Getting Results

Lately I have been working on the Pawn Shop Precision Mauser. I basically took a decent commercial Mauser from a pawn shop that didn't shoot very well and had a few issues and I'm making it shoot. The other day I went to the range and got some very good results.

The first target here is of my latest adventure to the range. I think I found a winning load! To date, I have done a re-crown to the barrel, floated the barrel, and ran some JB bore Polish through the bore to try and help with copper fouling. These were 105 Hornady A-Max's. I'm not sure of the speed but I'm guessing in that 2,850 fps range. I did get a flier, but the 4 shots went in under 0.330". That's pretty good for a stock rifle. I am going to do a little more testing with this load to prove it.

 This group was the very first time I shot it with some 85 gr Sierra's. As you can see minus our one flier, it initially shot these lighter bullets pretty good. However we are working with a 1-8" twist barrel. They do have the ability to shoot lighter bullets good, but usually shine with heavier bullets. There is more to it than just the weight of the bullet, but I'm keeping things simple here today.

 This was the 1st and 2nd round testing results. 13 and 14 were 1st with 85 gr sierra's. The group under #12 were with another rifle I have. #15 and 18 were the 2nd time out with a new crown and 85 gr sierra's. #16 was some 90 gr Noslers which didn't shoot, that day but that was before the barrel float, I might come back to these. The bottom left group was a lighter load with the 105 A-Max before the barrel float and after a crown job.

 This was the first group with 85 gr Sierra's after the barrel free float. I only shot one 5 shot group, and decided a second group wasn't going to tell me anything other than what this one did. I've since moved away from the 85 gr sierra's with this rifle. Typically these bullets shoot very well in many 6mm caliber rifles, and for sure in 10 twist barrels.

 I next tried some 95 gr Hornady SST's. This was an interesting group due to the face that my vertical dispersion was very little, but my horizontal was quite a bit. I did have a bit of wind that day, but I would like to try this group again. This again was after the float and crown.

We still have a bit to do with this rifle to try and get everything we can out of it. I was using a Leupold VX-II 6-18x40 scope. All these groups were shot at 100 yards off a bench with a bi-pod and rear rest.

Repairing a Horribly Machined Rifle Barrel

A few months back I bid on a few rifles that I was told were built by my wife's late Grandfather. He was a master gunsmith and builder of many custom hunting, long range, and bench rest rifles along with being an accomplished shooter and competitor. When I won this rifle I was quite excited about getting my hands on it. A few months went by before I was able to travel to pick it up and a few weeks back, I finally got it.

Upon initial inspection of it, the rifle looked the part of what he used to build. However upon closer inspection, some things didn't add up. First and foremost, it has been bead blasted on both the bolt, barrel, and receiver before it had been re-blued. I worked with the original builder quite a bit, and learned quite a bit of what I know from him. I have also closely inspected many rifles that he has built, and he tends to have some features that only he does, and a quality that is better than everyone else in the area at the time. On the flip side, I also worked with another gunsmith in town for a few years and got to learn about how he did things and his quality of work, which to say the least, wasn't up to par with my wife's granfathers work.

As I looked closer and started pulling things apart, things weren't adding up. The action looks correct to what I thought, but the barrel was not looking original to the original work on the action. First thing I noticed was the extractor cut was done with an end mill of some sort. I know the original builder didn't have a milling machine, and didn't use a milling attachment on his lathe. Second, there was a chamber designation mark which was consistent with the later gunsmith. Final factor was that the receiver ring had a truing cut made on it, which the original builder rarely if ever did. I saw him do one, once which had a repair done to it, but other than that his motto was to leave them be. The nail in the coffin was the bead blasted exterior on the entire rifle.

Next was when I started looking at the stock. The original builder used to use of all things Fiber Glass with fiber flock for bedding material. It is a very good bedding material believe it or not, and I have seen some extremely accurate rifles with fiberglass bedding jobs. The nice thing about it is that it sets fast! The stock even though it was a Boyd's, could have been used back then, and it had been bedded with fiberglass.

The best that I can come up with is that the receiver was originally done by my wife's late Grandfather. Later at some point, the rifle came into the second gunsmiths shop for a re-barrel. He then proceeded to put a new barrel on it, trued up the receiver ring, and refinished the entire barreled receiver.

