Best guns you've made up?

[Blackwater]

There's an awful lot of talent and knowledge here, and I thought it might be nice for you guys to show off some of your work that you're proudest of. What are your favoritemost guns you've worked on or made up for yourself or others?

Mine was a #3 Ruger. I cut off the barrel just behind that ugly 10/22 front sight and recrowned it, then cut the butt off just ahead of that dinky plastic butt plate, and added a 1" Pachmyr black 752B Decelerator recoil pad. This left a little hole at the heel of the stock where that plastic butt had been, and to fill it, I mixed some very fine walnut dust in some Accra-Glass, and then some black shoe and leather dye, adn filled it completely. When dry, I sanded the pad and epoxy insert together, rounding out the stock contours and generally thinning the whole butt, and grip section, so it felt good in my hands. The grip was slightly pear shaped with the larger girth at top to take up recoil a bit better, and the slightly thinner part at bottom so as to provide a slightly better tactile index of deflection.

Then I laid in on the forearm and slenderized it, eliminating the barrel band and giving it a slight schnabble at the fore. When I was done, this little carbine felt like a classic double "bird gun" in the hands, and I was VERY impressed with my handiwork and decisions. Sometimes even a blind pig finds an acorn if he just keeps rootin'! Seriously, this is the best #3 I've ever had my hands on, and I foolishly let a friend talk me out of it. He later moved to Chicago, and that gun was stolen in a burglary, so if you see one like that, please check it for stolen! I haven't found another one to modify like this, but if I ever do, it'll accompany me home if I can get it for anything near a reasonable price. It'd make a really awesome hunting rifle in my neck of the woods.

Another was done by a friend. He loaned an acquaintence some money and the guy left him his Savage 311 12 ga. as security. He was never able to repay the loan, and told my buddy the gun was his permanently. He wasn't a double gun fan, and just said, "Oh well," and put the gun in his safe where it stayed, until one day when he looked at it, and wondered how it'd shoot slugs. His great passion was hunting hogs in the Savannah River Swamp, amid the palmettos and tangles of brush and vines and heavy woods there. He tried some Foster slugs, and sure enough, they cross fired. However, in his disappointment, he noted how the barrels converged as they stretched toward the muzzle, and he thought to himself, "I wonder .... ." So when he got home, he cut 2" off the barrels with a hacksaw, and filed the muzzles visibly straight and square, and did a very good job of that. He took it back out, and sure enough, the slugs printed closer than before, but no brass ring yet. He judged by the incremental move that another inch off might make them print closer still, so he got his hacksay out, and cut again, and filed the muzzles off nicely and neatly. This time, the barrels printed still closer together. "Aha!" he thought, "I'm really onto something here!" And he WAS, too! This time they printed even closer together, and he continued until he wound up at 22.5", IIRC, where the gun printed nice round groups from both barrels at 75 yds. - exactly what he wanted. So, now he had a very short, light "double rifle" that he could hit with reliably out to significant range, AND he could grip it at the receiver balance point and literally run, with his long legs, through the mud and tangles and palmettos at top speed, and intercept and kill an awful lot of hawgeaus in the swamps. That ain't no small thing where and how he hunts them, either! He's as happy as a lark with the gun, and polished out the muzzles, had it reblued completely, and added a recoil pad to the butt to fit his tall frame a bit better. To date, it's his favorite huntin' gun, and he's got a passel of them. And all growing from a loan he very reluctantly made to a guy he knew! Sometimes, luck CAN work out fot the best!

Now you guys please show off some of your skills here, pix please. I don't have them of the two guns I outline above, unfortunately, and much to my regret, but there's nothing that quite stirs a real shooter's soul like pics of a really nice gun, especially if it's got nice looking wood on it. Here's your chance to show off your skills, so share what you have done with the rest of us.

[LAGS]

That would be very hard for me to do.
I am proud of my work on so many rifles and for different reasons.
I will just have to take a look and see what strikes my fancy at the time.
I may have to break it down by things like Favorite stock, or caliber, Custom Rifle , or military sporter.

[LAGS]

Well, lets start off with Favorite Caliber.
And the winner is.
A 35 Whelen built on a Czech Mauser 98/22 action with an Adams Bennet barrel that I installed.
The stock is a Boyd's prefinished mauser stock, That i stripped off the finish, Modified it like a nose cap, grip Cap, and some reshaping before finishing it in Hand Rubbed Linseed Oil.
The stock is Full glass bedded, and the barrel is free floated.
The finish on the metal is a Slow Rust Blue.
The trigger is a Bold with a side safety, and the bolt handle is one I welded on.
I did All the work myself, and love to shoot this rifle.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

