Building a Single Shot Receiver

[uscra112]

I buy old files even when they are shot to the heat death. Large ones especially. They can be annealed and cut or forged into excellent sears, extractors, and even hammers if you have a large enough file to start with. Then re-harden and temper. Learned from the Williamsburg gunsmith shop that most of the hardened lock parts and frizzens of colonial times were made from old files, which were imported from Europe.

There's a guy in England - Harry Eales - who posts on the ASSRA forum. He has built entire Sharps-Borschart replicas on a micro-milling machine of the sort that model-makers use. Not a Sherline, but close.

[oldred]

Old files definitely can be reincarnated in the forms of many different and useful items and I keep several pieces on hand at all times. I guess I'm kind of a pack rat and I tend to see value in what others might see as useless, a connoisseur of fine junk I suppose!

[uscra112]

One's man's trash is another man's treasure! I've also got 18" of a broken truck leaf spring that I found in the road. Over 5/16" thick and 4" wide. I ought to stuff it into the woodstove to anneal it right now, while I've got the stove running hot. It'll make a couple dozen single-shot hammers. When I had to replace a half-shaft in the rear axle of my van, I made sure I got the old one back. Almost four feet of excellent alloy steel. Bert Munroe whittled the connecting rods for his "World's Fastest Indian" from truck axles.

[terryt]

Hi:

I want to thank all of you for your response.

I do have a drill press and after reading this I will look into getting a small mill drill.

Back in the 50's when I was in school I had metal shop from the 7th though the 12th grade.

We were taught the use of files and had several projects were everything to do with removing metal was done with a file.

The brand of file we used was Simmons. Is Simmons still made and are they any good?

Thanks'

Terryt

[CastingFool]

Hi:

I want to thank all of you for your response.

I do have a drill press and after reading this I will look into getting a small mill drill.

Back in the 50's when I was in school I had metal shop from the 7th though the 12th grade.

We were taught the use of files and had several projects were everything to do with removing metal was done with a file.

The brand of file we used was Simmons. Is Simmons still made and are they any good?

Thanks'

Terryt

I did a quick search and this is what I found; www.simondsint.com

As to their quality, I cannot comment as I'm not familiar with them. Most of the time, I use Nicholson files.

[heathydee]

I have scratch built several single shot rifles including the one in my avatar - a falling block . I would recommend Frank De Hass's book of plans and would suggest building the Chicopee RF . A lot of the parts can be made with simple hand tools but a lathe and mill will be necessary for some operations . I built the Chicopee RF seven or eight years ago followed by the centre fire version in 30-30 .
The CF build was documented here . http://www.homegunsmith.com/cgi-bin/...ST;f=3;t=20227
The De Haas book also gives plans for two falling block rifles which did not interest me . I regarded them as cumbersome and ugly but since I still had an interest in building single shot rifles I came up with the falling block in my avatar which is an original design inspired by drawings by Bill Holmes .

[BCRider]

First off as a life long metal shop hobbyist I would say that making a receiver without a lathe or mill is possible. But it would require you to learn the old world skills with the hand tools. And not only will it take a long time to make up all the parts but your arms will look like you've been pumping iron at the gym! ! ! !

Since you'd lack the lathe for making small round parts you would need to rely on things like dowel pins or design the receiver so it doesn't require lathe turned parts that can't be made from simple operations using a hand drill and file.

The thing is that if you have the skills you need to make stuff like this totally by hand other than with the aid of a drill press then you really didn't need to post the question. If you start out to have a go at it anyway I'd strongly suggest you start with a .22 barrel from a donor gun and build your single shot receiver based on using the barrel. I'd suggest the simple plain stub found on Ruger 10/22 barrels since there's no threads to cut.

As for good files I have not seen any Simmons in years. Nicholson seems to be the only one I find that has one of the better quality names. But if you can find Sandvik files buy them. I've got a couple that have worked wonderfully for many years. I wore one out over about a 15 year period and the replacement started being used about 4 years ago. They are actually far better than Nicholson. And Nicholson isn't shabby by any stretch.

Other than for the oddballs that you only use once in a blue moon avoid Asian import files. They are very crude.

[oldred]

avoid Asian import files. They are very crude.

That should have read, "avoid those Asian objects that look like files".

[nekshot]

This thread turns my crank! I inherited a bunch of sandvik files from my dad and boy do they work nice! Back about 16 years ago I saw a smithy combo Lathe/mill commercial and a fellow holding a ss (sharp rifle type) that he built. I was hooked. I could not swing the funds for the smithy but I picked up a austrian lathe for 800.00 and a nice heavy duty drill/mill for 300.00 at auctions. All is well but in hindsite I wish I had bought the smithy combo. I hear all the negatives but I don't do production work, space is a premium and the smithy had what appeared to be good tech support for a newbie like me. The smithy had a 36 inch bed if I recall and most important a 1.5 spindle bore. I have the bed but my bore is around 1 inch and that limits me tremendously. If I ever move again I still might go with a combo and unload my stuff.

[Tatume]

The Smithy is a wood-working tool.

[oldred]

Those combo mills do have some advantages but they are mostly outweighed by the disadvantages. The better combos such as the "Granite" models can be much better than the cheaper Smithy models and almost any of the other brands which are mostly just junk. The problems with these things are both from one function interfering with another to the far more serious lack of rigidity, the "Granite" models seem to be a lot more rigid (although still lacking) and thus somewhat more accurate but at the price it's better to just go with a dedicated mill and lathe, besides from my experience the quality of even the Granite models is questionable. The flaw with these machines seems to be they have to make so many compromises in order to do everything it makes them unable to do anything really well!

