Breech plug / liner safety question

[shortbarrel]

Saw a sign on a good gunsmiths wall that said ( Fixed Guns Repaired). Saw this picture in one of my books. Think this tells it all.

[Turtle]

 I grooved out  the breech plug somewhat like the picture, but not as much on a gun I shoot a lot. It is more sensitive to fowling in the touchhole area than guns with flat breech plugs a little behind the touchhole.
                                                                     Turtle

[Micah2]

I tend to agree with Frogwalkin.  How many crowns come loose and the dentist pays for the second one?  None.  How many lawyers  win their suit?  Half.  How many get paid?  All.   We live in a wal mart world where everyone can take everything back, legit or not.  The guy made a mistake, forgive him.  It is your fault in fact I believe.  You should know how to tap a hole. It is not hard.  He should not pay for the barrel, and you should in fact pay him for his work.  If he has tax trouble, I feel bad for him and so should you.  Pay him, it is in fact your tuition.  And maybe he can give to Caesar what is Caesars'.

[mab7]

The tax man has visited Caeser, and the tax man winneth...
Actually, it came in the form of an agent, the kind from a three letter agency, and a customer who brought in a barrel asking to have the barrel shortened by about 1 1/2". You see, it needed shortened because that much of the end was filled with weld. As in, it had been demil'd. And of course the ever so intelligent and skilled 'smith not only agreed to do the work, he agreed to a higher pay amount to expedite it. Being the ever dilligent and thorough person that he is, especially on cash transactions, he naturally forgot to record it as well...

Moral of this story, boys and girls, is do not agree to restore to service the barrel of a Bren 10 with a federal agent standing in your store patiently waiting in line... Goober is officially out of business and probably still trying to get several microscopes out of his rear!

[bob in the woods]

Remember the saying " buyer beware " ?    I am still stuck on the question of why you went to him in the first place ?    Research is best done before the transaction in my experience. 

[mab7]

Primarily because the only other gunsmith within two hours of here is so booked up that it would have been three months before I got my barrel back. In addition, he is VERY proud of his work. He has some unique hours as well. Doors are open on Monday morning, Tuesday afternoon and mid-day on Thursdays. The rest of the time is for 'actually getting work done' according to his sign. If I were having something more critical done than drilling and tapping a hole, it would have gone to him or someone else. I didn't think drilling and tapping a hole was going to get this out of hand...

[Tom Currie]

This has been an ineteresting thread to read. I don't have any suggestions but will share my thought on barrels with minimal wall thickness and liners.

I mostly had built guns with C weight barrels and installing liners was pretty easy. Lately I have build rfiles with A and B weight barrels. Installing small diameter liners with delicate threads in barrels with minimal wall thickness makes me very concerned about safety. I have heard things like " don't tap all the way so the last couple threads are tighter"  but them what is really holding the liner in , the last couple threads ? Twice I have redrilled and put a larger liner in with bigger threads just to not loose sleep over the situation. I'm no machinist but lock everything down on my drill press when doing this work to minimize any drill wobble.

I am of the thought to just drill a vent maybe a tad oversize and cone internally on these small barrels moving forward.

[mab7]

The 32 pitch thread made me nervous as well. If this was a larger caliber rifle, there is no way I would attempted that. My nerves wouldn't let me! Since getting the barrel back, I have had conversations with the gunsmith I referenced above, the folks at Track of the Wolf and Danny Caywood since I am going to be in his shop in two weeks picking up my new fusil  ...

Track and the gunsmith both assured me liners are perfectly safe - when done correctly.  Both even gave me a thread count to use as a reference for safe installations. Danny Caywood does not like them due to the fine threading and because they are completely unncecessary on a correctly built gun. The end result of everything is that I am going with the solution provided in the images earlier in the thread. I just couldn't get past replacing a barrel with only a couple dozen shots fired through it. I have made arrangements for access to a mill and I am doing the work though. If I screw it up, plan B is to remove an inch of the barrel and rebreech it.

Either way I go, I am going to have to do some work on the rifle. This is now going to be a 'project gun' for this, better fitting the buttplate, rebrowning the barrel and if the wildhairs get out of control, I may even see if my carving skills are still intact.

