner.
(https://i.ibb.co/3FTJJzC/DSCN1364.jpg) (https://ibb.co/kDGdd1S)
(https://i.ibb.co/54msprn/DSCN1367.jpg) (https://ibb.co/tKgYjqx)
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Here I am further rounding the forearm grip area, long radiusing strokes, down to up for a bit and then up to down.
(https://i.ibb.co/R4xMwWF/DSCN1369.jpg) (https://ibb.co/wr9bm1k)
(https://i.ibb.co/gSF1j8h/DSCN1370.jpg) (https://ibb.co/2vY2nrH)
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Okieboy, can you show and tell on those "smooth rasps"? I can see how they might be handy. Thank you!
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Glad to Bogie. I have three of these in three sizes, they are flat on one side and curved on the other. The curve is a very large radius at the big end and continually changes to a smaller radius at the small end. The very slight curve is not duplicated by any rasp in production that I know of. The teeth are stitched very small and close in a curving pattern. The tools cut very slow and smooth, actually slower and smooth than a second cut file, but not so slow as a smooth file. I obtained these in the late 1970's in Tulsa from the Wholesale Tools Store. They had loose boxes full of them and they were not expensive. These are the only ones that I have ever seen.
The closest available rasps that I know of are at Tool For Working Wood. The Aurion #15 Modeller's rasp is probably good, but the Gramercy 25TPI rasps are probably closer and the stitching looks very similar. Gramercy's shop is in Pakistan and I would not be surprised to learn that my rasps came out of their shop. The patterns that they make for Tools For Working Wood are made to TFWW's design and specification.
In the photos the middle rasp is turned flat side up. Before anyone suggests Nicholson pattern files,which I also have, these cut much slower and much smoother than Nicholsons.
(https://i.ibb.co/BLSKRKP/DSCN1371.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Y2qTGTW)
(https://i.ibb.co/k6b5t3w/DSCN1374.jpg) (https://ibb.co/2YVWT8C)
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Take a look at these from Stewart MacDonald. They have some neat tools.
http://www.stewmac.com/shop/Tools/Files/Dragon_Hand-cut_Rasps.html?actn=100101&xst=3&xsr=180060&tgtiid=4151
Tim C.
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With the forestock getting close to finish, I decided it was time to install the muzzle cap. This is just a store bought steel cap, but was pretty much what I wanted. I am sure people noticed that I left stock wood extending past the end of the barrel. I did this to provide a "pilot", so that I could get lined up and start generating the shape before I am back "where it counts". I don't know if other people do this , but it works well for me.
As you can see it creates a little shelf that I can put a piece of flat scrap against to line up the stain transfer of the end of the cap. With the stain transferred, I start roughing the shape with a rasp.
Notice that for this, I am only using one clamp, with the butt resting on the bench. This puts the work at a nice height and makes rotating the stock faster and easier. As the work proceeds the stock gets turned "left, bottom, right" again and again.
(https://i.ibb.co/872wNWK/DSCN1377.jpg) (https://ibb.co/4VMLK6m)
(https://i.ibb.co/CK4Zsct/DSCN1381.jpg) (https://ibb.co/PGJnzLY)
(https://i.ibb.co/G5DrDzt/DSCN1383.jpg) (https://ibb.co/vjWMW0Q)
(https://i.ibb.co/ZXVrwf2/DSCN1384.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Rb9KMgj)
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With the "pilot" shaped, the nose area gets roughed down to the same shape, but left slightly oversize. The cap gets stained on the inside and edge, slid on until it resists a little, slid off and the high spots lowered with a scraper. Notice there are some lines on the stock to tell me approximately where the end of the cap is going to end up. As I get close to the lines, I will slow down and try to make a nice fit.
Obviously at some point the pilot is in the way. I removed it by first chiseling healthy chamfers that end up even with the muzzle, then measure back the amount of reveal that I want, plus the thickness of the cap end and square this off with a chisel that I am willing to damage if it contacts the barrel (those cheap garage sale chisels are good for something after all!). I like the cap close to the muzzle, but many chunk guns leave more naked barrel sticking out.
The final part of the fitting involves only removing wood where the back end edge of the cap comes so that the contact is even all around. I do this with a small chisel, but a small scraper or even a square needle file could be used. After the metal gets finished the cap may get a rivet and honestly it might get a dab of glue.