Here's an unusual one that I displayed a year ago on another site (which I no longer visit!). The story is that when I was an active gunsmith I also had a few for sale. Once I got in several Chinese SKS rifles that were mechanically sound and had nice bores, but the stocks were pretty bad. The rifle in question was the last one remaining after the others had sold, and I just got tired of looking at it in it's used and abused condition, so in a slack time I grabbed it off the rack and worked it over. I removed the bayonet and mounting hardware and filled in the slots where that had been attached, polished and reblued all of the metal, and added a semi-fancy walnut sporter stock. I have others that I'd be happy to display when I can get around to digging them out and photographing them, but others went home with customers.Attachment 146602Attachment 146603Attachment 146604Attachment 146605Attachment 146606

[LAGS]

Lets see one of my best stocks.
This is one that I built from a blank.
It is walnut, and has a Maple or Birch band at the nose cap.
I cant remember, or maybe it was beachwood.
All I remember is that it was a Beach to get that angle right.
The rifle is a Turkish 98 with the small ring barrel.
I took a Adams Bennet Large Ring barrel in 25-06 and turned the shank down and rethreaded it for the small ring thread.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

Mr. LAGS, that is some very nice work indeed. The grip area is especially well done, graceful with ample hand room, a feature usually found only in truly custom stocks. Those Neidner-style grip caps make so much difference in the proportions and are great guides to work with. Very nice.

[LAGS]

That stock was my own layout from proportioning I learned years ago when I took a class for Custom Rifles.
The rifle is designed to fit my measurements.
I thought the grip looked a little Too Open, but when I shot it for the first time, I was very happy I did not make the grip angle any tighter.
People dont realise how much of a differance it makes when the angles of the stock are made to fit them.
And designing a stock for one type of shooting, and not expecting it to be as good for all types of shooting.
IE; a hunting Field offhand rifle wont be able to be shot as well off a bench or in the prone position.
and the other way around.

[nekshot]

thats as nice a sks as I have seen. Did you bed it like original and how does it shoot? Very nice!

[nekshot]

Lags, I agree very nice stock work. Oh for the days when I had access to wider pieces of wood. I rarely scrounge any thing over 6 inches wide nowadays!

[Blackwater]

Lags, you're so right about those grip and other stock dimensions. The mark of a really good custom stock is that it simply fits the owner, and we're all built differently, so it's always a one-off proposition. It's all those "little" things, like ovaling of the grip, just the right thickness at the comb, just the right diameter at forend, balance, etc. that make a man say "Wow! I could really SHOOT this thing!" when they pick it up for the first time. I've slenderized some grips for a friend's wife, and shortened the stock and added a pad, and she just raved about it when it was done. These are really simple things to do, really, but just require a little thought, reason and care in execution - I always just go slow and check often. Few people today recognize what a profound effect the simple diameter and contour of the grip has on a gun's use, but it affects us whether we realize or admit it or not. I believe almost all the old PN & KY rifles were "made to measure" for their owners, weren't they, at least usually?

[David2011]

Nice work, Lags.

I built one similar to your first post. It's been posted before but it's my best work so far so here it is again. It's on a Yugoslavian Mauser action and I used an Adams and Bennett barrel. The action was trued on a lathe. I chose 6.5X55 because of its reputation for accuracy and because I have a beautiful original Swedish Mauser in 6.5X55. Like yours, mine is on a stripped and refinished Boyd's stock but no nice caps. I went with a Buehler left hand safety because I can operate it without moving my hand off of the grip. It has a Timney Sportsman trigger. The stock originally had fragile "ears" on the sides of the bolt raceway and IMO made the stock look boxy so I cut them off and ground the raceway to a more pleasing shape. The extra serial numbers on the floorplate and trigger guard were crossed out with a chisel and restamped when it was rearsenaled so I welded, filed and polished them away. I put a fairly high polish on it and hot blued it. At the suggestion of a long time long range riflesmith the chamber is cut to minimum dimension. The bolt will just drop on the go gauge and I feel the bolt close on the cartridge. After cutting a new crown it shoots extremely well. It's pillar and glass bedded with the barrel free floated and is very plain looking except for the trigger guard. It was chucked up in a milling machine on a tilting vise and substantially reshaped. It's my favorite part of the rifle. The scope shown was an old blued steel Weaver fixed 4X that has since been replaced with a Redfield 4X-12X. It has taken deer and a lot of feral hogs.



David

[Artful]

Guns I think I'm done working on


Ruger #3 375 Big Bore


M38 Mosin


Mauser converted to 7.62x39 and feeding from WASR magazine


Romanian 1969 22LR trainer - scoped and barrel threaded for suppressor

Still working on

#4 Mk1 converted to 45 acp - putting a Bushnell Red Dot on it as the soda can front sight is too fragile.

