Christian's Spring rifle inspired by RCA #43- Photos Fixed

[TMerkley]

"I my opinion the secret to any repetitive filing task is some music with a good driving rhythm.  Just what is the ultimate filing music? Alas, that is a trade secret and cannot be discussed here, but only over a cold beer.   "

Curtis

Well, I know there is no beer available at the moment, however, may I suggest "foggy mountain breakdown" with lester flatt and earl Scruggs? 
It will definitely get you there a little quicker.....

[coopersdad]

Thanks Curtis.  I considered doing the folded sight, but worried I'd file into the fold when filing it down to sight in, and if unsoldered it might separate.  Then I worried about the solder line showing, and ended up filing one from solid stock.  Likely took me 3x as long as folding one, and the solder line, if I filed that far, would likely be visible only to me.....  Looking good, thanks for taking the time to do this!

[Curtis]

Great suggestion TMerkley!  You may be onto something there...

Mike, on this sight I put a dab of solder paste inside the folded area before I squeezed it tight in the vice, it only takes a very small amount.  After squeezing hard in the vice I usually give a few raps with a ball peen hammer on a vice to make sure there is no gap even in the bottom of the fold.  90% of the solder will squish out and have to be wiped off.  Then I unfolded the sight at the prescribed angle, and wiped the solder off what will be the base.  Hit it with the torch until the solder melts.  When I was filing the sight I could barely find the center line with good lighting and 1.75 readers on, I kept turning over to see the bottom to make sure I was centered.  Rio grand sells low temp brass colored silver solder that blends with brass perfectly, you would never ever have to worry about showing a line.

Curtis

[Curtis]

I believe I forgot to mention earlier that is it a good idea to use a new, sharp hacksaw blade for cutting your dovetails.  It helps insure that it cuts where you want it to and doesn't screech across your barrel and give you a panic fit.  If you don't have a nearly fresh one, go buy one!  For these dovetails I used a 14tpi blade.  I have always used a finer blade in the past but I really liked the way the 14tpi cut.  I read here on the board that someone else used a 14tpi, I forget who that was...  Mike Brooks perhaps?

One thing that may be helpful is to use a scrap of brass stock of the same thickness as your dovetail depth as a gauge to check your depth and level of your cut.  I also found if I used a marker on the scrap and moved it around it will help to show high spots.  You can usually see them with good lighting, but this will make them stand out, as well as indicate you when you have filed the high spots down.





Ready to cut the dovetails...



I have a special dovetail file from Brownell's that does an excellent job, however every file cuts differently and I usually end up using two or three when tuning the cut.  I find occasionally i may have to use the cutting edge on the bottom for a couple of strokes to keep the dovetail on track.  It is important to cut with strokes and not a scrubbing motion if you want a straight cut.





When you are almost there it is time to raise the dovetail.  This is normally done on the rear sight only, due to the design of the front sight.  I have a fancy tool for this I bought from Track.  It has only been used once, on a single dovetail.  I will never use it again, so if you want one send me a PM and I will sell it cheap.  I wouldn't recommend you buy it even from me. 



This is what I now use, a cold chisel that is ground to an appropriate angle.  Don't make it too sharp as you want to raise the metal, not cut it.  I find I have much better control with this than the fancy tool, you can work the entire dovetail, or fine tune one side at a time.



Tweek the dovetails till you have a good snug fit, and tap your sight in place with a scrap of wood or a brass punch.  If you can see a hair of light under the sight, set the wood on top and wack it with your ball peen a couple times.





I used a scrap of steel with the end filed smooth and hit with a hammer to set the raised steel down snugly on the sight instead of a punch, so as to not noticeably mark the barrel.



Curtis

[Curtis]

....And now for the front sight.  I promise to not get so wordy on this one.  FYI, the rear dovetail was approx. forty thou, the front is about 30 thou.

