Light Dragoon Update

[Eddie2002]

Here's a couple pictures of the left handed Light Dragoon I'm putting together
The lock is made by L + R and is based on a British left handed rifle lock proper to the late 1800's but wasn't used on the issued Light Dragoons. I had to hone the barrel out to .69 caliber and just got a Lee .69 RB mold in from Midway. I used a .69 RB screwed onto a cleaning rod as a gauge for the honing, it was a little crude and took forever but worked great.
Still need to blend in around the butt plate and give it all a final sanding, cleanup and fit. The finish will be multiple coats of BLO on the walnut stock and I'll blue the barrel. Also need to replace the trigger guard with something a little fancier but I'm using what I have right now. It's been a lot of work and fun so far, looking forward to letting some smoke out of it.

[54bore]

Looking good!!

[dondiego]

What was the original caliber? How did you hone it out?

[Eddie2002]

It was .68 caliber to start with. The barrel came from a kit made in Japan back in the 60's and had fine cuts all the way down the bore that must of been left by the boring bar and needed to be smoothed out to make it serviceable.
I honed it out by cutting a 2 inch long slot in a medium walled metal tube that was longer than the bore and slid different grades of sand paper into the slot depending on how aggressively I needed to cut. I started at the mouth of the bore and worked in using a bunch of .69 gauge round balls to judge how much metal needed to be removed. The round balls wore out and gave a smaller diameter pretty quickly and needed to be changed out frequently. All the honing was done on a drill press and the final hone was full length with 120 grit and then 220 grit paper. It took over 8 hours to get it done. I didn't want to try cutting the bore out using my South Bend lathe which would of been quicker, I'm not that good with the old girl yet.