That would have been just fine except for what was to come when I pulled the barrel off. First thing I noticed was there was some red stuff on the threads. First thought was axle grease of some sort. That quilckly got solved when I touched it and it was rock hard. I knew then exactly what it was, Loc-Tite! The red stuff non the less. The only reason it was on there was because he messed up when he cut the threads. The major diameter ended up being 0.008" under what it should be, and the minor diameter was 0.018" deeper than it should have been.

There is no reason to be off this far with square threads.However, it is still enough to thread onto the receiver and be fairly safe. The reason for the loc-tite was to take up the slop in the threads and give it a nice tight fit when it was cranked down. This was just the tip of the iceberg!

The crown looked like someone took a dull spoon to the end of it and the metal instead of getting a clean cut, was torn. The geometry of the crown was good, just a bad cut. Next was the cone had two angles in it and it had a bad C shaped ring scored into it. After checking bolt clearance I decided to clean up the cone. When I put it in the lathe I used the chamber to zero the barrel out because I do not currently have a rod long enough to reach the bore. The chamber was very concentric, however the threaded shank was 0.006" off from the chamber. WTF I was thinking to myself.

This is the point where I knew the correct solution is to cut off the barrel and set it back to correct both the chamber and the threads. However I decided to clean it up best I could and see how it shoots because I was able to bore scope it, and it has maybe 500 or so rounds left on it. When I cleaned the cone up with a SINGLE 45 degree cone, it cleaned up from the chamber to the threads without going deeper into the chamber. This tells us that when he was chambering, he needed to go deeper to set head space and cut a second 49 or so degree cone to get the depth. Why he did this.... I don't f'ing Know!

Upon further ispection, the chamber was scratched up and had a light score in it which cleaned up without much effort. On top of all that the original cone was cut off center.

When I flipped it around to clean up the muzzle there wasn't much surprise except that it too was cut off center.

Moral of the story, It wasn't what I thought it was. I am happy to have the receiver built by the Grandfather, but the barrel was completely F'ed up by the second gunsmith and it was just sloppy work. I never teally agreed with how the second smith did a lot of things and this barrel reflects it. I have shot several rifles built by my wife's Grandfather and they are all extremely accurate rifles. Many of them mind boggling with today's methods of barreling.

I now have done all I can do besides setting it back so we will see what happens.

Check Out both videos on my Youtube channel to see what I did!
 Part I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X5d39M7fTE
Part II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9f2m70bUdE

Summer time New Projects and a new Clausing 8520!

As always the spring time and the start of a new Trimester is always busy for me. Getting things rolling with school and getting back into the swing of things along with all the extra yard work that comes with summer time! I have decided to make a few equipment changes in my shop. Although the Clausing 5914 is a great lathe and well suited for doing barrels, I made the decision to sell it and replace it with a Clausing 8520 milling machine. I still have my Rusnok for now, but I am really in need of a larger machine for doing gunsmithing work. Being that I'm still in the basement, I'm not ready to jump into a full size Bridgeport. I'm also very partial to US made machinery. I ran across a guy a few months back that had an 8520 and we decided on a price and he held on to it until I was ready to pick it up. A couple weekends ago I went to pick up the machine. A few days later the 5914 lathe was sold and out of my basement.



In with the New!

I have some plans with the guy and it will allow me to do much more than the little Rusnok. The main advantage is the adjustable knee! I can actually fit something under this guy and do things such as drill and tap a receiver, inlet a stock, or mill something longer than 6"!

I'm also just about ready to start 3 new large exciting projects that will be covered in a 3 videos series on my youtube channel about gunsmithing.

Stay tuned and check back regularly!

It's been a busy start to the year! I spent a lot of time doing school work. Taking part I national boards, and finishing the term with good grades.

I have been busy also with my shop work. I have been slowly gathering a few tools to chamber a couple future rifles. I'm almost there, so I will be able to start making some new videos on gunsmithing.

I also picked up a barrel that will need some work o bring it back to what it should be.

For some reason I have been getting into buying, fixing and re-selling old Drill presses. I am working towards getting one that I like to keep for myself. I am now on 8th press and I think I am going to settle on a 14" Delta DP200 benchtop model which I will have photos of soon. Everything on it is in very good condition minus the head casting, which was cracked and will need to be replaced.

I'll be posting more in the future.

In the Mail!