[EC121]

A drilled touch hole will work fine but will eventually burn out.  Sort of a "do it now or do it later" situation.  The liner question will still come up.  Most nuts only have three or so threads on them for their thread pitch.  If more were needed, wouldn't the manufacturing engineers make longer nuts for their bolts?  In my years in the paper machine maintenance industry I saw more bolts shear or stretch than nuts pull off.  Thinking of it another way, the pressure force on the liner is not only out the hole but also is pressing the liner threads outward into the barrel threads.  A properly installed liner should be fine.
     

[Captchee]

   Funny how that works . Would appear to have been worth the wait .
I think if it were me , I would take more then a few lessons from this .
 One of which would be to learn how to  drill and tap that “simple” hole myself and  get that 1/4X32 tap that’s for the WL liner .

 Yes its un safe ,  who can say more .  I also would be listening to those telling you to use lead , solder, super glue , JB weld  ………. No tax info is needed .

 Past that ,I think im just going to say that  there are to many things that just don’t add up
 the biggest is that by judging by your words , one would think you would have  the knowlage  to do this job yourself  or at the very least have Danny do it for you  while you chatted  over coffe in his new shop ??

to many questions  guys , just to many 

[Bob Roller]

This has been an ineteresting thread to read. I don't have any suggestions but will share my thought on barrels with minimal wall thickness and liners.

I mostly had built guns with C weight barrels and installing liners was pretty easy. Lately I have build rfiles with A and B weight barrels. Installing small diameter liners with delicate threads in barrels with minimal wall thickness makes me very concerned about safety. I have heard things like " don't tap all the way so the last couple threads are tighter"  but them what is really holding the liner in , the last couple threads ? Twice I have redrilled and put a larger liner in with bigger threads just to not loose sleep over the situation. I'm no machinist but lock everything down on my drill press when doing this work to minimize any drill wobble.

I am of the thought to just drill a vent maybe a tad oversize and cone internally on these small barrels moving forward.

If the point of the drill isn't right it will wobble no matter what.
Use a center drill to start the job and drill a pilot hole and THEN the tap
drill size.Countersink it the depth of one thread and the carefully tap it.

Bob Roller

[mab7]

I more than have the knowledge and skills required to drill and tap, and a whole lot more, what I do not have is the equipment setup to do it correctly. My 'shop' is a two car garage with all the tools lined along the wall, some on mobile cabinets, some stationary. My drill press is a small bench top model mounted to a mobile cabinet. It is not stable enough to properly support a 42" barrel mounted in a vise holding onto the last four or six inches of the barrel with the remainder hanging out into thin air.

I feel something like drilling a 1/4" hole in a gun barrel for the purposes of igniting a powder charge needs to be done using proper machining methods, not just whip out the old drill and go to town. I am also of the opinion that making a breech plug 'work' with a 1/16" or more gap on its face is not only dangerous, its stupid. I have, and will, use creative engineering on a lot of things but the detonation of a powder charge, no matter how small, is not one of them. I am a retired, 20 year ordnanceman and there are some things I just will not do. Based on the responses I have received on here and in private messages, I am not alone in my opinion either.

I asked Danny Caywood about it and he said he would be more than willing to look at it and offer advice, but he does not do vent liners. Track told me that it is nothing unusual for there to only be two threads on a liner, but their preference is six or seven. Personally, I wouldn't trust two 32 pitch threads to seal water, let alone the chamber on a rifle...

[EC121]

Just on general principle I think I would want more than two threads.  On a thin walled barrel I would look for one of those liners with the long threads and small countersink.  Even a set screw would work for more threads and be easily replaced when it burns out.  My rifles have a variety of liners and drilled holes.  They all seem to work for reliable, fast ignition.

[Captchee]

I think its pretty safe to say that we all know Danny’s opinion about vent liners .
If ToW told  you that having 2 of 5 of the threads  engaged , then  shame on them because they know better .
 its just not adding up for me , im going to leave it at that .
glad it turned out for you .
 

[mab7]

I was pretty surprised to hear it myself.
It was Eric that said it. I have also been kind of surprised by the number of people that won't touch Colerain barrels for as popular as they seem to be.

