stocker
04-12-2006, 06:01 PM
This is not for the faint of heart so proceed at your own risk!
This morning wife said she had a sore abdomen so instead of going for my regular coffee routine I stayed home. I decided to slug the M64/32 Special I'd recently acquired.
I'd loaned out my brass rods to a friend so opted to use an oak dowel that was a nice close slip fit in the barrel.
About halfway down the well oiled barrel I found a tight spot- and then it got tighter. And just then the wife yelled to take her to the doctor and from there we went to the hospital for x rays and several hours passed before we got home. She may or may not need surgery as a result of a diagnosis of diverticulitis along with an infection but she's home and on antibiotics for a day or two.
Being a little discombobulated from these events I returned to the rifle and I took a mallet and whacked it through and ended up with an inch of dowel sticking into the action.
The dowel would no longer pull out as it did previously. Slowly a light came on and I decided the dowel had swollen considerably from absorbing the oil which I had liberally squirted down the barrel.
However with an inch of wood out into the action it wasn't possible to dissemble the rifle. So a mini saw was made to cut the dowel tight to the breech face and the rifle was torn down. I used a 6" mini-hack saw blade with the set ground off one side to prevent damage to the breech face. It takes a lot of 1/4" strokes to cut a dowel.
Then to the local hardware for a new brass rod which was built up at 3" intervals with masking tape to cushion against deflection and the dowel was driven out. No harm to the barrel but the dowel has the neatest spiral imprints all along the first half of it's length. Oh yes, its .3215 and there is no tight spot as determined by a second slugging using the brass rod. Sometimes I make things harder than they need to be but at least I also took the time to give the old rifle a proper action cleaning while it was apart. Sheesh!
This morning wife said she had a sore abdomen so instead of going for my regular coffee routine I stayed home. I decided to slug the M64/32 Special I'd recently acquired.
I'd loaned out my brass rods to a friend so opted to use an oak dowel that was a nice close slip fit in the barrel.
About halfway down the well oiled barrel I found a tight spot- and then it got tighter. And just then the wife yelled to take her to the doctor and from there we went to the hospital for x rays and several hours passed before we got home. She may or may not need surgery as a result of a diagnosis of diverticulitis along with an infection but she's home and on antibiotics for a day or two.
Being a little discombobulated from these events I returned to the rifle and I took a mallet and whacked it through and ended up with an inch of dowel sticking into the action.
The dowel would no longer pull out as it did previously. Slowly a light came on and I decided the dowel had swollen considerably from absorbing the oil which I had liberally squirted down the barrel.
However with an inch of wood out into the action it wasn't possible to dissemble the rifle. So a mini saw was made to cut the dowel tight to the breech face and the rifle was torn down. I used a 6" mini-hack saw blade with the set ground off one side to prevent damage to the breech face. It takes a lot of 1/4" strokes to cut a dowel.
Then to the local hardware for a new brass rod which was built up at 3" intervals with masking tape to cushion against deflection and the dowel was driven out. No harm to the barrel but the dowel has the neatest spiral imprints all along the first half of it's length. Oh yes, its .3215 and there is no tight spot as determined by a second slugging using the brass rod. Sometimes I make things harder than they need to be but at least I also took the time to give the old rifle a proper action cleaning while it was apart. Sheesh!