It's official, after talking about it for close to a year now, I finally ordered a 6mm BR reamer for my project that has been sitting on the back burner. I'm not sure exactly what will show up but I ordered a few extras to go along with my reamer. Usually they say it can take up to 8 weeks to get a reamer, but the 6 BR is so popular that you would think that they would be cranking these things out one after the other. I bought the Lapua reamer with the .2704" neck. Not really sure what the lead and angle is, but I'll find out. I should have specified, but they were on sale from PTG and I think I read once upon a time that these are around .090" lead. We'll find out!

No pictures to promote today, but I can throw up another project I picked up in the meantime.

Here's a 1970 CB450 that I'm going to attempt to make a cafe racer out of. Currently not running, but the new kick starter pedal should arrive tomorrow to test it out! I have a couple gas tanks too, but the one I want to use has a couple dents in it. I might just have to use it though because it makes the bike look so much better!

"New" Dunlap "Craftsman" drill press project for my shop!

One of the main items missing from my shop at this time is a decent drill press. Now, due to my space constraints, I'm not left with many options are far as bigger machines go! I ran across someone a while back that posted a neat photograph of a restored South Bend drill press. These are nice little machines and pretty accurate along with being able to get them in a bench top model! I've been keeping an eye out for something, but there isn't much around in the usual places such as Craigslist and eBay. I didn't want to spend much money ether being that I'm still a Grad student after all!

About a week ago I was perusing Craigslist and ran across some poor listing with some bad pictures of a little Dunlap bench top drill press! I wasn't sure what it was exactly, but after doing a little bit of research it turns out that it is a Craftsman private label made by someone else for Sears and they slapped a Dunlap tag on it. most likely an Atlas, but there were a few other manufacturers for this machine as the years went on.

I went to take a look and ended up taking it home for $35! Now that I have it home, I was able to look at it a little further and figure out what was going on because it has a few issues. Cosmetically it's in very nice shape and a good paint job and a little buffing will make this thing look new again. However, the motor does have a funky clicking noise which may be a bad bearing, and the spindle sleeve and spindle drive pulley has been wallowed out!

New project on the lathe! In the coming weeks I'll be taking it all apart and showing how I repair that sleeve on my YouTube Channel! Other than that it is in pretty good shape! Everything is there, the bed is almost perfect and no other parts are broken or missing. I will need to add a on/off switch and maybe a light to this guy!

Keep an eye out in the comming weeks for this repair and the restoration of this little drill press! It's not quite the capacity I was looking for, but it will do the job for now!

Finally in my new basement shop!

Well, I just wanted to tell everyone that I am now in my new basement shop with just about all my tooling. I tried to make it big enough to fit everything, but as usual, it's still too small. I am able to fit everything that I currently have in there, but it doesn't leave much for any new acquisitions. I'll be making a video update on my YouTube channel to show everyone what I have going on.

This is one half of it, and I'll have to grab a photo of the other half. As you can see in the photo, I got myself a new power hack saw which replaced my old green Jefferson saw. More to come on that.

If you look, you can see that I painted the floor too. I used to work in a Diamond Vogel Paint store which is similar to a Sherman Williams store and I learned a lot about what to use, where, and how. I prepped the floor as it should have properly been done, and I painted. The only thing is I used a cheap Dutch Boy porch and floor paint. Needless to say, it's junk! I knew it wouldn't hold up like a good 2 part epoxy would, but I didn't feel like spending $2-300 for this floor. We'll most likely be moving in a couple years and they cheap stuff will get me by. However it already has some scuffs and scrapes in it from very light use! Long story, if you're doing your shop floor and you want it to last, the minimum I would suggest is the Rust-0-leum epoxy products available at most hardware stores. If you want the best, go to a paint store like Sherman, or Diamond Vogel and they can set up up with some amazing stuff! The best stuff we sold when I was there would stand up to brake fluid, and that stuff is nasty! It was designed for airport hangers! Cost about 6-7 years ago was about $150 for 1.5-2 gallons.

If you look in front of my south bend lathe, you can also see an anti-fatigue mat that I found on sale for $5 on a trip back to my hometown. Unfortunately when I went to move it the other day, it pulled up half of the paint along with it.

I have some big plans for 2016 and hope to do at least 2 complete rifle builds! I am extremely busy from now until the middle of April because I have my Part I NBCE Boards. I'll try and get up as much as I can with my channel, but it will be a little hit and miss for the next couple months! I have several videos I want to get done but not enough time! I also plan to upgrade both my computer and editing software to give you guys much better quality videos along with getting one or two more cameras and some mics.