Norton Gatz lived in Louisville, KY. Born 1922, passed in 2004. He worked for 42 years at Supervisor at Stimpson Computing Scale Co., I was told by his son was a company that made & repaired scales. Worked his way from machinist apprentice to Superintendent. to the best of my knowledge.
When he retired to his shop at home, he had a couple lathes, milling machine, drill press, and Drawers of milling & drilling bits & reamers & broaches, etc. I have his old patterns for rifles, locks, trigger, patchboxes & etc. The guy could make practically Anything with machinery. I bought all of his tools from his shop, including a Sine Rifling Machine that he made & it is incredible. Prob. gonna sell the stuff, as I am not using any of it. More lathe & milling tools that I know how to even use. Too late in the day for me to start over.
Here are some photos of the Sine rifling machine, just for those that don't know what one is. It is a manual machine, but
quite intricate. Barrel is clamped down stationary. Once you are set up, you pull the cutter head thru the bore until it
quits pulling a shaving, then you turn a set screw on the cutter head 1/16 to 1/8 turn & slightly lifts the cutter, and you
repeat pulling, & you do this til you have the desired depth of rifling you want. Cutter is bathed in oil on each pull thru the bore.
Then you pull the spring loaded pin on the Indexing Head & go to the next Pin Hole of that # Groove your are cutting &
you cut the next groove.
It will cut cuts 5-6-7-8-9 grooves, depending on bore dia. & cutter width.
Rate of Twist is determined by you & what position you move the twist adjusting bar to. I know it does 48, 54, 66, 72,
Rate of Twist and will do more or less if you want. It will rifle a barrel over 48" in length.
It came with a whole box of cutter heads (32) with bits from ? 32 up to .85 calibers it appears. And also about a dozen unrifled octagon barrels. And 17 mold cherries or round ball mold cutters.
You can grind you cutter head bits to cut any shape Groove you want, be it Radius Cut groove, Straight Cut groove, or Concave Cut groove rifling. It it is quite unique & very cheap to change the cutter bit, you simply slip it out of the head, sharpen it & reinsert it, or grind a new cutter head the shape you want out of flat 1/8 or 3/16" tempered steel. It is quite a impressive machine design.
It is a pretty neat machine & I have never see one like it. The guy really was a mechanical genius. The gear drive on it is really snug & no play in the geartrain of the machine. And of course it has roller bearings on the traveling parts of the machine. etc.
We took the legs off to get it out of the basement & it was still a chore for 4 men to get it up & out the small 26" basement door & up steep steps. Don't know what type of machine the legs came off from, but they are cast iron & really heavy. It's quite a nice machine & would most likely last several lifetimes.