(https://i.ibb.co/7kFPVLY/DSCN1389.jpg) (https://ibb.co/XYT1pM2)
(https://i.ibb.co/ypzNTHv/DSCN1390.jpg) (https://ibb.co/68Kyhj9)
(https://i.ibb.co/2t3RwJg/DSCN1392.jpg) (https://ibb.co/xjqwyZJ)
(https://i.ibb.co/QKFPX98/DSCN1397.jpg) (https://ibb.co/6WRHNYv)
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The weather was clear in Mn. this weekend, so I screwed the gun together and took it out to the range to decide where to locate the back sight. No shooting was done.
I set up my spotter at 60 yards. Note: I just joined the Wild Marsh Sporting Clays club recently. When I told about what I was trying to do, they went to the 100 yard range and put in ground pipes (to hold a target frame) at 60 yards for me. When I was at the range Saturday, one of the owners came by to check on me and make sure everything was satisfactory! I like these people!
I am using a pinhead Swiss front sight, so I black taped it on the front. I had marked the back of the barrel at 6,7,8,9,10,11, & 12" from the barrel end. I then covered the top of the barrel with double sided poster tape. I had a handfull of back sights with me to play with, but I am concentrating on "U" and square bottom notches around .040" wide.
I would put a sight at 8", study the sight picture, then move it to 9", then move it to 10"and so on. After a couple of hours of this, I was repetitively going between 9" and 10" and settled on 9-1/2".
Besides locating the back sight this practice showed me that I want to shorten the comb to move my thumb back about 3/8" or so and to push the comb (which hasn't been rounded yet) as low as my design allows.
(https://i.ibb.co/fF3sBfp/DSCN1399.jpg) (https://ibb.co/GpZqBy2)
(https://i.ibb.co/YP6gVbc/DSCN1404.jpg) (https://ibb.co/bQxtG7s)
(https://i.ibb.co/nnTP5v3/DSCN1407.jpg) (https://ibb.co/z7160Y8)
(https://i.ibb.co/V2DG50K/DSCN1412.jpg) (https://ibb.co/hDHNwxq)
(https://i.ibb.co/BcG6WQg/DSCN1414.jpg) (https://ibb.co/8Nbxvfj)
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As long as I had the lock screwed in, I decided it was a good time to lower the panel down even with the lockplate. I did this with a scraper. That isn't fast, but the control is great and I get a flat, fairly smooth surface.
(https://i.ibb.co/92Qkx1L/DSCN1421.jpg) (https://ibb.co/TR9xQ7S)
(https://i.ibb.co/MhFX7YM/DSCN1425.jpg) (https://ibb.co/8B1h9W6)
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O-boy: I see your shader in the photo. Can you tell us about it? What's the material? How's it attached? None on the front--any reason?
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Greybeard, i wouldn't call it perfect, but its probably good enough for a chunk gun. When I inlet I actually taper the mortise to start, then when I whack the plate with a mallet the bottom edge of the plate nicks the side of the mortise and lets me catch the nick with my small thin inletting chisels. This works well enough for me, but I am building "shootin' irons" for myself. My vision is more of country smith in overalls. My inspirations are Enoch Hardin and Jake Keedy.
Kermit, my shaders are made from 1-1/2" Schedule 40 ABS black plastic pipe that I got from the home builders store. I cut a kerf from end to end with a saw (I use a ryoba, but a back or dovetail saw would work fine). I then measure over just less than the thickness of the barrel and cut again. The rough edges get smoothed and the fit adjusted with a file. The pipe is shiney so it gets roughly sanded inside and out to give it a flat finish. It will stay on by the tension fit, but at a shoot I will put a rubber band or two on for extra security. The front sight doesn't need an additional shader, because it is a Swiss sight, a tube with a nonchangeable pinhead in it, similar to a globe sight. The NMLRA considers globe type sights to be shaded front sights in chunk shooting as long as they have a pinhead, a post or a barleycorn. They could not have any type of aperture.
The shader at the range was 12" long, the one in this photo is 8" long. The photo also shows the Swiss sight and just for fun I threw in my proportional dividers. You can change the pivot point of the dividers to get different ratios of distance between the two ends, such as 1-1/2 to 1, 2 to1, 3 to1, and so forth. They are quite handy for a quick enlargement or reduction.
