Workshop

[blehrter]

Hello folks, I have a Kibler SMR kit. My available space to work on it is an outbuilding with no heat. How much should I be concerned about the wood expanding and contracting when taking it from the warm house to the cold workshop? Would it be better to leave it in the workshop, where the temperature changes will be somewhat mitigated during the winter? This would make it much more convenient to work on without getting it out of storage in the house every time I want to tinker on it. Thanks, Bill

[Bob McBride]

Depends on how cold it is out there I suppose but I don’t think there’s much to worry about. Personally, this time of year, I would just do the majority of the work at the dining room table. It’s fairly simple and won’t make much of a mess.

[hawkeye]

Bob, I think my wife would hit me with a hammer if I would use the dining room

[Dennis Glazener]

Hello folks, I have a Kibler SMR kit. My available space to work on it is an outbuilding with no heat. How much should I be concerned about the wood expanding and contracting when taking it from the warm house to the cold workshop? Would it be better to leave it in the workshop, where the temperature changes will be somewhat mitigated during the winter? This would make it much more convenient to work on without getting it out of storage in the house every time I want to tinker on it. Thanks, Bill

Leave it out in the cold, no problem with that.

Moving it back and forth between warm/cold plus change in humidity theoretically is worse than putting it together in a controlled environment but I doubt it makes much difference unless you have extreme cold to deal with.
Dennis

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

When I started my muzzleloading rifle building "career", I lived in a 55' trailer in Masset, on Haida Gwaii, formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands.  My shop was in a "Joey shack" attached to the entrance door of the trailer.  It was unheated, and throughout the winter months the temperature in there was a few degrees below freezing.  Water dripping down one of the back walls sometimes encased my file rack in a sheet of ice.  But I worked throughout that miserable season...young, dumb, you know the story.  I didn't experience any problems with wood changing as a result of humidity.

[fjohnson]

i built my first rifle kit on the kitchen table much to the dismay of my wife but being newleweds and no place to work in a rented apartment she finally relented to do so  i was happy!

[blehrter]

Thanks for the input guys, just wanted to make sure I didn't ruin this beautiful piece of maple leaving it out there.

[Clint]

A lot has been said about working in "the old days" without electric lights. I have worked in blacksmith shops and ship yards since I was fourteen and I would say that warmth and comfort were generally the last things on the list of importance. Most eighteenth century shops were almost certainly dirt floor, not insulated and poorly lit. When we try to imagine how long it took to build a rifle it needs to be asked against the back drop of cutting wood to feed a fireplace which burns way more wood than a stove and then we need to throw in milking the cow feeding the chickens cutting hay and all of the other survival activities that were part of life.
One of the reasons that antique guns are so fragile is air conditioning which dries the stocks to a much higher degree than in the working life of the piece. I would say build the gun out in the shed and when it's finished, keep it just inside the kitchen door. Loaded, not primed.
CW