TC Contender schuetzen project, of sorts

[ohland]

I lost my common sense. Looking at making an offhand rifle where it is a fun gun. Ordered a 540XR adjustable butt plate, complete, from Canada. Numrich is out of them... The adjustable hook from the M1922 Springfield gave me an idea on how to attach a hook to the butt plate. The palm rest will be interesting...

What is an easy way to strip the garish finish from a TC forend? What is a good finish to replicate a decent late 1800s stock? Tung oil?

Yes, the 540XR butt plate is not period, but it is so much easier to install without significant alteration to the factory stock. And it works very well. If it gets where I want a real Schuetzen hooked butt plate, and want to reshape a stock, Track of the Wolf has two models of flat Schuetzen hooked butt plates, in brass or steel, to choose from.

Schuetzen & Swiss target rifle buttplates
http://www.trackofthewolf.com/List/Item.aspx/696/1

also:
Winchester-Helm Schuetzen buttplate
Schuetzen buttplate(s) different top straps over the buttstock
Flat Schuetzen buttplate
George Schoyen Schuetzen buttplate
Schuetzen Double Ball End Buttplate

[JHeath]

Does somebody make a Contender barrel with a false muzzle?

[AlaskanGuy]

I tell you what, the "Roger Method sticky" refinish in the gunsmith area would make that tc look really nice... Same method can be used to make a flatter finish without hand rubbing to a glossy finish.....

AG

[ohland]

Does somebody make a Contender barrel with a false muzzle?

I have never seen one. What is the smallest barrel diameter that has had a false muzzle installed?

[ohland]

I tell you what, the "Roger Method sticky" refinish in the gunsmith area would make that tc look really nice... Same method can be used to make a flatter finish without hand rubbing to a glossy finish.....AG

I would prefer the second, flatter finish. Most modern factory guns use a gloss or shiny finish (think of the Browning 1885 finish, beautiful but soulless).

[ohland]

In my plan for world domination, or at least a repeatable T/C Contender forend and rear sight jig, I ran into a wee problem. The 13/16 x 18" 12L14 rounds were spot on, the 13/16 ID bronze bushings slid over the ends. Then I got beat about the head with an empirical lesson in differences in tolerances.

I bought two Thomson shaft end supports for their linear shafting. Well, the bushing ODs are 1.004 or so, and the Thomson SB16 end supports are 1.002, if that. Thomson linear shafts are VERY close to size, as they should be. The bronze bushings for fan motors and whatnot are a bit looser. So I need to grab some 1" wooden rod, chuck it up in my lathe, rasp it down a bit, then unship it, cut a cross-slot with a thin saw, then stick some 300 or so grit wet/dry in there and burnish the ID of the shaft supports until things are easy to turn.

[ohland]

Not wanting any emergency go to waste so I could buy more tools (thanks for the inspiration, Rahm!) I found a spiral expanding hand reamer on fleabay. Straight reamers are cheap, but the shaft supports are slotted for clamping on the shaft, and will catch on a straight reamer tooth.

I want to be able to unscrew the cross-bolt and easily rotate the bushed 13/16 shaft for a 90 degree operation. Most fixed reamers only want to do +.005 -.000 and that does me no good.

[ohland]

My adjustable spiral reamer came in today, the long hard roll in a large priority USPS envelope gave me tingles down my leg. Ripping the internal cardboard tube open exposed gleaming steel, smooth turning but not loose threads, square spring coil (round OD, but the coil uses square wire), reamer teeth with edges of scintillating purity.... Then I put it down and walked away, must be strong.

If I smoked (which I don't) it would have been time for a cigarette, and a drag puff all the way down to the filter.

[27judge]

check with david white over at d&t custom guns he makes a muzzle ext. for the contender/encore that makes a 14-15 in factory barrel into a legal carbine. I had 4 of them he did a nice job very hard to fine the line where they screwed together. he talks about the process on his forum tks ken

[cbashooter]

what caliber? also with the break open a simple inline breechseater would work dandy.Just add a Pope style palm rest and you are ready to go.The Maynard break barrel was a good Schuetzen rifle in its day.

[cbashooter]

I have never seen one. What is the smallest barrel diameter that has had a false muzzle installed?

i had a 25 cal a number of years back that had about a .800 muzzle diamter.it has to be made when rifling hte barrel,its not an add on.

[ohland]

it has to be made when rifling the barrel,its not an add on.

A thousand pardons, but what is the significant difference? Sure, the muzzle would be exposed to slightly more wear, but methinks not much. The false muzzle would have a smooth bore, and would be a bit of a bother to properly align with the existing bore. Well, bore and ream a piece of slightly oversize stock to the bore diameter, then turn it between centers for OD to match the barrel.

So easy, you could do it with a Harbor Freight floor standing drill. That is if you are a real machinist like me (cough, cough...)

[ohland]

Well, I found an A1 in decent shape and snagged it. Took the head apart, and it is still tight. Wiped the internals down, put on some light bearing oil and reassembled it. Bright and gleamy inside, the index ring was still crisp. It was tight enough that it took some finger pressure to seat the inner assembly due to the air lock from the oil.