Hacksawed:



Chiseling:





Check for width:



Check depth and flatness:



Cut the dovetails and check for fit.  Cut a few strokes and check again.  I always check from both sides, as invariably one side will start to fit before the other.  On the front sight I usually wait until it will go just over halfway in with heavy finger pressure before I tap it in.  As a side note, I usually take the very sharp point of the dovetail on the sight off with a few gentle strokes of a file, since the dovetail in the barrel won't be that sharp of a "V".  Tap in with a wood scrap.



You're done!  Have a tasty cold beverage.  I usually leave some overhang on both sides of the sight until the rifle has been sighted in, in case you have to drift it to one side.



One thing I should mention here... the last rifle I made, I put the rear sight in front of the balance point, and the front site where I thought it looked good.  After filing most of the front sight off during sight in, and still shooting low, I had to make a new set of sights with a taller rear sight.  On this rifle I located the sights where they appeared to be on the original gun (from photos), then adjusted them back and forth slightly so they were near the same height from the center of the barrel, with the front sight about 1/32 lower than the front.  This was done by eyeball and a tape measure, so I will have to let you know how it works out in the end.

Thanks for looking,
Curtis

[Curtis]

I wanted to do some coning of the inside of the touch hole on this rifle, and since I did not have an appropriate tool for this I decided to make one.  For this design I will drill a 1/16th hole in the center of the stock.  The easiest way I have found to be centered with a piece of round stock is to chuck the stock into my drill press, lower the stock to vice level and move the back edge of the vice so it is touching the stock.  Tighten the jaw and release the stock from the chuck.  It may not be perfect but probably better than I get by manually locating, center punching, and trying to line up the drill with the punch mark.  I then use an appropriate center drill to start the hole.



I started with the broken end of a 1/4" file left over from another project and heated it cherry red and let it cool in order to anneal it.



I placed it in the vice, using the edge of the vice as a guide to keep it straight up and down, and filed the broken end flat.



My battery was low in the camera so I missed a couple pics, which I will attempt describe.  I drilled a 1/16th hole in the file about 5/16ths deep or so.  The file end was then chucked in the drill and spun, and using a file I cut a taper to make a cone an precisely whatever angle it came out as.  You can control the taper to approximate any angle you need for your purpose.  I then put the file piece in the top edge of the vice sideways with the cone end hanging out, and cut teeth into it with a three cornered file, starting the cut with two unaltered edges of the file with one edge 90 degrees , then once the cut was started I put a safe edge against the face of the cut and made it deeper.  I started by cutting the four quadrants, then made random spaced cuts to fill the gaps in a similar matter.  Using a black marker on the cone will help you to see when you have reached the edge of the adjacent tooth.  You want it to end up sharp, without a "flat" spot on top of a tooth.  I found I had to use some magnification to see what I was doing.  If random patterns make for less chatter then this should cut smooth as glass!



I cut it off about a quarter inch or less from the base of the cone.



I cut a slot in the base with a hacksaw, much like a screw slot centered on the hole, and widened it to 1/16th inch with a file.  Here it is with a length of test wire bent at 90 degrees to engage half the slot.



I heated and quenched the tool in light oil while on the wire, then drew it back to almost straw.  I chucked it in a hand drill and tested it on a barrel scrap inside and out for proof of concept.  It cut!





I then took a bit of 1/16th drill rod, bent the end to 90^o, used a scrap of brass with a hole in it to protect the cutter and tapped the bent portion into the slot and filed it flush to both faces.







Then I cut the drill rod shorter.  It looks a bit crooked in the photo but it is an optical illusion.



I have an special idea in my head for the touch hole in this rifle, but will keep that to myself for now.     I decided I may need a larger cutter as well, so I made another using the same technique with some 1/4" drill rod.  This was oil, air and water hardening rod so I quenched it it oil bud did not draw a temper.  It cut well the way is was without any signs of chipping so I left it alone.



I considered using a threaded rod for the tools however decided it would just make things more complex.

Hope someone finds this useful!

Curtis

[Chowmi]

Curtis,
that is awesome work creating your own tools.  I love it. 