[frogwalking]

I don't think there was a problem with barrel wall thickness.  The problem was that the flash hole was originally properly located only a very short distance from the face of the breechplug.  If the rifle is to work properly, the flash hole in the new liner must be in the same place.  This means almost half of the new, tapped hole (for the liner) will be in the threaded portion of the breechplug hole.  In this location, the barrel is too thin.  The only way that I see this thing could have worked is for the flash hole liner hole to have been drilled (with the breechplug in place) with an end mill. running deeper than required for the liner to form a kind of a jackleg patent breech.  The tap would then have been made partly in the thick portion of the barrel, partly in the thin section, and partly in the breechplug.  I don't think this is a good way to do it at all, but is the only way the "gunsmith" could have done what you were asking him to do on this rifle, have it work and be reasonably safe.  Of course, any serious attempt to remove the breechplug without first removing the flash hole liner would have been a real mess.
To fix it properly would have probably required cutting off the barrel and installing a patent breech.   I think what we need to learn from this is; if you can't fix it yourself, take or send your gun to a reputable muzzle loader gunsmith if you value your gun and your behind.

[Captchee]

     I suspect Frog walking , that what happened is  someone tried to drill  a “simple threaded hole “ for a  flash hole liner while unknowingly  using  an angled   flash hole as the  location for the center of the new liner .
 Once that was realized  they tried to  re drill   farther forwards ,for a larger  liner . Hence the  tool mark  on the off side of the bore , left by the drill .
 Possibly also trying to do the job with a dull drill . 
 It would appear by the   file or grinding marks on the side flat of the barrel  that the liner would have been installed or at least attempted to be cut off and filed only to have it pop out in the process .
 Even if it had a liner prior , its still going to have to have a 5/16th liner as your not going to  re-thread a 1/4x28 threaded hole  to ¼ x32  without pretty much getting a stripped out hole

Regardless , without the rest of the gun , there would have been no way of knowing  if the new location  would have even  been in the pan  if the hole had to be moved .
A knowledgeable person would have known that  and refused the  job and or figured it out  when they check the gun for a load prior to working on it .
 But then they also would have found the angled flash hole during the same  safety check .
 Then refused the job.

 I still have not gotten the  grinding of the breech figured out yet . I just cant see how it was ground down  to the point so many threads appear to be visible on the  liner side , without the same number of threads being visible on the  off side . Yet still have a flat faced breech that looks like the one in the photo  without a clear angle  to the face of the plug .

[mab7]

The original touch hole would indeed have been just in front of the breech plug. There was no liner, but it was coned on the outside. I am not sure what file marks you are referring to Cap? The picture is really crappy but there aren't any file marks from working the vent. The barrel was very obviously browned in the as-received condition. It is very apparent a draw file has not been within three feet of it, and whomever did the browning did the bare minimum required to call it brown...

There is indeed a tool mark on the off side of the barrel. It looks to me like it was hit with a drill bit. From either pushing too hard or not having a clue how deep they had gone. Measuring it out, it appears the hole was just enlarged using the original location for center. The face of breech plug looks like it was shortened with a sander. In fact, I would lay money on it. Screwed in and oriented on the witness mark, the face now sits back far enough the liner does not contact it when screwed in. If the face were to go all the way to the shoulder, it would be physically impossible to install a liner of any size without some form of modification. With the barrel breech up, and you orient it like a compass for reference (N - S - E - W), the north point has two - three threads due to the shoulder for the plug. All other points have what appear to be a full thread count. The barrel is 13/16, with a 5/8-18 plug...

[mab7]

To give you an idea of the beginning, here is a picture of the original touch hole. It shows what a really crappy job was done on both the original hole as well the browning job on the barrel... When this picture was taken, all that had been done was the barrel removed from the rifle and the breech plug removed from the barrel...

[Captchee]

   Seems to me with the breech ground at an angle  that you would have greater worries then  lacking a small area  of threads on a liner .

so you took a barrel to someone  to have a liner  installed, knowing full well that  if the liner hole was orientated to  the existing hole  what the result would be  ?
  It appears you knew of his poor reputation  but could not wait for  another shop to do it for you
 You did not take the rest of the gun  so that this “smith “  would have the opportunity to  have what he needed to do the job and do it correctly  with even a basic understanding .

