I really messed up this time

[draken]

I painted the area with engravers white and carefully laid out and marked the vent location.   Removed the barrel from the stock and center-punched the pencil mark I had just made.   Set it up in the drill press with the barrel's breech face parallel with the drill bit    Started the hole with a center drill and the finished with the proper sized drill bit.   Took the barrel back to the bench and proceeded to tap the hole and install a white lightning liner.    Put everything back together.................and felt sick.

I seriously don't know what went wrong, for I thought the T's were all crossed and the I's all dotted.        

Is there a way to fix it?   The red line indicates the location of the breech plug face.

[billd]

I would try it as is.  The height looks good, maybe you can widen the pan a little in front.  I think it will work.  The only way to fix it is rebreech the barrel a little shorter.

Bill

[Stophel]

It can be removed and the hole milled/filed back towards the breech, and you can then fit a larger touch hole liner, pulling the hole back just a bit.  

I've been working on a pistol, using up some old parts I had laying around.  It's a Pedersoli "Queen Anne" barrel.  I had to move the touch hole FORWARD (it was too far back for any lock!).  I took a nail to fit the touch hole, TIX soldered it in place and filed it off, just so my new hole wouldn't wander back into the original hole.  Worked mighty dang good.    My original hole (and the plug) was completely drilled away.

And don't be afraid if your new hole location is a tad lower either.  You can deepen that pan (and enlarge it forward) quite a bit.   

[Dave Faletti]

Give it a try and see how well it works.  You could probably modify the pan some to make it work better.

 Thats a good reason for putting the barrel back in place after its marked to double check location.  Looks like you doubled a dimension when you were laying it out.

[keweenaw]

That looks like the 5/16" liner.  The 3/8" would only get you back .032" which wouldn't make much difference.   The real fix on this one at this stage is to rebreech the barrel.  You'll have to plug your pin holes in the forestock and redrill those but that's no big deal on an unfinished stock.  One could, although I wouldn't recommend it, make a threaded plug to replace the current liner, screw it in with red loctite and redrill for the liner at the correct location.  Since the correct liner position would give a 1/2 overlap with the plug it would lock it in.  This would be tricky to do to not end up with a trap for crud ahead of the liner in the bore.  But  this is at least as difficult as rebreeching the barrel and if you can do that you can also rebreech.

Tom

[billd]

I center punch when the barrel is in the stock. 

Bill

[Jim Kibler]

You could make a patent style breech for it and then, the barrel could remain in the same location.  Some care would have to be taken to get the tang appproximately the same size and shape as the current one.

[Gaeckle]

Widen out the pan slightly and chalk this up as a learning curve......the gun should still shoot even if the hole a a bit off center............

[Jim Kibler]

You could also plug it with  some threaded barrel steel material, file it flush and drill a straight hole off center.  This along with the suggestion of widening the pan would help out a lot.  If kept clean a straight touch hole is just a little slower than a coned one (somewhere around 15% if I remember correctly). This is from Larry Pletcher's testing.

[Jerry V Lape]

I had one of these because the gunsmith I paid to install the liner (I was being timid on the first gun) didn't put it where I had punched the mark.  It worked as was but was a little slow and somewhat unreliable.  Before pursuing anything too difficult I decided to widen the pan.  That is all the further I had to go as it is very fast and reliable with a white lightening liner.  So I would suggest just try it as is first then shift the center of the pan as far forward as you can before going any further - probably solve it for you. 

[draken]

Thats a good reason for putting the barrel back in place after its marked to double check location.  Looks like you doubled a dimension when you were laying it out.

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I marked the position with the barrel and lock in the stock.   I do realize now, however, that I should've set it up in the drill oress with the drill bit at right angles to the flat; not paralell to the breech face, as the vent is also angled forward slightly.

This build is for my Grandson recently home from Afghanistan, and I wanted it to be perfect.    

[Habu]

As the grandson (actually great-grandson) of a man who built a project for me, and worried over the mistakes, I don't think the kid will care about the mistakes.  The important part is that you care enough to do it for him, not the degree to which it approaches perfection.  When he's the age you are now, he'll have the rifle his grandpa built for him. 

[Dennis Glazener]

If I figured right you need to move the touch hole back about .156". If your breechplug is 5/8 like many of them are, you could shorten the breech plug threads an 1/8 inch (remove same on the barrel) and get .125". Probably could re-use the pin-holes/tennons if they were hitting close to the center of the tennon. Just recut the tennon slots 1/8 further toward the breech. If the tennons were too short you could make a new set and add the 1/8 inch length on the breech side, reusing the same dovetails. That would keep you from having to plug the cross pin holes.

