Bret4207
10-05-2006, 09:15 AM
Last year I busted the firing pin in my Puma 44 mag. Griff was kind enough to send a replacement firing pin to me to try which apparently is for a slightly different model or maybe a real Winnie '92. At any rate it didn't fit and I wasn't about to start grinding it down. (Honest to God Griff, I'm mailing it back sometime this century, I promise!)
Back before I got educated and began my glorious and thrilling career as a world famous crime fighter and all around good guy, I used to work in my Dads gunny shoppe. Making and fixing firing pins isn't new to me. So I dusted the cobwebs from the brain and took a look at the broken pin. OK, I know how to do this. Out comes the mic and a some measurements were made. The original pin was obviously a bit too brittle and I needed to drill it anyway, so I annealed the forward section right off. Chucked it up in the ancient Atlas 6" lathe and center drilled it about 1/4" deep. Dad had a whole slew of small pins he found someplace that we'd used for repair pins for years. I fit one to the hole and then the problem came. Yeah, I can find the silver solder, but where did I put the flux?! I KNOW had at least 2 kinds of silver solder flux here. Saw them not 6 or 7 years ago! I didn't even bother looking for the Brownells silver solder and flux paste that works so easily. I have to order some of that again someday. After a 45 minute search I found both bottles in with the decoys. Now why didn't I think to look in among the duck decoys for flux in the first place? I'm sure thats where everyone else stores their flux. So I get everyting fluxed and apply the heat. Then I take it all apart and clean everything up like I should have done first and re-apply the heat. I had to shorten the pin a bit and did that. Whoops. OK, get another pin and fit it and solder it in. Lets try going a little slower on this one. Reduce the diameter to fit the firing pin hole in the breech block and viola! Round the face nicley and make sure it's smooth. Bingo, got it. Now to recall how to put the darn gun back together. OK, I won't bore you with the 7 times I almost got it and had to take it back apart. I only ened up with 1 extra part left over and it looks suspiciously like a carburator off the Simplicity tractor I'm also working on so I should be OK. Hunt up a 44 mag factory round and step out the back door of the garage. Figure out where the the herd of sheep and goats are, check to see if the neighbors cows have trampled his "fence", (White Birch fence posts! Sell a steer and buy some real fence posts wouldja' pal!), and the firing line is clear. Stick the round in the magazine. Take the gun apart again and put the lifter where it belongs. Repeat the shell into the mag excersize, chamber and KABOOM! (Have a laugh as the sheep jump 4 feet straight up in the air, turn 180 degrees and head for the barn at warp 3. The goats just watch the sheep, shake their heads and sigh disgustedly.) Check for missing fingers, pierced primers and depth of pin strike. Looks good.
Total work time- about 45 minutes. Time spent procrastinating, whining, emailing, web searching and generally putting off the inevitable- nearly a year. And to think I can breath and walk at the same time....
Back before I got educated and began my glorious and thrilling career as a world famous crime fighter and all around good guy, I used to work in my Dads gunny shoppe. Making and fixing firing pins isn't new to me. So I dusted the cobwebs from the brain and took a look at the broken pin. OK, I know how to do this. Out comes the mic and a some measurements were made. The original pin was obviously a bit too brittle and I needed to drill it anyway, so I annealed the forward section right off. Chucked it up in the ancient Atlas 6" lathe and center drilled it about 1/4" deep. Dad had a whole slew of small pins he found someplace that we'd used for repair pins for years. I fit one to the hole and then the problem came. Yeah, I can find the silver solder, but where did I put the flux?! I KNOW had at least 2 kinds of silver solder flux here. Saw them not 6 or 7 years ago! I didn't even bother looking for the Brownells silver solder and flux paste that works so easily. I have to order some of that again someday. After a 45 minute search I found both bottles in with the decoys. Now why didn't I think to look in among the duck decoys for flux in the first place? I'm sure thats where everyone else stores their flux. So I get everyting fluxed and apply the heat. Then I take it all apart and clean everything up like I should have done first and re-apply the heat. I had to shorten the pin a bit and did that. Whoops. OK, get another pin and fit it and solder it in. Lets try going a little slower on this one. Reduce the diameter to fit the firing pin hole in the breech block and viola! Round the face nicley and make sure it's smooth. Bingo, got it. Now to recall how to put the darn gun back together. OK, I won't bore you with the 7 times I almost got it and had to take it back apart. I only ened up with 1 extra part left over and it looks suspiciously like a carburator off the Simplicity tractor I'm also working on so I should be OK. Hunt up a 44 mag factory round and step out the back door of the garage. Figure out where the the herd of sheep and goats are, check to see if the neighbors cows have trampled his "fence", (White Birch fence posts! Sell a steer and buy some real fence posts wouldja' pal!), and the firing line is clear. Stick the round in the magazine. Take the gun apart again and put the lifter where it belongs. Repeat the shell into the mag excersize, chamber and KABOOM! (Have a laugh as the sheep jump 4 feet straight up in the air, turn 180 degrees and head for the barn at warp 3. The goats just watch the sheep, shake their heads and sigh disgustedly.) Check for missing fingers, pierced primers and depth of pin strike. Looks good.
Total work time- about 45 minutes. Time spent procrastinating, whining, emailing, web searching and generally putting off the inevitable- nearly a year. And to think I can breath and walk at the same time....