A lot of us have neither access to a forge, nor the skills to forge a traditional iron trigger guard.
This tutorial shows how I made iron pistol trigger guards with a propane torch, two bending blocks and a welder. You should be able to make rifle trigger guards the same way. I made the trigger guards of mild steel sheet metal 1/8” thick.
Step1. making patterns. Draw the guardtrigger on paper. Transfer the trigger bow “hole” to a 1” thick piece of wood and cut out a pattern for the “hole”. Draw patterns for the trigger bow and try them out on the wooden hole. NB! The pattern has to include the foot (front tang?), bow and “ears”. The function of the ears is to keep the blank level and avoid twisting when using the bending block.
For more detail see
http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=704.0Step2. Making the bow bending block and cutting out blanks.Find a heavy piece of steel for the bow bending block. Trace the trigger hole and foot on the block.
Draw a line that tangents the front of the bow, Install bolts along these lines as shown in the pictures. Glue the blank pattern to 1/8” sheet stock and cut it out. Saw halfway through the blank where the bow meets the rail. Heat this area cherry red and make the first bend as shown.
Step 3. Welding the foot to the bow blank.Use a welder to fill in the joint between the foot and the rail and file away the excess.
Step4. Bending the trigger bow.Transfer bolts to the holes for the bow in the bending block. Heat the front of the bow cherry red and start bending.
The bow blank is skinniest at the front of the bow. For this reason the first bend is always too sharp and has to be corrected.
The easiest way to do this is to find a suitable piece of round stock and squeeze the blank in a vice. No heating required.
Now work your way around the bow by heating 1” at a time cherry red and bending, until you have completed the bow. Next cut off the “ears”.
Step 5. Making the tang.
Glue the tang pattern on 1/8” thick steel sheet stock and cut it out. A couple of tips when cutting thick sheet metal:
• Use a heavy duty jeweler saw blade. I use size 6+. These cut quick. It takes me 15 minutes to saw out a tang blank.
• Make a saw table out of 1/8” thick steel. Use clamps to hold the blank still. If the blank moves, the blade breaks.
• Change blades when they get dull, before they break. It’s easy to track the line with a sharp blade. Dull blades wander. On average I used 2 blades two saw out a tang blank.
• Keep blade perpendicular the sheet stock. If you vary the angel the of blade, you will mess up the bottom contour of the blank.
Use a bending block and bend the blank hot. The square on the rear end of the blank is an “ear”needed to keep the blank level while bending. It is cut off afterwards.
Step.6 attaching the tang to the bow.File a curve in the front end of the tang that matches the curve of the bow where these two parts are going to be joined. I like to use a round file for this (type used for sharpening chainsaws).
Glue the tang to the bow with epoxy and drill the hole for the rivet.
Burn away the epoxy. File the mating surfaces clean. Cover them with high temperature
Silver solder paste (flows at 710C = 1310F) and rivet them together. I’ve made a small primitive “forge” out of a brick, a little fireclay and a small piece of sheet steel.
I put some extra silver solder wire in the angel where the tang meets the bow and top with some Degussa flux powder. I aim the torch along the brick. This brings the tang and the rear portion of bow quickly up to solder temperature. It is surprising how effective this simple construction is. If I don’t watch out the guard gets white hot and the solder burns up. Next I file clean the area where I want to solder the front tab and bind up the tab so It doesn’t move when the silver solder flows.
The rest is simple file work. I hold the trigger in the vice by the front tab or the tang while filing.
I had originally plan to use a welder to add metal to the front of the bow and file a thick bolster like those found on forged guards, but I like the way it looks now better. By changing the rear tang, it should be possible to make trigger guard for rifles the same way.
Best regards
Rolf