[FrankG]

'Mel' a Melchoir Fordney inspired 50 cal flintlock from a blank . 15" LOP , simple forged trigger , 42" Montana tapered octagon barrel . Drop and castoff to fit me .

[Der Gebirgsjager]

I've always had "a thing" for as-issued military rifles, but I always wanted them to look at least as good or better than when they left the arsenal. Just my peculiar quirk, which has gotten me untold grief from "purists" who like them scraped, scratched and dinged. I suppose one can argue all day about whether such a rifle is historical or abused. I like the K98k a lot, but when I ran across the VZ-24 rifles I liked them even better. But I liked the bent bolt of the K98k better. So I altered the bolt on a VZ-24 and came up with (for me) what is the perfect 8mm Mauser military bolt action. Both of these rifles really shoot well. About 15 years ago I got in on the big import of Turk Mausers and ultra cheap Turk corrosive 8mm ammo. I bought several cases and a friend and I pulled the bullets and salvaged the powder and loaded it back into commercial Remington brass with CCI primers. We used 46 gr. of the Turk powder. The bullets were heavily crimped by the Turks and had a visible ring around their jackets, so we crimped them back in the same location, but less severely. Both of these rifles shoot 1 1/2 - 2 inch groups at 100 yds. using that ammo.

Attachment 146665Attachment 146666Attachment 146667

[Der Gebirgsjager]

One more item of interest...reminding you now that the thread is about what you consider to be some of your best work. That's not necessarily
your most beautiful work (is it?). I'm including this stock repair because it involved repairing a break of a nature I hadn't encountered before. The M1 stock is birch and a crack that began just a bit left of the center of the rear of the receiver and proceeded down the top of the wrist, but then started forward toward the muzzle along the grain. I had to study it for awhile, as I would have to stop the crack from continuing down the wrist, from continuing forward, and from separating upward. I drilled holes in the appropriate locations, one each below and above the wrist crack and one down from the top edge of the stock beneath the edge of the receiver. You can just see a bit of the third pin in the third photo. I forced as much Accraglas Gel into the holes as I could before running in the pins, which are threaded, then cut them off flush. The holes are all blind holes, so nothing is visible from the right side or bottom of the stock. I guess some folks would have taken pains to have hidden the visible ends of the pins, but I don't mind them. It's unlikely that this stock will ever break again, and it was restored to usefulness, which is why I consider it to be "good work". And it's easy to pick my rifle out of the rack at the gun club!

Attachment 146668Attachment 146669Attachment 146670Attachment 146671

[rockrat]

Mine was a T/C Hawken 50 cal that I bought as a Kit. Couldn't afford the regular rifle. Did the woodwork, draw filed the barrel, fit the lock, buttplate and all the other hardware. Looked just like a factory gun. Have replaced a few barrels on 700's and a few xp100's. Pulled the 22-250 barrel of an xr100 and put on a 243 takeoff barrel and set the headspace, but thats been about it.

[LAGS]

@ Nekshot
I had two guys that owned a Hardwood flooring company bring me 5/8 x 5 1/2 Flooring Planks in Walnut and Cherry.
I glued them together and made each of them a pistol grip stock for their Mosin Nagant 91/30's.
They plained the relief grooves off the backs of the planks before they brought it to me.
I lost the pictures of them on my compiter and only have a print out of them , but I dont think it will scann too good.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

He tried some Foster slugs, and sure enough, they cross fired. However, in his disappointment, he noted how the barrels converged as they stretched toward the muzzle, and he thought to himself, "I wonder .... ." So when he got home, he cut 2" off the barrels with a hacksaw, and filed the muzzles visibly straight and square, and did a very good job of that. He took it back out, and sure enough, the slugs printed closer than before, but no brass ring yet. He judged by the incremental move that another inch off might make them print closer still, so he got his hacksay out, and cut again, and filed the muzzles off nicely and neatly. This time, the barrels printed still closer together. "Aha!" he thought, "I'm really onto something here!" And he WAS, too! This time they printed even closer together, and he continued until he wound up at 22.5", IIRC, where the gun printed nice round groups from both barrels at 75 yds. - exactly what he wanted.

It sounds like an extremely successful project, but I think he was lucky, and the difference probably had more to do with stiffness and weight than convergence. If they just assembled the gun in one go, as Savage may well have done, the angle of convergence would be exactly the same after shortening.

Often though they hard-solder or braze the rear ends of the barrels together, with the lumps, typically converging (physically, not in terms of where they shoot) at some 20 twenty feet. They then regulate them by packing-pieces moved or interchanged until they get the same placement of right-barrel and left-barrel patterns. It isn't necessarily the degree of regulation that would make us perfectly happy in a rifle, though.