For example look at the impressive swing on some of these machines, 16" of swing on a new machine for less than $2000 sounds great until a person looks at that incredibly tall and skinny tail stock! That tall thin tail stock combined with the light weight construction of the machine makes it all but impossible to prevent chatter when working most materials but even worse is the flex which will wreak havoc with accuracy! I know that some folks have done some impressive work with these machines but all things considered that same work can be done with a LOT less headache on dedicated design machines.

[oldred]

The Smithy is a wood-working tool.

Agreed, it's just that they are disguised as metal working tools!

[Boz330]

You might take a look at Frontier Armory action kits. The Farrow actions I believe are supposed to be one of the easier to complete and it is a falling block. Here are some of their kits. http://kwk.us/FA/ A buddy of mine got one of the 1885 Winchester kits which is one of the toughest to build and he has been working on it for several years and isn't done yet.

Bob

[nekshot]

Boz, are these guys really in business? I have tried numerous times in the last 3 or so years to find them and no luck. I would jump at some of their work in a heart beat.
Oldred, the good thing I quess I can say is I don't have a combo right now but the Granite was the model I looked into.

[Tatume]

A company called Blue Grouse was selling kits for an underhammer muzzleloading action. They guaranteed everything 100%. I bought a kit, and when I found the trigger/hammer geometry was off and the trigger was unsafe they told me "take it up with the foundry that made the parts." I don't even know who that was. I still have the parts.

[hickstick_10]

Boulder River foundry sells castings for the winchester highwall. The castings must be pretty good as they also do the ones for shiloh sharps.

Theres also a Remington hepburn kits from another company. http://www.uppermotradingco.com/index.html

[BCRider]

Nekshot, first off the combo machines often do not have the features you already take for granted on your separate tools. The most obvious one being room on the milling table to allow for clamping setups or indexing setups to be clamped down. Don't discount this feature as it isn't uncommon for a small part to need clamping or indexing fixtures that take up as much room as a large loaf of bread to hold something the size of a candy mint.

Other things I take for granted are not found on the combo machines. For example large diameter dials with wide and far more useable markings in .001 graduations instead of small diameter dials with .002 graduations. And very few combo machines have quick change gearboxes for threading.

I could go on but the list is long. The point is that you're much better off with the separate machines. If room is tight then consider how to mount your mill on a stand with retractable wheels so you can move it out of the way. Or organize your other stuff to make the other storage methods more compact so you have room for the machines. And if you really must combo anything then use the mill/drill as your drill press to save some room.

[oldred]

Of all the combo-machines out there the Granite stands out well above the rest, still I would only consider one if space was the limiting factor. For the cost of the Granite a person could buy a dedicated lathe of comparable or larger size and use a milling attachment, the milling attachment might be somewhat limited compared to the combo-machine but the lathe would be orders of magnitude better! JMO however and I have to admit the Granite seems to get better reviews than the others so it just might be a decent choice for some folks needs especially the in 40" version.

Have you looked at this machine?

http://www.grizzly.com/products/Guns...h-Stand/G4003G



Now about those receiver kits, I may get some disagreement from some who have built them but IMO it's better (and a LOT cheaper!!!!) to start with raw materials. Getting from a rough sawn block of 4140HT to the stage of that raw casting is the easy part and even that is mostly offset by the difficult set-up of that casting, I found that when working with raw stock set-up was a lot easier than trying to work to tolerance on semi-finished parts. The small pieces like triggers, sears, levers, etc are hardly a problem and again most of these are just as easily made, or even more so, from raw stock as opposed to castings. Another problem is making a mistake with an expensive casting, it's a lot easier to start over with a part made from raw stock than it is to have to do it with a casting that cost a lot of money and/or is simply not available as a replacement. After having done this a couple of times now I would choose raw stock over a casting without hesitation!

[BCRider]

I agree with you oldred. Another advantage for working from regular stock is that we can leave the part joined to the rest of the metal for longer so it's easier to hold in a vise while shaping the part.

An old apprentice test back when there were no computers or CNC was to file a round ball to a set diameter and with a fairly tight tolerance for size. Go a little too far and the size was off and it didn't matter how round it was. Get the diameter right but make it too egg shaped and it was a fail as well. It tested not only the apprentice's ability to work a file but also to measure. And the smarter ones figured out a way to mark or otherwise index the ball so they could spot the highs and lows. Yes it was a lot of work. But no more so than what we're considering in this thread for a wholly hand tool made receiver.

Oh, and once the apprentice got the nod from the master on the ball? He was told to take it back and file it down to a cube of a given size and tolerance with the faces to be flat to within an even smaller tolerance....

[Boz330]

Boz, are these guys really in business? I have tried numerous times in the last 3 or so years to find them and no luck. I would jump at some of their work in a heart beat.
Oldred, the good thing I quess I can say is I don't have a combo right now but the Granite was the model I looked into.

Here is some contact info http://frontierarmory.com/ but I'm not sure how current it is. My buddy got one of the highwall kits but it seems that this guy is a little hard to catch but he did get the mentioned kit in due time. He originally wanted one of the Farrow kits but it wasn't offered with a double set trigger which he was adamant about. Personally I really like the look of the Farrow action and think it would make a fine rifle.

Bob