(https://i.ibb.co/M110yMR/DSCN1429.jpg) (https://ibb.co/8xxZn6j)
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With the lock panel lowered, the left panel also needs to be lowered. On the lock side the lock plate guides the work. On the left panel I just need to remove material evenly as it is still flat and square from the start. The lock panel is .250" thick (the same as thelock plate thickness at the bolster). The left panel measures .280" thick from the barrel. I set my depth gage to .030" (.280-.250) using my caliper. I then sweep around the panel with the depthgage, the corner of the rod scribes a guide line.
From there it just rasp and scrape down to the line.
(https://i.ibb.co/LpQtq0x/DSCN1432.jpg) (https://ibb.co/12sqp0r)
(https://i.ibb.co/RgsddWG/DSCN1437.jpg) (https://ibb.co/K5fSSHc)
(https://i.ibb.co/smnBJw7/DSCN1439.jpg) (https://ibb.co/LkmGhtK)
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Today I did most of the rounding of the top of the comb. First I trimmed the top of the comb flat, close to even with the top of the buttplate and parallel to the top of the buttplate. Then I pick up the radius of the buttplate comb and continue it forward with the radius continually getting smaller.
For me, this completes the rough work and everything from here on out will be finish work, so I am going from chisels, gouges, and rasps to files, scrapers, and sandpaper.
(https://i.ibb.co/CQPcNzX/DSCN1441.jpg) (https://ibb.co/1TzghLp)
(https://i.ibb.co/gVzSjd0/DSCN1447.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Dp59VYB)
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As the top of the barrel channel makes a base for the shader, I had considered leaving it squared off, but decided that was too severe. I compromised on a 1/16" radius. Yes, I made a small scraper to do most of the work before smoothing it with sandpaper. I notched the scraper to fit my handle, but found that it worked best unhandeled as not much pressure is required.
The small pieces of wood are waste from the stock that I am using for color tests of dyes. Not satisfied yet, but getting closer.
(https://i.ibb.co/25FX4BW/DSCN1449.jpg) (https://ibb.co/9GpR5jc)
(https://i.ibb.co/vXWnrqv/DSCN1451.jpg) (https://ibb.co/sW4YDRJ)
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Since I "lowered" the surface of the panels, I had to redraw the panel outline and recontour up to my line. My panel is 1/8" above and below the lock, 1/4" in front and back. The 1/4" isn't a lot, guns like this usually had more, often quite a bit more, but this was what I wanted on this gun.
(https://i.ibb.co/r7xcCHQ/DSCN1454.jpg) (https://ibb.co/kH49RXG)
(https://i.ibb.co/Sm1dPtR/DSCN1488.jpg) (https://ibb.co/pKsRxfJ)
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With the lock side paneled up to the outline, I make a new new rubbing of the outline to transfer to the left side. There are slits in the outline to allow a sharp pencil tip through.
The only thing special to point out about this is that as there is only one lock screw, I made the pattern long and hung it on the back barrel pin, so that when I went to the other side it would align with the lock side.
(https://i.ibb.co/mG7Vg2q/DSCN1491.jpg) (https://ibb.co/c1dSVZF)
(https://i.ibb.co/M9d8B5J/DSCN1494.jpg) (https://ibb.co/fQJ8DGT)
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The panels are transitioned to the wrist using half round files on concave surfaces and a flat file and straight scraper on convex and transition surfaces.
(https://i.ibb.co/B4SMj7Z/DSCN1497.jpg) (https://ibb.co/3fLZW8N)
(https://i.ibb.co/ZG2rDQs/DSCN1500.jpg) (https://ibb.co/pbhTFHD)
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The finished panels , ready for sanding.
(https://i.ibb.co/vqzhMWB/DSCN1511.jpg) (https://ibb.co/NCYrGq3)
(https://i.ibb.co/Dpxjg7y/DSCN1522.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Zmnb1hP)
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As I think I have said, it is difficult to show how finishing goes because you work back and forth between areas as removing wood in one area often causes adjustments in adjacent areas. One thing that I want to show clearly though is that as the wood surfaces become level with metal parts, I make the two surfaces level with each other with a small smooth file. This can mean lowering metal surfaces, lowering wood surfaces, or both. Smooth files remove wood very slowly and leave a smooth wood surface that needs very little sanding.
