What's your biggest goof up (so far)

[Pete G.]

Long John's description of his tribulations with a muzzle cap got me to wondering. Seems like I spend a bunch of time fixing things that didn't go right. I'm not sure what gives a better feeling; having something go right the first time, or recovering from something that at first, seemed unrecoverable. Perhaps a thread that covers some of these goofs and what was done to recover might put out some valuable information.

There are plenty of books, articles, etc. that explain how to do something right, there are darn few that explain how to undo something unright.

I think I may have one for the top of the list, but I'm going to hold off for now until I see what some others may have stumbled into.

[smylee grouch]

How about cutting butstock for 13&1/2 inch pull, thats 1/2 inch on the other side of 13 right, but you have to mark the stock 1/2 inch over on the correct side of 13 or else you get 12 & 1/2. I have yet to figgure out how to grow maple.    Gary

[b bogart]

How about twisting off a breech plug?  I didn 't wait long enough for the penetrating oil to work.

[jwh1947]

Master Correll knows of mine.   Jim might as well tell the story.  It will be hilarious coming from him.  Wayne

[wattlebuster]

How bout drilling the tang screw hole at just enough of a wrong angle so that it does not countersink just right. Not enough to hurt anything but the looks and my feelings and my wallet

[jimc2]

Wayne thought the length of pull was the same for rifles as for shotguns.He had finished a very nice gun great patchbox nice color and finish. When he handed it to me and asked how was it i said the pull is to long,Wayne said can't be. I told him to carry the gun as if he were hunting and saw a deer ,through the gun to his shoulder sure enough the heel cought in his arm pit.He came back the next week with the butt cut and the patch box reinletted. But now a good hunting gun.Youve gotten better wayne.

[Captchee]

 well ill tell one .
 one morning i was  just about  to mark a barrel for  under lug dove tails .
 breech was set and all was well . then  i get a phone call .
 when i came back  i set the barrel in the vice and went to cutting .
all went  well tell i realized i had  cut the dove tails  using the  reference marks i had placed on the side of the barrel   

[Dave B]

I broke off a tap while tapping a barrel for an under rib. I was told that if you used carbon steel taps you can break them out of the hole you just snapped it off in. I took the punch and smacked the broken tap end in the barrel and drove the point of the tap right though into the bore. Lucky for  me the hole was for the screw at the end of the under rib at the muzzle and I could just cut off the end of the muzzle by an inch and I was ok.

[Simon]

I drilled the tang and the trigger bar exactly the same amount off center after center punching both in the correct place.  I have never figured out how I did it.  Had to weld up both holes and redrill.

[elk killer]

engraved Tammy
was supposed to be Tammi
on a thumb piece,,what a ***** TO FIX...!!!

[Stophel]

I have had to restock three rifles after getting so far along and deciding I had done something wrong beyond repair.

[sz]

I built a very nice "Golden Age" rifle for a man only to find that I was supposed to make it left handed instead of right handed.

He laughed it off, but I still had to build the entire gun again in mirror image.  The first one sold within about 4 days, but still.............it was very embarrassing.

[Pete G.]

OK. I feel much better now. I thought I would be the leader, but found out that Captchee has done the same thing as I did, except I went ahead and installed the lugs. The barrel had been breached, but I had removed the plug so let in the barrel. When I tried to set the barrel into the stock to inlet the lugs I realized from the maker's mark that the lugs were on the side. Ended up filing out some dovetail blanks, peening into the slots and filed back down. It doesn't show and doesn't seem to affect the shooting, but I will always know that they are there.

[JTR]

Even the old guys made mistakes!

Yikes, how do you fix this?
Simple, put a little loop on the D to try to make it look like a J.

[smallpatch]

When installing the underlugs in my first (skinny) swamped barrel, I measured the depth using the one nearest the breech.  When I installed the one in the waist, of course, I used the same depth.  The hacksaw actually made dents into the rifling grooves.

Now, instead of a 44" swamped barrel.  I have a nice tapered 29" barrel, AND a nice tapered 13" barrel.

Who says mistakes don't pay off, two barrels for the price of one!!

[Captchee]

OK. I feel much better now. I thought I would be the leader, but found out that Captchee has done the same thing as I did, except I went ahead and installed the lugs. The barrel had been breached, but I had removed the plug so let in the barrel. When I tried to set the barrel into the stock to inlet the lugs I realized from the maker's mark that the lugs were on the side. Ended up filing out some dovetail blanks, peening into the slots and filed back down. It doesn't show and doesn't seem to affect the shooting, but I will always know that they are there.

.  yep same thing Pete  and yes it was a swamped barrel
  i  made my marks with the barrel breeched and in the stock .then  i got called away.
 the sad part about it was the breech was still in the barrel . i just had a major brain @$#%  that i didn’t realize tell i stepped back  and saw the breech laying sideways ..
 i was yelling and cussing so loud my wife came out to the shop to check on me .

 to fix it i ended up   making a new breech and re breeching the barrel so that the  dovetails were proper .

[northmn]

My first build out of retirement was my current smoothrifle project.  Somehow I mismeasured and ended up with the ramrod hole drilled such that my web is about 3/8 of an inch or better.  Put the gun up and let it set for a while and then picked it up and got it shooting finally.  Its been sitting around for maybe three years now.  Darn near restocked it. Decided that as guns need a name I am going to call it "Old Slabsides"  Does not really look that bad as one can kind of work some of the probelms with the Oct to Round barrel.  It still would look a lot better with a proper web.  Get philosophical.  Mistakes give a gun "character"  All my builds have lots of character.

DP

[Mike Brooks]

When installing the underlugs in my first (skinny) swamped barrel, I measured the depth using the one nearest the breech.  When I installed the one in the waist, of course, I used the same depth.  The hacksaw actually made dents into the rifling grooves.

Now, instead of a 44" swamped barrel.  I have a nice tapered 29" barrel, AND a nice tapered 13" barrel.

Who says mistakes don't pay off, two barrels for the price of one!!

I did that once....what a crushing blow...almost had me a little cry over that one. The worst part was the gun was completely finished, I was just running a cleaning patch down it to get ready to deliver it.  Lucky for me the Getz boys bailed me out.

[David Rase]

After finishing up inletting a barrel into a piece of walnut for the Alford Duncan project for the Oregon Gunmakers Fair I decided I would go ahead and trim off some excess wood with my bandsaw.  After carefully laying out the the top profile I commenced to bandsaw off the excess wood on the left hand side of the stock starting at the muzzle end.  I then went and started cutting the right side.  Once again I started at the muzzle, cut all the way to the start of the comb before I turned off my bandsaw and said something like "$#@*, I just cut off the cheekpiece during that first cut."
DMR