Now that I have a consistent mount (5C collet vs. a face-attached chuck) I can dispense with about half of my Rube Goldberg jig. But I will still go forward with pinning the bronze bearing to the 13/16 shaft, turning it down slightly to 1.000, and installing a 1/8" cross pin for 90 degree indexing.

[ohland]

Can't get away from things, past few months sorta busy, and April is gonna be hectic. But I got to adapting my jig setup for TC stuff.

Epic fail. Which jaw is not like the others?
Attachment 99096
Yes Virginia, putting the wrong jaw in the wrong place DOES make a difference.

Drilling for 3/32 roll pins.
Attachment 99098
Need to make a pin starter that holds the roll pin in a drilled hole so starting it can be done with TWO hands. But the short set I got from Brownell's does pretty good. One more hand would be nice...

Attachment 99099
Turned this with a Warner HSS insert. Nice having the little specks come off, not like crappy 1018. See the two roll-pins this side, I put one other on the far side, in case torque would develop. Such a shallow cut, I think just one pin would have kept the bushing from rotating.

Attachment 99101
Lastly, my original ideal, but now with an indexer. Of course, the shaft support now sits way higher, and I have no stock to make up a full-width support which will allow me to use the T-slots in the table.

[Just Duke]

I'm lost on this build. I'll just sit here and keep quite and learn........

[ohland]

I'm lost on this build. I'll just sit here and keep quite and learn........

Build? Try a controlled crash. I have something coming up and I have to punch out for a few weeks. But my arbor support stock (two blocks of 1018, yuk) came in, the 13/16 5C collet was shipped, and the spanner wrench (martin #458, 2.5 inch OD and 9/32 pin) for the A1's 5c lock ring was also shipped.

On a related note, my Lyman Super Target Spot should be in next week, and my Dad wants to mount it on a low wall 357 max (Winchester action, non-Winchester barrel, so no lost collector's value). Finally get to use my Forster's Universal Sight Mounting Fixture....

[ohland]

As feared, the 9/32 pin on the Martin wrench was too big. So the easiest thing to do was to chuck up the 5c nut in the A1, use a 1/4 drill to get the just about right centering, change to a 9/32 drill, then drill all three holes a little larger. You have to love angular relationships, where they are easy to set-up, repeatable, and dependable... Besides, metal has never lied to me, if you take off too much, it is what it is.

Attachment 99697
Simple to set up, even if the A1 is a little off-axis, the nut will be indexed pretty much the same under the drill (even a busted clock is right twice a day!). Note to self, if you don't tighten the clamping nut down on the ER-16 collet, not a whole heckuva lot of metal will be removed.... I must stand up for the R8 ER-16 collet chuck, its Bison/TMX, good Polish steel and machining. If you find a used Bison tool and it wasn't abused, and it is a reasonable price, drop the hammer.

Attachment 99698
From the back, plenty of room to tighten it up. It seems the pin on the spanner is tapered to the tip, so using the wrench will form the holes in the 5c nut even better.

Attachment 99699
This is my test rod, a 13/16 drill blank. Thought I'd lost it, but it was the first piece of steel that I picked up when getting ready to try the 5c collet for the first time. Could not do that on purpose if my life depended on it...

Now if I only did not misplace the flucking test indicator, got the Zero-Set out, and the indicator is somewhere else... Oh well, it was some cheap import junk anyways. After using a normal dial indicator off of the mill head to set the A1 so the blank is dead level to the head, I'll swap in the bushed 13/16 stock, put the shaft support over the bushing, tighten it up semi-snug, then I can measure from the table up to the bottom of the support to get the no-foolin' height needed to mill the steel supports to.

On another note, I sent an email to CPA Rifles (singleshotrifles.com) and asked if they have the Pope style palm rest in stock http://singleshotrifles.com/palmrests.html. MVA has some nice stuff as well http://www.montanavintagearms.com/ca...ok2qjr8i6tf2v4, but they sell their palm rest sans wood. Jeff's Outfitters Tuning Fork palm rest does nothing for me http://www.jeffsoutfitters.com/Image...//TUNINGFO.JPG. Sent another email out to get a pair of T/C Contender dovetail locks. Figured out what drill sizes and coatings for modifying a bare Freeland hooked buttplate casting for use with the 540XR buttplate system.... Now if I have more time....

[ohland]

check with david white over at d&t custom guns he makes a muzzle ext. for the contender/encore that makes a 14-15 in factory barrel into a legal carbine. I had 4 of them he did a nice job very hard to fine the line where they screwed together. he talks about the process on his forum tks ken

I have D&T bookmarked (I think) but what about a link for others less traveled on the web?

Ooh, $150 for a barrel extension. Maybe a Super 14 pistol caliber would do. Say $200 total or so, that would be OK.

http://www.dandtcustomgunworks.com/

[ohland]

Just got off the phone, Bear Creek has no dovetail locks. Matter of fact, since S&W bought TC, its tight.

Good luck to Bear Creek, nice folks.

www.parts4guns.com

[ohland]

Was able to get through to CPA Rifles, they had palm rests in stock.

$135 plus $6 S&H. God, I love Capitalism! By the time I bought the tools, got the plating done, etc, it would probably be close to if not more....