(https://i.ibb.co/qm0B7Km/DSCN1476.jpg) (https://ibb.co/44sWKz4)
(https://i.ibb.co/D4tpB2Q/DSCN1478.jpg) (https://ibb.co/4W7dbrp)
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Thank you SquirrelHeart. Sorry that I am a little late in posting, we were without power for most of the holiday due to storms and it has thrown a wrench into the schedule. Thank goodness no damage, just inconvenience.
I wanted to show some of the work thinning and blending the comb to the wrist and butt stock.
I rounded the wrist right back to the front of the comb, I could do this because this comb will meet the wrist pretty much square. It looks awful, but guides the work on the comb and butt.
I formed a lot of the concave surface with one of my radius scrapers held in my fingers. A round microplane got used some also.
As this work is going on, the rest on the butt stock is being worked with radius and flat scrapers so that everything flows visually from one area to another, hopefully with some grace.
(https://i.ibb.co/FqW6ZbT/DSCN1456.jpg) (https://ibb.co/cXvJfcn)
(https://i.ibb.co/682kb6h/DSCN1458.jpg) (https://ibb.co/NrXMpwh)
(https://i.ibb.co/mbJzvpS/DSCN1503.jpg) (https://ibb.co/jbh4VtH)
(https://i.ibb.co/ykrPNGM/DSCN1505.jpg) (https://ibb.co/s1ZRgkD)
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The toe plate (three holes in a piece of steel!) is home made. I also worked up my own dye color mix as you will see soon. I also made my own side plate, which I started inletting tonight. I did not make the plate until the left panel was to final size, so that I could be sure that it would fit. I have also made what I think is a very special rear sight, that probably some will love and some will hate. Hopefully I will be posting these in the next week.
I want to build the butt plate and trigger guard on my next build and will be glad to photograph the process.
I hadn't planned on showing the side plate until it had some simple engraving, but here it is. I actually thought about this a lot before I came up with the acorn. Acorns are important hog forage and this plate honors "the old hog rifle". This is intended to be the only decorative touch on the rifle.
(https://i.ibb.co/SsT3PWv/DSCN1542.jpg) (https://ibb.co/FxvDKN7)
(https://i.ibb.co/0Ymx00k/DSCN1545.jpg) (https://ibb.co/HGBjcc0)
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I have been sanding and mixing dye for the past week. I didn't take any photos of sanding. I am not going through multiple grades of paper, but using 100 grit aluminum oxide for everything. That seems appropriate for a chunk gun. I did photograph my dye mix set and some of the test pieces. The test piece on the right is my last mix before applying dye to the stock.
I also got the simple engraving on my side plate done. I just held the inlay on a piece of waste with some brads, and only used two tools, a small round graver and a liner. The inlay was difficult to photograph because it is shiney right now and actually looks better the the photo.
(https://i.ibb.co/LQ9sWZf/DSCN1564.jpg) (https://ibb.co/hX2Tjmv)
(https://i.ibb.co/F3mpfTQ/DSCN1557.jpg) (https://ibb.co/RbY8MwX)
(https://i.ibb.co/18QZ4dd/DSCN1558.jpg) (https://ibb.co/bzm1G22)
(https://i.ibb.co/br7K4hv/DSCN1566.jpg) (https://ibb.co/P5t62pW)
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I was excited about posting photos of my stock with the dye going on until I saw what Mr. Wenger can do! That is some piece of work.
I have done acid coloring, but this gun is going to only get dye. I apply the dye with a piece of cotton cloth about 6x6" and run the stock till the cloth is fairly dry. This is spirit dye so the stock dries fairly fast, but i leave it at least an hour before putting another coat on. It has about seven coats now and I will keep coating until it looks right. Doing multiple diluted coats of dye evens the color, helps control the darkness, and seems to add depth.
(https://i.ibb.co/FJSyDVH/DSCN1571.jpg) (https://ibb.co/tc7vJXL)
(https://i.ibb.co/HH5Zn9q/DSCN1574.jpg) (https://ibb.co/sV87yXq)
(https://i.ibb.co/jJfc9L8/DSCN1578.jpg) (https://ibb.co/phwt631)
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Spending my time sanding steel parts getting ready to brown this weekend, but I wanted to show my rear sight before it gets installed. I made and changed out about 5 rear sights last season and decided it was time to make this sight that I have thought about for a long time. The bigger rectangular piece is a hardened jig for drilling the pin holes in the sight blanks.
I am sure some of you will know what I mean when I say that for no more than it looks like, this was a lot of work using a drill press for a mill.