I gotta ask, how is it that you get that coning tool inside the barrel with the small wire through the touch-hole and in the screw slot in the back of the coning jig? 
I know Tom Snyder has a tool that he makes that is threaded for that purpose.
Will you cut the wire short enough that it will fit into the barrel attached to the coning jig, and then go through the touch-hole from the inside? 

Happy New Year!
Norm

[Curtis]

Hey Norm!  Great questions.  I typed a reply last night before I went to bed but apparently forgot to hit the "post" button.     It must have been past my bedtime already....  and I swear I only had a couple New Year's libations!

A threaded tool would possibly superior to the method I used, especially for a small bore or a thick walled barrel.  The drill rod I have doesn't tap or thread worth a darn, it wants to gall and chip badly and is no good for those purposes.  An advantage of the method I used is you don't need a 1/16th inch tap and dye.  The tool bodies could be made even shorter than these I did here, if necessary.  Also, if you cut the teeth backwards, you can still us the tool with out it unscrewing itself.  If you look closely at the tools you can see I filed the teeth in opposite directions on the two tools - when using the one made with the file I have to crank my drill backwards.  Yep, that was an boo-boo I corrected on the second tool,  but not a real problem the way these are made.

I was able to maneuver the tool and test wire into the hole on the .50 cal barrel scrap and had enough wire exposed to chuck into my hand drill and cut from the inside.  My barrel on the #43 is .58 caliber with a standard wall thickness, so there will be more room inside to work with.  I'll be starting with a larger hole than 1/16th which will allow more wiggle room - that will be explained later when I post the touch hole process.

Hope I answered your questions.

Curtis

[David Rase]

Curtis,
that is awesome work creating your own tools.  I love it. 

I gotta ask, how is it that you get that coning tool inside the barrel with the small wire through the touch-hole and in the screw slot in the back of the coning jig? 

Happy New Year!
Norm

Norm,
I do not want to rob Curtis' thread so hopefully this posting will be seen in the spirit of education.  I made my own internal coning tool a couple of years ago and recently broke down and made one for member of the ALR.  My cutter is basically the same as Curtis' but made from O-1 tool steel vs. a piece of file.  I do like the file idea and if I ever need to make a replacement might use a piece of file.  Since I share Curtis' sentiments about threading "small" drill or piano wire", the biggest difference in my cutter is that I attach the cutter to the shaft using a 6-40 set screw.  The set screw also allows me a means to hold the cutter with an allen wrench while I snake the shaft through the hole in the barrel and into the cutter.

Curtis, Keep up the good work.  I love reading your thread.  I really enjoy your ingenuity on solving the little hurdles you encounter.

[Chowmi]

Curtis, David,
That all makes sense.  It was difficult to get a sense of scale in the photos and I guessed it might be small enough to go in as a single unit.

Thanks for posting.

Cheers,
Norm

[Curtis]

Dave, thanks for adding your comments, for me this is all about education and information sharing.  Now it's my turn to call you a genius!  For some reason I hadn't thought of a set screw, if I experience any issues in use I will have to add one.  Do you file a small flat spot on the shaft where the screw contacts it?  Or does the set screw hold just fine without one? 

Norm. the shafts in the photos haven't been trimmed to length yet so I can understand why they appear they would not fit in the barrel - they won't!  They were left long and taped together so I don't lose them in the drawer.  I will cut them so they just barely fit for, maximum length, just before using them.  If you were to make one for anything smaller than a .50 cal I would suggest a set screw like Dave uses.

Curtis

[David Rase]

Dave, thanks for adding your comments, for me this is all about education and information sharing.  Now it's my turn to call you a genius!  For some reason I hadn't thought of a set screw, if I experience any issues in use I will have to add one.  Do you file a small flat spot on the shaft where the screw contacts it?  Or does the set screw hold just fine without one? 

