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View Full Version : You guys ever think of doing one of these



gregg
01-24-2006, 06:27 PM
http://kwk.us/FA/

Buckshot keep the machine work coming. Love
looking at it.

Bent Ramrod
01-24-2006, 11:43 PM
Gregg,

I bought one of those casting sets from from Bison Mfg. (Later Tools, Inc., and even later, as I understand, burned down in a fire) for the DST pistol-grip Ballard action with the four-finger lever. I signed up at the local Junior College for Machine Tool Technology, and, during the course, I did the outside machining and drilling and tapping on the parts, and made the screws. I still have to fit the innards, heat-treat and finish the parts. Too many other bench projects ahead of it in line.

If Storie's castings are as good as Bison's were, (and the pictures look the same) there should be enough excess on them to make a very good replica of whatever single-shot rifle you want, IF you have the machinery and the patience. I used a big lathe (maybe 20" swing with an angle plate) to face the front of the Ballard receiver and bore and thread for the barrel, then had to turn it around, reset it, and do likewise for the throughbolt tang. Had to make a special holder to thread the tang, and a mandrel for the receiver. Using the mandrel, a dividing head and vertical and horizontal mills, I was able to evenly shave off the cast surfaces on the receiver, octagon the top and even put in those little facets like are on the Ballard A-1 model.

I surface ground the outsides of the breechblock, and the female part of the inside, and then painfully spotted the male half in. The screw holes were "located," after a fashion, by dimples in the castings, but they seemed close enough. In any case, I had a real Ballard, though not a high-grade one, to measure from.

I didn't run into any casting pores that didn't machine out, although there was some slumping in the sides of the breechblock that didn't quite clean up in the center (in the gun, it should be invisible). There was no heavy hogging needed anywhere; I thought the casting set was a good value for the money. The machining took almost a semester, three to four hours a night, three days a week, but remember, in a shop class, the first hour is spent finding where the day students hid all the stuff you were using the last time. But, it beat watching TV those nights. It was a good lesson in what a marvel a factory is; some of those setups were very difficult. And of course, the bench work is going to go on a good spell, too. If you like the work, it's worthwhile; if you want a rifle to show your friends at the shoot next month, better buy one, instead.

A friend bought casting sets from Tools, Inc, for the Highwall, the Farrow and the Borchardt. He didn't finish any of them. As I recall, the mortise in the Highwall receiver was very undersized for the breechblock; without a shaper or a broach, it would have been a big job to bring it up to the proper size. Otherwise, the sets all looked pretty good.

You might ask Storie if he X-rays his castings. The Bison guy said he didn't but he said any bubbles usually went to the gates or the surfaces and would machine out. As far as I could see, he was right. The metal was some kind of case-hardenable alloy (forget the number) but the springs, also cast, were (I think) 8620 (?) and they did heat treat into springs just like forgings would.

Hope this helps some.

Bent

Buckshot
01-25-2006, 02:59 AM
.............You'd have to be dedicated and single minded in building one of those. It really isn't something that one could work on, lay aside, work on it some more, and etc. A home shop guy would need to be very inventive on some of his setups. That is part of the fun in doing something like that.

I plan on making a Snider action or 2. I have enough material on hand (2" 4141 R30C) to make about 6 of'em. However, after making one, that might just be enough! As simple an action as it is, it's obvious that there was several dedicated machine tools and cutters made just for some relatively simple looking features.

One of the guys at the range was making a Sharps action from a castings kit he'd bought at Raton. He was doing a superfine job of it too. Every couple months he'd bring in some of what he'd recently accomplished. If I recall, he did something to the breechblock mortice that set him back and I think he was deflated enough to have lost interest in it.

..........Bent Ramrod, I think that 8620 is casehardenable but not through hardenable. Not enough carbon, ie: 8620, only having 2 points of carbon. A good tough alloy though. The Garands and M-14's were 8620 IIRC.

...................Buckshot

Frank46
01-25-2006, 04:37 AM
Bent Ramrod, my hats off to anyone who could take a parts kit like that and end up with a suitable action. Sometimes I have trouble drilling one hole. Good thing I still have that origional hi-wall action I bought about 23 years ago. Maybe its about time I did something with it. Frank

Bent Ramrod
01-25-2006, 11:07 PM
Buckshot and Frank46,

Very likely I got the steel numbers backwards; can't find the spec sheet when I need it now.

You do have to enjoy the machining work as a thing in itself; as a means to an end it would be a lot of tedium if it was of no other interest. But I never could afford a really high-grade single shot rifle. The castings route at least affords someone a way around the expense and the opportunity to learn something as well. I enjoy buying wrecks at gun shows and doing gunsmithing work on them, so the castings were to me kind of an upper-level version of a muzzleloader kit.

Those Community Colleges that have Manual Trades courses are a real resource. In effect, you get to rent a million dollars' worth of machinery for a hundred bucks a semester. You get to watch a bunch of students make mistakes so you can learn from them without the pain and expense of making them yourself. And if you're really lucky, like I was, you get a non-team playing renegade from the educational system for an instructor, who delights in the stuff you are trying to do and is there to help you with the hard problems. (He announced to the class one day that what I was doing on the horizontal mill was making a "decorative hoe-handle." What I was actually doing was half-octagoning a barrel.)