(https://i.ibb.co/3d96DW2/DSCN1582.jpg) (https://ibb.co/MSxwYpr)
(https://i.ibb.co/YTbygf2/DSCN1583.jpg) (https://ibb.co/TqrbyPc)
(https://i.ibb.co/J5mr8vz/DSCN1585.jpg) (https://ibb.co/m6bhd9H)
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I finished the last bit of metalworking, which was installing the sights. I start by cutting a slot across the barrel using my drill press, cross-slide, and an end mill. I posted pictures of this earlier in this topic, so I won't show that this time. In the past I have made this slot with just a file, controlling my depth by measuring at the four corners with a caliper. I have never used a hack saw as some do.
After that it is cut in the dovetail angles with a homemade dovetail file. Nothing tricky here, but I will mention that after cutting the angle with the safe side of the file on the bottom of the slot, I turn the safe side into the angle and take a few strokes to blend the bottom.
(https://i.ibb.co/d5Y1DN4/DSCN1593.jpg) (https://ibb.co/DR2sQBf)
(https://i.ibb.co/ncMgFPk/DSCN1598.jpg) (https://ibb.co/fpd1sD0)
(https://i.ibb.co/vZczNBF/DSCN1602.jpg) (https://ibb.co/dGfKNcT)
(https://i.ibb.co/9N1Kz5N/DSCN1606.jpg) (https://ibb.co/ZVF4tDV)
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Now I am browning steel and applying finish to the wood. For the browning I am using Track's Tried and True. I wear nitrile gloves and apply with a cotton swab. I am carding with a stiff fingernail brush. I have never liked steel wool and used to card with a very soft brass brush made for brushing suede. but suede brushes seem to all be plastic now and the brass brushes that I can find are not soft enough.
The finish that I am using on the wood is Laurel Mountain Forge and I have colored it with a good deal of black and a little brown aniline dye concentrates. I apply it thinly with a piece of cotton duck then wipe it down with clean paper shop towels. Yes the build up is slow, but but the effects are good, giving a nice soft satin look. When the finish looks right, I will give it a coat of my favorite wax, Goddard's.
(https://i.ibb.co/47w0YYm/DSCN1610.jpg) (https://ibb.co/yXmxYYf)
(https://i.ibb.co/V9w8XQt/DSCN1612.jpg) (https://ibb.co/GpHjgt0)
(https://i.ibb.co/TKCckwt/DSCN1617.jpg) (https://ibb.co/YDr23Nh)
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The browning is done, every thing has been soaked with WD40 and will start being assembled tomorrow. Here are a few photos to bring things up to date.
I always engrave the date on the bottom flat of the barrel and I sign on the top. All of my engraving is chased with a small mallet.
The next two photos show the barrel with browning and the small parts after browning and oiling.
(https://i.ibb.co/smCRcjH/DSCN1622.jpg) (https://ibb.co/ngBm4rC)
(https://i.ibb.co/rsB9R7L/DSCN1625.jpg) (https://ibb.co/3zxK9r8)
(https://i.ibb.co/brVSnmp/DSCN1644.jpg) (https://ibb.co/SKghpyq)
(https://i.ibb.co/SwzJNkR/DSCN1642.jpg) (https://ibb.co/tp93B08)
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Run a few screws, drive a few pins, and bang you've got a rifle gun! I will pretty much let the pictures do the talking, but will mention that in some photos the barrel looks reddish, where as in person it is black.
I got it out to the range yesterday and fired seven shots (it was 85 degrees out), three for spotting and four with targets. My fourth target was the best. I am sure it is going to take some serious time at the range to get gun and shooter working as a successful team, but I think that I am off to a good start.