Curtis, You are correct that I grind a small flat into the shaft.  The main reason for this is because you have to shorten up the set screw to where it is just barely longer than the length of the hex key, so when you do this you remove all the teeth that were on the original length set screw.  The original cutter would do a .45 caliber barrel.  After rounding the back side a bit I could do a .40 caliber barrel. 

[Curtis]

Beautiful work, Dave!  Thanks for posting the pic and explanation, that pic is worth probably 2000 words.  You do most excellent work, I must say.  Gotta say information sharing rules once again!

Curtis

[Curtis]

RCA #43 has a gold touch hole that is believed to be original to the rifle, and I wanted to reproduce it for my gun.  Doing so was probably one of the most tedious and stressful tasks accomplished so far on this rifle, as most of the process was new to me.  The gold touch hole is essentially a high dollar rivet with a hole in the center.    I created a couple of special tools along the way to overcome some of the problems associated with riveting through a barrel wall, and did some smelting and casting.  I'll try to explain how it was done with the help of a few photos.

The first order of business was to drill a 3/16" hole in the barrel, then counter sink the outside to 1/4" diameter.



Then I used one of my home made tools from the previous post with a hand crank drill to create a counter sink on the inside of the barrel.



Using a gouge I dug a pit into some fireplace liner material, cut up my 14k gold, put it in the the recess and melted it into a lump.  A firebrick could be used in a similar manner.  I got this material about 15 years ago from a friend who used to sell gas fireplaces, thinking it would be useful for something.







I annealed the gold and forged it (pounded it) into a 16 sided cylinder shape, then hammered (extruded) it through a series of holes, each a drill size smaller than the previous one.  After about 3 holes I stopped this process because I didn't like the way things were going....  probably because at this point I was still struggling with properly annealing the 14k gold.



So I decided to build a better mouse trap.  I originally avoided trying to cast the plug because I have no crucible or casting sand.  Then I thought maybe I could use the material at hand, and some gravity to do the casting work for me.  So I drilled a 3/16" hole in my fireplace liner about 3/8" deep.  ( I had to use a slightly smaller drill to get my hole to come out the proper size).  Then I scooped another, shallower trench next to my hole, then used a v-parting tool to connect the trench and the hole.  Here's a couple of pics to give perspective to the description:





I raised one end of the liner material with a scrap of 4x4, and placed a metal lid under the bottom end in case my gold made a run for it.  I coated the gold with some homemade flux - approx. 95% borax, 5% washing soda and slog of methyl alcohol to make a slurry paste.



VIOLA!  I love it when a plan actually works!  The hole filled up and the remainder of the molten gold ran about halfway down the ramp before it froze into a lump.  Now I had a plug I could work with.  The plug was then annealed.



I drilled a 1/16" hole through the a block of steel, then a 3/16" hole in the steel a bit shorter than my plug (centered on the smaller hole), reamed it almost flat on the bottom, and used the same cutter that was used inside the barrel to cut a countersink.  The gold plug was then inserted and beat on with a hammer and then a punch until it filled the countersink.



You can see what the 1/16th" hole was for.     The plug was quite stuck in the hole!





I made an angled punch to fit inside the barrel.  The leg that fit in the barrel was drilled and tapped to accept 8-32 screws.  I filed the heads of a couple different screws to different dome shapes to force the plug to completely fill my internal countersink.  I moved it around the base of the plug, and varied the angle of the tool as I went, hammering until I was satisfied with the results.





I took a gate hinge from my scrap box and cut a somewhat less than half round section, drilled a clearance hole and placed a cut off bolt with a nut and washer in it to create a jack-stand that fit inside the barrel for support of the gold rivet.  I filed a rounded point on top of the bolt.





I crudely ground an old cheap wrench so it would fit inside the barrel, inserted the jack-stand, and screwed it up tightly against the bottom of the rivet.  I forgot to snap a photo of the jack in the barrel...



Using various ball peen hammers, and also variety of flat and round faced punches, I hammered the gold until i filled the outside countersink.  I checked the jack-stand frequently and tightened whenever the nut would turn some.