This would come close to centering the vent hole in the pan but if necessary you could grind out the pan for the rest of it. I suspect even with a swamped barrel you could move it back .125 with no problems.
Dennis
 

[billd]

What Dennis said is explained better than the way I said it. Even a swamped barrel can be moved forward or backward 1/4" without the cross flat dimension changing more than a few thousandths.  The wood will move more than that with seasonal changes.      Another idea.......Have the pan TIG welded flat and reshape the whole pan.

Bill

[smylee grouch]

Draken, I did the exact same thing and Dennis Mc Candles fixed her up with a patt. breech, same tang length, same barrel length. He cut off barrel and made the breech to make the barrel the same length as the original. Then I drilled vent hole at top center of pan.      Smylee

[Larry Pletcher]

You could also plug it with  some threaded barrel steel material, file it flush and drill a straight hole off center.  Snipped. . . .

To Jim's suggestion above you might consider Tom Snyder's interior coning tool.  It's done from an open breech and duplicates the Chamber's liner shape.  This would give you an interior coned vent without a second set of threads.  I'd use a smaller one.

If you use a straight vent, don't worry.  Keep it clean and prime close to the barrel.  Hard to tell the difference done that way.

Regards,
Pletch

[Odd Fellow]

Enlarge the hole a bit then drill the th where it needs to be after pluging with a bolt.

[kutter]

Either re-breech, moving the bbl back as already mentioned. The bbl tennons would probably only need their pin slots lengthened in the move. No plugging of the holes in the wood nor re-drilling.
Probably have to slightly reshape the pan to get the vent into the center.
Depending on how close the bbl muzzle is to the endcap (overhang), you may have to do some rework there too if shortening the bbl causes a problem (assuming a cap has already been fitted).

Or,
Simpler for me would be to take the pan and cut out the existing cavity to a convenient shape (1/2 d mill perhaps). Make a cut to erase the cavity and then lay a piece of (1/2"d) stock in that cut & silver solder into place. Face it off flat and then cut a new pan cavity where you need it to line up with the existing liner.


Welding can accomplish the same thing,,I just don't weld very good that's all..

[Majorjoel]

Been there, done that! I can honestly say that your rifle will shoot well without doing much of anything. The second rifle that I made had the TH in just about the same spot as yours pictured. It shoots as fast as any flintlock rifle ever shot. At most, a little honing of the pan bowl forward. Definately shoot it before you go to all of the trouble of moving the barrel around. On your next build, you'll be experienced not to be in a hurry to place your liner. Hope this is helpful to ya.....Joel

[satwel]

draken,

The rifle will probably function fine the way it is. I agree with the others who recommend shooting it first before doing anything else. I once had a drill bit wander and wound up with a vent liner higher than where I wanted it. It is the fastest shooting flintlock I own. I was lucky!
If widening the pan doesn't help, here's another suggestion: Have a machinist make a new vent liner with no hole in it. Install it in the barrel and mark the vent location as far back towards the breech plug as you can without compromising the vent threads. It will be off-center, at the 9 o'clock position. Remove the vent blank then drill the hole. If you angle the hole towards the muzzle a little you may have enough meat around the vent on the inside so that you can add a cone. The cone doesn't even have to be concentric with the hole to speed ignition.

[cmac]

I'm with the idea of making your own liner with the hole back. Either that or the Allen head install liner. The self made liner would probably be less noticeable and more weatherproof, as well as authentic. Seems easier than rebreeching to me. Although that would move things back and put em right where need be. Best of luck

[draken]

Thanks you guys, I really appreciate all the input.  A number of alternatives to consider, but I will probably modify the pan and maybe move the TH as well.    The liner is a 1/4-32 White Lightning, so if I were to replace it with a plug made from a 1/4-32 bolt and then drilled for a 3/8-32 next to it, how much of the plug could I safely drill into?

Also, I sawTom Snyder's vent coning tool on the internet a while back, but now I can't find it.    Can anyone steer me toward one?

Thanks,
Dick

[Dr. Tim-Boone]

His email address is in his profile, or PM him:  snyder 

[Stophel]

If I was putting in a new touch hole liner, I would want to drill out ALL of the old hole.  A little piece of plug isn't going to stay put.

I'd look at a 3/8" liner.  lay it on the barrel with the top right "corner" in the top right "corner" of the existing touch hole liner and see how far back you can move the hole.  Your center may have to be lowered a smidge, but that is no big deal.