(https://i.ibb.co/b6npQDN/DSCN1660.jpg) (https://ibb.co/6y56rLD)
(https://i.ibb.co/CJtNMpD/DSCN1670.jpg) (https://ibb.co/cbvMCKV)
(https://i.ibb.co/3BX6ZPq/DSCN1671.jpg) (https://ibb.co/BqDWMYx)
(https://i.ibb.co/1fGWy2c/DSCN1675.jpg) (https://ibb.co/N62BDYR)
(https://i.ibb.co/kQ1r0dz/DSCN1677.jpg) (https://ibb.co/bzJyLfY)
(https://i.ibb.co/C8T4D5r/DSCN1683.jpg) (https://ibb.co/jf1qsvp)
(https://i.ibb.co/njs1KXJ/DSCN1684.jpg) (https://ibb.co/3cyFPxZ)
(https://i.ibb.co/LQ40H49/DSCN1686.jpg) (https://ibb.co/SQq6GqV)
(https://i.ibb.co/gm9VjfG/DSCN1647.jpg) (https://ibb.co/DzWpVvN)
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Thank you one and all. Sorry if I have been a little slow responding, but our internet was out for a while. The gun is pretty much what I wanted, a long sight radius, heavy enough to shoot steady, but light enough to manage. It came out trimmer than what I had expected and that's OK with me. Generally I feel that it is a good enough gun for me to determine how good a shooter I can become. I wanted plain and it is very plain, but tight and solid.
I will shoot in Iowa in a few days and although I won't have enough practice under my belt, hopefully I can produce one target that I won't be embarrassed to post.
I appreciate everyone who has encouraged me and I appreciate everyone that has offered different views of how to do things. There is no doubt that I have gotten more than I have given in this experience. Thank you all once again.
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First off, let me explain that I am tardy in my replies because I went on from the Iowa shoot to Oklahoma and just got back tonight. For those of you that have not had the pleasure of shooting with the fine people of Iowa or of getting to meet Mr. Bookout, I will recommend both experiences without reservation.
Thank you Steve, you are too kind.
I will post some pics of the Iowa's Original Chunk Gun Shoot tomorrow under the shooting section.
Thanks Deano. My next project will probably be a squirrel rifle, so that I can focus on forging the hardware, but right now I am going to put some effort into living up to my new gun's potential.
Thanks jmdavis, the coach and I have to choose which events we can attend each year and there are many temptations to choose from.
Thank you mbokie5. I would not use a table saw, as a rip needs to be guided and the shape of a stock makes this difficult. Some people on here have good success with jig saws (good ones, not cheap ones). I own a table saw and am very careful about its operation, table saws and pedestal or bench grinders are generally the two most dangerous tools in most home shops. My father no longer plays the fiddle because of a table saw event that took less than two seconds.
Here is a pic of Mr. Bookout giving my new gun his scrutiny.
(https://i.ibb.co/vLbY5QZ/DSCN1687.jpg) (https://ibb.co/xzyHvfJ)
(https://i.ibb.co/SdGq0RY/DSCN1690.jpg) (https://ibb.co/0FvPZh4)
(https://i.ibb.co/RPLmSV8/DSCN1692.jpg) (https://ibb.co/y5L1Rb2)
(https://i.ibb.co/Ssmz8Ky/DSCN1699.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Bz69xg3)
(https://i.ibb.co/pJWhms1/DSCN1704.jpg) (https://ibb.co/t8ZLdNH)
(https://i.ibb.co/2vh9R4C/DSCN1702.jpg) (https://ibb.co/m9TjdW2)
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Well now Okie you gave us a darn nice tour while you were abuilding. We await more pictures of the results... We watch every item as you can tell.... ::)
I must ask (a constructive question) Have you noticed any fliers at 1 O'clockl??
Most of us noticed that hard wood rest you lay your cant section of stock on to shoot her, with no sort of a pad and you rest her well out there on the stock??
Or have you found the sweet spot right off from the get go?
Inquiring or nosey minds need to know...... :D ;)
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I have just joined the forum, and it is my honour to be here!
The pictorial on the build is absolutely wonderful! Good detail, good explanation, just seeing how it grew from parts is amazing.
I am planning on building a full stock Hawken. I got a lot to learn. I am a jeweler, so I do have some skills.
To all, thanks for letting me in, and to this builder,
Awsome!
Great job.
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I have just joined the forum, and it is my honour to be here!
The pictorial on the build is absolutely wonderful! Good detail, good explanation, just seeing how it grew from parts is amazing.
I am planning on building a full stock Hawken. I got a lot to learn. I am a jeweler, so I do have some skills.
To all, thanks for letting me in, and to this builder,
Awsome!
Great job.
docone; You are in for a real treat on this site.Welcome. Just have to ask for help aand advice . Theres a wealth of knowledge to be gleaned here. Bob
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Thank for the welcome!
I feel it is a privilege to be with such artisans.
Can we say Breatheless? Sure.
I am looking forward to learning, and I suspect I can learn a lot here!