Then I clamped the top of the plug in place and gave it a few more whacks on the inside to insure a tight fit everywhere.



When satisfied, I ground a plug tap and ran it in to the shoulder to make sure my breech plug would fit back properly.



The outside of the rivet was filed flush with the barrel flat, then center was marked and punched:


A 1/16th" hole was then drilled through the center of the rivet.  Another coning tool was made using a 5/32" round file, inserted from the inside and an internal cone was cut in the rivet - carefully so as to not cut into the flange.



And it was finally finished! Yippee!  That darn near flat wore me out.





Thanks for looking,

Curtis.

[runastav]

Hi Guys!
Very nice Curtis!
Runar

[James Rogers]

Great work Curtis! I especially like your inside staking tool.

[deepcreekdale]

Fantastic work Curtis, I always learn something new reading your posts with their excellent photography. Much appreciated. Are you planning on bringing this piece to Bowling Green this year?

[Curtis]

Thanks guys!  Dale, yes, it is my plan to bring it to Bowling Green this year,  I would like to get some final critique from Jack, as well as anyone else willing to share their thoughts.

Curtis

[Chowmi]

Okay Curtis,
that seriously made me jealous. 
When you posted about coning the inside of the barrel, I thought about asking why you were doing that since the original had the gold liner.  I thought you were going an entirely different direction. 
Now I'm amazed and slightly close to saying I don't like you anymore! 
As others have said before, your problem solving, and ability to craft tools from what is at hand in order to get the job done is remarkable.


Norm

[Curtis]

Norm, you just made me laugh out loud!  I'll attempt bribe your friendship back with beer or two at the NMLRA seminar this June!

Curtis

[Chowmi]

Curtis,
Sounds good, and I shall return in-kind for all you have taught me through this thread and last year. 
If I may say, what it has done is inspire me to think more about what I am doing and how to accomplish a task.  And, more importantly, to slow down and do it right. 

Keep this thread going, I get the impression it is helping or inspiring a lot of people.

Cheers,
Norm

[snapper]

Curtis

are you planning on being at Friendship for the June shoot with this rifle?

Hope so, I would like to put my finger prints all over it, have a Christian Springs rifle shooting contest and also have a beer.

Norm, if you are going to be there would like to meet you as well.

Fleener

[Chowmi]

Curtis

are you planning on being at Friendship for the June shoot with this rifle?

Hope so, I would like to put my finger prints all over it, have a Christian Springs rifle shooting contest and also have a beer.

Norm, if you are going to be there would like to meet you as well.

Fleener

Fleener,
I'd love to go to friendship and meet you there!  I think I won't make it this year.  I struggle to get enough days off of a regular work schedule to make the WKU seminar.  Someday, when I'm clever enough to retire early like Curtis, I might just be able to do all the Longrifle events! 

You may have guessed from the thread that I am also building a Christian's Spring rifle.  I'm also doing #43 out of RCA.  However, my skills are nothing like what Curtis possesses, but man, I like those early guns!!  Mine wont be ready for probably another year or so.  It has sat in my closet since WKU last year.  I'm hoping to finish up my Isaac Haines, and then get some work done on #43 prior to class this year.

All the best,
Norm

[snapper]

Norm

I dont have the skills that Curtis or I am sure that you do to build a CS rifle.  So, I did what I had to do and commissioned Mitch Yates to build one for me.  Mitch is working on my rifle at this time and I am very much looking forward to getting it.

I plan on using it at Friendship this June.

Too bad we could not hookup at Friendship.

Fleener

[Curtis]

Norm, I can't say I have any more skills than the next guy- I just get inspired by the new McGyver show and the old re-runs that have popped up since the new show started airing, lol.  Seriously though, I do enjoy trying to figure out how to get things done with what I have laying around the shop. 

Snapper, Not sure yet but I may make it to Friendship again this year.  If I do I'll bring the rifle along so you can put your sweaty fingers all over it.  If we shoot it can I paint the front sight orange?   

Curtis