I took the course (nominally four semesters) for six years, running all my big hobby jobs through their machines. Had an increasing amount of trouble staying in the course, as the school adminies couldn't understand why I wasn't moving on to better things. I finally had to write a letter to the Chancellor saying I was a "Special Student." I figure I got the equivalent of an apprenticeship in lathe, mill, surface grinder, band saw, etc., before the California Budget Crisis offered the administrations their dream opportunity of dumping all the manual trades and the lower levels of health and beauty care so they could have a "real" college to run. What it is now, of course, is mostly a holding pen for kids who slept through high school, but there are a few worthwhile academic courses, and it looks like Welding has revived. Maybe I'll take that (again) one of these days.

holycross
01-26-2006, 04:03 AM
Buckshot,

If the guy that was building the Sharps action removed too much metal there is a specific welding rod for building up 8620 castings available. It comes either as a stick electrode or a tig rod. Just going through the welding rod application guide that the local welding supplier gave me. The rod is from Crown Alloys Company, rod # CM-86-20 Electrode or CM-86-10 Tig wire. The cross reference table in the book also list Eureka and Weld Mold as manufactures of suitable welding rods. HTH

Mark

Frank46
01-26-2006, 04:14 AM
Bent Ramrod, sounds like you had a good teacher in those courses. And not specifically anti-gun. Like you said you probably got a good education on those machines. 8620 was used for garand receivers. Check out knuhausens book on the garand. They were case hardened and as you know a whole bunch of them are still banging away years after they were last made. Frank

Blackwater
01-26-2006, 10:29 PM
How much of making one of those actions COULD (at least in theory) be done with files and things IF a man didn't mind the time in so doing?

Buckshot
01-27-2006, 08:55 AM
How much of making one of those actions COULD (at least in theory) be done with files and things IF a man didn't mind the time in so doing?

..................I'd suspect almost all except for internal threads. It's all only removing unecessary metal, and a file will do it, sho nuff 8)

................Buckshot

Bent Ramrod
01-27-2006, 11:10 PM
Frank46,

Yes, my instructor was the best part of the class. He was a genius at figuring out why the parts I was machining wouldn't fit together, screw down to the bottom of blind holes, etc. He'd give the situation a look, put some magic marker on the threads or sides, look at it again, take a slight cut here and there, and suddenly the parts would go together like an animated cartoon. That kind of stuff can't be taught as a part of a regular course curriculum; you have to have the occasion to generate the problem and then the opportunity to watch how people fix it. This, of course, is what apprenticeships were about.

Blackwater,

There is the classic story of the Chinese worker who'd sit down with a file in hand and a piece of railroad track between his feet and have a copy of a Mauser pistol frame when he stood up. Anything in the shoulder-fired gun line that can be done by machine can be done by hand tools; the museums are full of guns from the eighteenth century and earlier made this way. The workmanship is as good as anything that is done today, although the parts aren't interchangeable and the mechanisms are less sophisticated than today's. But I wonder if that level of skill with such tools exists any more. If I only had files and chisels to work with, I personally would forget the casting sets and buy something ready made.

It really is amazing to me to think that all of the technology of the Industrial Revolution up to maybe the end of WWI can be duplicated in the home shop of today. There are founders, forgers (not that kind), machinists and benchworkers who just do it for fun that could probably have been inside contractors or shop foremen at any nineteenth-century factory.

Blackwater
01-28-2006, 12:13 AM
Yeah, I understand. I'd love to have the machinery, particularly a lathe, but don't. The main reason I asked about the hand tools is my 'smith, who went to Ackley's school way back when, has spoken several times of how Ackley'd take a part he'd just made, examine it, and then look up at him and tell him to go back and make one using only hand tools. Jack's a pretty proud guy, and I suspect that some of Ackley's instructions were to benefit his ego as much as his talent, though he's got plenty of talent, too. He's not really as cocky as he sometimes pretends to be, and when he's doing really good work, you can see real humility in him, and a deep appreciation for work well done.

About those old guns, muzzleloaders in particular, I think they're some of the finest examples of work a man could find. I just fell in love with them way back during a visit to the Smithsonian. Amazing work!

I envy you guys with the machines, I really do, but just wondered if it wouldn't be possible to make one "the VERY old-fashioned way," or at least much of it anyway. Thanks, but if you guys talk me into getting a whole tool shop ..... ???? ;^)

Bent Ramrod
01-28-2006, 04:12 AM
Blackwater,

It certainly isn't impossible to do the job with hand tools. I read that the Browning Bros made the patent model for John's single shot rifle by forging, chiseling and filing metal. An English gun factory is (or at least was) supposedly a big bench with files and breast drills, a handful of old men and a crowd of young apprentices. You'd probably need some big drills and taps for things like barrel threads, and a lot of lamp black or Dykem for spotting in, but most of the rest of the stuff would probably be the standard stuff on the average workbench: files, chisels, small taps and dies, etc.

Machinery is a big expense, but some of the smaller stuff at Harbor Freight or Enco is no more expensive than a new rifle with scope and a certain amount of ingenuity and a lot of patience can go a long way in getting this machinery to do accurate work for you. If you can't buy any machinery now, I would definitely suggest checking out the junior colleges in your area for manual trades courses. You can use the machine tools there on the casting set and see whether the work is interesting enough for a long term investment of your own.