Haven't posted much lately, especially here in the Gunsmithing Forum. Since I became General Manager I haven't been on the lathe at work. I spend all my time coordinating things, dealing with employees, putting out fires, talking to customers. You know, GM stuff.....
I did get my checkride finished for Civil Air Patrol, and I learned my LRBR heavy gun now likes to be cleaned hard.......and it's hard to argue with the 1000 yd 10-shot groups of 5.7, 3.9, 4.2, and 5.0 that it rewarded me with a couple matches ago.
I have done some machining work at home. A buddy called in a favor and made me chamber a dinky Sako A2 in 25 Creedwin. It was a super skinny Pac-Nor barrel. It dialed-in nice and I got the best looking button rifled throat I have seen. However, I had to finish threading the muzzle with a thread file. The muzzle end was so bendy that it would push away and not cut when I got close to being done, and this is with high quality threading inserts and proper tool height.
The Sako A2 was a hassle with the protruding extractor, and it took me a bit to figure it out. It was also 95 degrees in the garage. The Astro-Swiss flows REALLY well from my 1/4 HP immersion pump at 95 degrees.
The bendy muzzle got me to thinking about a better way to hold a barrel than my inboard spider. I took one of those Grizzly gunsmith spiders and fit it to a thick D1-4 back plate. The spiders four screws are 1/2" in from the face of the spider, so there is always an extra half inch of unsupported barrel vs a chuck. Most of the time that's no big deal, but it got me to thinking.
So I bought a Precision Matthews 6″ Adjustable Ultra Precision 3 Jaw Chuck, D1-4 Mount. It cost $699.
It's a very nice chuck, probably 95%+ of the Bison Set Tru we have at work. The biggest difference is the grub screw on the PM push where they pull on the Bison--at least I think they pull on the Bison. I don't use that lathe so I could be wrong.
I put a barrel stub in the PM after I had it mounted. After 2.5 hours I still couldn't get it dialed in. I would get it to about .0003, make one last tweak and then lose the whole thing. It was also 90+ degrees in the garage, so I walked away wondering if I had wasted my money.
I called PM the next day, and concluded I just needed to "pay my dues" with learning the set-tru design.
About three weeks later (yesterday), I got to mess with it again. I needed to throat my "New" (FN) Winchester M-70 in 33-28 Nosler a little longer, and then Plus P the throat. So I had to dial in the barrel based off my existing chamber. It went fine with the PM Chuck and I got it where it needed to be. The longer throat looks awesome as does the Plus P. Then again I do have my PM 1340 GT very well aligned. I am sure it also helped that I now have a mini-split in my garage that keeps the third bay comfortable.
I also decided to open the action for a Wyatt's extended magazine box. That was a pain, but I got it all done, have 3.825" of mag length, and it feeds and ejects like a CRF Model 70 should.
I do need to learn how to use my Mill better. It is a PM 833T. I installed power feeds and a DRO. It only goes to 1500 RPM, and I didn't get a great finish as I machined on the action. I guess I need to take the time to figure out what end mills to get, similar to what I did for my lathe tooling. I was able to polish everything up with my new Dremel and a cartridge roll. My old Dremel just up and died, but it was probably 20 years old.
While I did get everything machined okay, I was having a hard time getting the rifle to feed. I stumbled across a couple Youtubes by Kevin Wyatt, and learned something.
At work we can often fix a feeding issue--which is almost always the follower heel dropping, by increasing spring pressure. Kevin said that when we lengthen the action for a longer mag box, the follower spring needs to move rearward on the floor plate. He said to strake it in place. I wasn't able to do that, but I did use double stick tape to hold the spring on the floor plate. I guess I'll expoxy it in place as the tape won't hold forever. But it was amazing how it went from me thinking I had ruined the feeding to having it work nearly perfect just by moving the magazine spring back. Time for load dev.
That's it for me. I don't know when I'll be able to stick my head back up.....
I did get my checkride finished for Civil Air Patrol, and I learned my LRBR heavy gun now likes to be cleaned hard.......and it's hard to argue with the 1000 yd 10-shot groups of 5.7, 3.9, 4.2, and 5.0 that it rewarded me with a couple matches ago.
I have done some machining work at home. A buddy called in a favor and made me chamber a dinky Sako A2 in 25 Creedwin. It was a super skinny Pac-Nor barrel. It dialed-in nice and I got the best looking button rifled throat I have seen. However, I had to finish threading the muzzle with a thread file. The muzzle end was so bendy that it would push away and not cut when I got close to being done, and this is with high quality threading inserts and proper tool height.
The Sako A2 was a hassle with the protruding extractor, and it took me a bit to figure it out. It was also 95 degrees in the garage. The Astro-Swiss flows REALLY well from my 1/4 HP immersion pump at 95 degrees.
The bendy muzzle got me to thinking about a better way to hold a barrel than my inboard spider. I took one of those Grizzly gunsmith spiders and fit it to a thick D1-4 back plate. The spiders four screws are 1/2" in from the face of the spider, so there is always an extra half inch of unsupported barrel vs a chuck. Most of the time that's no big deal, but it got me to thinking.
So I bought a Precision Matthews 6″ Adjustable Ultra Precision 3 Jaw Chuck, D1-4 Mount. It cost $699.
It's a very nice chuck, probably 95%+ of the Bison Set Tru we have at work. The biggest difference is the grub screw on the PM push where they pull on the Bison--at least I think they pull on the Bison. I don't use that lathe so I could be wrong.
I put a barrel stub in the PM after I had it mounted. After 2.5 hours I still couldn't get it dialed in. I would get it to about .0003, make one last tweak and then lose the whole thing. It was also 90+ degrees in the garage, so I walked away wondering if I had wasted my money.
I called PM the next day, and concluded I just needed to "pay my dues" with learning the set-tru design.
About three weeks later (yesterday), I got to mess with it again. I needed to throat my "New" (FN) Winchester M-70 in 33-28 Nosler a little longer, and then Plus P the throat. So I had to dial in the barrel based off my existing chamber. It went fine with the PM Chuck and I got it where it needed to be. The longer throat looks awesome as does the Plus P. Then again I do have my PM 1340 GT very well aligned. I am sure it also helped that I now have a mini-split in my garage that keeps the third bay comfortable.
I also decided to open the action for a Wyatt's extended magazine box. That was a pain, but I got it all done, have 3.825" of mag length, and it feeds and ejects like a CRF Model 70 should.
I do need to learn how to use my Mill better. It is a PM 833T. I installed power feeds and a DRO. It only goes to 1500 RPM, and I didn't get a great finish as I machined on the action. I guess I need to take the time to figure out what end mills to get, similar to what I did for my lathe tooling. I was able to polish everything up with my new Dremel and a cartridge roll. My old Dremel just up and died, but it was probably 20 years old.
While I did get everything machined okay, I was having a hard time getting the rifle to feed. I stumbled across a couple Youtubes by Kevin Wyatt, and learned something.
At work we can often fix a feeding issue--which is almost always the follower heel dropping, by increasing spring pressure. Kevin said that when we lengthen the action for a longer mag box, the follower spring needs to move rearward on the floor plate. He said to strake it in place. I wasn't able to do that, but I did use double stick tape to hold the spring on the floor plate. I guess I'll expoxy it in place as the tape won't hold forever. But it was amazing how it went from me thinking I had ruined the feeding to having it work nearly perfect just by moving the magazine spring back. Time for load dev.
That's it for me. I don't know when I'll be able to stick my head back up.....