The trouble is, there is then slight inward or outward curvature in the bores. So shortening the barrels may make your pair-of-spectacles group either wider or narrower. You can generally recognize barrel curvature by looking through the bore (if it is reflective) at a straight line such as a window-sash. But curvature hard to detect matters in barrel regulation. I would try slugs of different weights first (varying the charge makes little difference). Another trick which may work is beveling the muzzles in opposite directions. A degree of beveling which isn't too noticeable can shift the points of impact quite a bit.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

This is my P14 Enfield-based .300H&H.


I wanted a heavy rifle which looked like a sporter, so fitted the heaviest straight-taper Shilen sporter barrel. People say a square thread is difficult to cut, but I found it very easy, as long as you grind your own lathe tool, with the blade slightly canted to suit the diameter you are cutting. I would have liked to go for a rosewood stock, but I have a strong allergy to the dust of all the Dalbergia species, so I decided to go for Andaman Padauk. I had an old Imperial Indian Forests Department sample, bought in a junk store, which was a beautiful wine-red, but what came from the timber merchant was a foxy bright brown, possibly African, but mellowed to a rather good chocolate colour later.

The bolt handle is from Brownells and MIG welded on. The trigger is Dayton Traister, with weight but not creep adjustment, but it doesn't creep, and is all steel. I decided no aluminium was coming into this one. The pistol grip cap is bronze, silver soldered with a silver spacer to give a white line, and textured over with a dental burr, which I think looks better when dulled.

I bought the Dayton Traiste trigger and cock-on-opening kit, not so much for cock on opening, which I didn't care about, but to speed up the lock time. I found that the Enfield safety (far superior to any trigger safety in my opinion) then wouldn't go on. But the removal of a pinhead-sized piece of metal from the notch in the new cocking-piece allowed the safety to go on and off in total silence, which it never did before, and yet lift the cocking-piece just the tiny amount which is essential for safety.

The padauk was a good choice, for I have doubts about the dimensional stability of rosewood. I full-length glass bedded the barrel with a small piece of rubber sheet under the tip, and one day I had to spend an hour struggling through shoulder-high fern in pouring rain. The rifle and I got as wet as wet can be, the day before I left on an overseas trip. So the barreled action sat separately for months. The point of impact was unchanged when it got put together again.

The usual ERA Enfield great hold in the receiver bridge had to be filled with a steel block and MIG welded over. (I'm told trying to do it all with weld can produce warping.) The bridge became angular so that the Redfield receiver sight, which I never used, could have its base modified and permanently soldered in place.

The before and after pictures are taken in the same place, and the changed seasons show how much on-and-off work it took. As usual the amateur working for himself can do things in ways for which the gunsmith daren't try to charge his time.

It is a good example of what contrary beasts rifles can be, for it was designed around bullets of about 190gr., and yet got better groups, a consistent 1⅛in. at 200 yards, with Sierra 125gr. spirzer soft-points than it ever did with MatchKings.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

This one isn't .quite a gun I have made up, but it is one I probably saved from being cannibalized for its ivory. It is a Belgian Spirlet revolver, usually described as 11.5mm, although the cartridge turns out to be virtually identical to the French ordnance round, usually referred to as 11mm. or 12mm. It came without trigger or hammer,d and with no real finish although it was unpitted.



The complex trigger guard was, surprisingly, the easier of the two to make. I had accurate patent drawings from a city library, AB Zhuk's book of accurate hand drawings, and dimensioned drawings sent by a friend who had a complete Spirlet. I had a .455 Webley trigger guard which could be modified to suit some other revolvers, but this, like many of the period, had the rear of the guard widened in a sort of foot to cover the hand slot. So it came to drilling, cutting along the dotted line, and a long, hard hand finishing job.

Accurately timing double action revolver, when you don't have a hammer to copy, is fiendishly difficult. I started out with an oversized wooden hammer with no axis hole, and moulded the nose in the receiver with car body. Then I drilled it where the receiver hole for the pin came. Basically the height of the single action bent controls where the hammer will rise to before releasing, and the distance from the axis of the pawl tip determines where the same thing will happen in double action.

Both of these jobs could be more easily done now that I have an imported mini-mill - just the kind on which many skilled machinists pour scorn, but for this kind of job any mill is a lot better than no mill. In particular I wouldn't have made it in two pieces and silver soldered them together. Last night I made a hammer lifter for a Tranter cap and ball revolver, which cocks by a secondary trigger, to replace the part onto which someone had soldered a brass tip generations ago.

I refinished the Spirlet by heating in animal charcoal (starting from garden store bone-meal) in a closed stainless vessel. This would probably work well, if heated to a higher temperature and quenched in bubble-filled water, for colour case hardening. But I was content with the lower temperature which was often used to give revolvers a smooth black. You can't do this to parts like the hammer which need to remain hard, and some more modern revolvers depended for strength on having a hardened cylinder. But probing with a needle established that this one didn't.