So really you set him up to fail . Knew there was a possibility that he would fail  and now have an issue because he did .
  I would have to agree with the others in that it appears your as much to blame as this person whom you took the barrel to.
 Im sorry to say it , im not trying to be insulting by saying so , but he should have sent you packing.
 Pretty hard to make a silk purse from a sows ear  when what you have to work with is the tail .

doesnt much mater now . did i understand you correctly in that he  replaced the barrel and is paying the cost of having someone else  fit it to your rifle ?

[flinchrocket]

Htredneck, how long is your breech plug after it was sanded off?

[mab7]

Flinchrocket - the existing breechplug is now 1/2" from the face of the tang to the face of the breechplug. There are seven complete threads.

Captchee - I chose to ignore your two previous 'jabs', or attempts to downgrade me. I will do no such thing this time. I will not be impugned or put down for a lack of experience or knowledge with flintlock firearms, nor my unwillingness to perform work that I cannot properly support with the equipment I have on hand. Prior to this experience, my blackpowder and muzzleloading experience has been limited to shooting and cleaning inline, percussion and BPCR guns. I have never installed a liner, never removed a breechplug from a blackpowder barrel, and until this experience, never knew there were so many options and opinions on sloping, cupping, grooving, sealing or otherwise modifying a breechplug.

I took a barrel to a LICENSED gunsmith. Yes, he was new in his business but everyone has to start somewhere and sometime. If he had known what he was doing, we wouldn't be having this conversation. What he should have done was realize what was going to be involved and called me. He chose not to. He set himself up for failure - not me. He was also the only one within an hour and a half drive from here. The only other one in this area quoted me almost $200 and 16 week wait to drill and tap the liner in place. Three differing people on this forum refused to touch a Colerain barrel. Track of the Wolf will repair it if I take that path. As to providing the entire rifle - that is your complete and total assumption. In this case it is accurate, but if a licensed gunsmith had required it, he should have said so. Amazing enough Track says if I send it to them, DO NOT send the complete rifle.

Lastly - no, he has not offered to make it right financially. He was told he would, but with the fact he is no longer in business due to his own stupidity and greed, that option is probably off the table. Even if it were not, I would not pursue it because the aggravation and stress of recouping $200 is not worth my time or trouble. If it were two thousand, it would be a different story.

As I have stated, I have decided to take the path of using this rifle as a project. If I should happen to ask what seems like a stupid question or seek opinions of those wiser and far more experienced, I apologize if it offends your sensibilities. If you can impart some of your knowledge and experience, I would sincerely and greatly appreciate it. If you cannot do so without making false assumptions or judgements, I would also greatly appreciate you doing so at someone else's expense.

[flinchrocket]

If it were mine, I would cut 1in. off the barrel and reinstall the breech plug, cut new dovetails and
move the underlugs, cut 1 in. off the stock and install the touch hole liner. Just an idea. That way
you won't have inlet a new tang or drill a new hole for your tang bolt, your mess will all be hid by
the barrel channel.

[bob in the woods]

From where I sit, your level of knowledge regarding the gunsmith and entire situation seems much improved over what was implied in the first post. Since we can only work with questions as they are presented, and there are only so many paths around a bush, I believe I'm done here. Good luck.

[Captchee]

seems that way to me to Bob

htredneck
 First  let me say im not putting jabs at you.
I don’t have to .
 As to why this “smith “is not in business , its pretty obvious  so w we don’t really need the comments about his Taxs ,  , greed ……….  Its of no concern.   The quality of work  , of whom ever did this , is proof of  their qualifications as they were not a gunsmith  .  Nuff said on that subject  .

As to those who refuse to use Colerain , I bet there would be . Why not . Personally I refuse to use Green mountain  .  I known folks that  wont use Rice  or pay the cost of a Getz unless it was one of the older ones  made by Don himself .What does the barrel choice have to do with your problem ?
  Unless this barrel is one of their older ones , they did not breech it . Nor did they drill the original flash hole . So why even make such a comment  when it has nothing more to do with your problem then  Jim Chambers choice of threads on his liner .