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Grinding recievers

spitfire_er

Silver $$ Contributor
In an effort to make finer, higher quality custom rifles, I picked up a surface grinder. Among the million other uses, I plan to grind a few old M1917 style recievers OD. While this won't be my first project on the grinder or nowhere near my first rifle build I was wondering if i could get some pointers on grinding recievers.

While I do have a rotary table i was wondering what the most common way to do it is. Just thinking in my mind, I would think after mounting the reciever in whatever fixture, you would also contour an OD cutting concave radius on the stone with a radius dresser to match the desired radius. Of course this would be done after getting everything very close on the mill. While I have done both flat and radiused rear bridges, I tend to do a radiused rear bridge more often than not. My past work has been done on the mill with final fitting by hand with radiused rings, and just milled with flat ones. My goal is to get better finishes quicker and more accurate without all the hand work. A quick cleanup up front will be nice too for consistancy.

Any advice would be appreciated.
 
Most, I said most custom builders, grind them on a surface grinder between centers with an indexing head.
All of my photos all messed up from all these photo places wanting to merge and charge a lot of money to host them. I'll get it straightened out and then I can post the photos of the surface grinding. I was lucky, my M17 did not have the ears or duck pond.
 
There was a time when you COULD set up the receiver on a flat surface , install a set of receiver screws and rock the receiver with a cupped grinding stone . Some of the Gunsmithing books of the 40-50s show the set up . Crude , dangerous but it can work . I now use an older lathe with my tool post grinder . When I decide the value isn't be decreased by modifying a military arm .
 
I've done them on a surface grinder and tool post grinder. In school they had a jig that looked somewhat like a coat hanger for grinding the top radius. The flats were ground using the feed and the top radius was just indexed by hand. The coat hanger jig mounted to the mandrel prevented you from rotating into the flat by hand. Everything was ground along the bolt axis in school, even the front receiver ring. It worked well enough to get into Gesswein range. :) I learned a hard lesson a long time ago by bending the shaft on my own tool post grinder grinding radially. I let one slip and it got sucked into the wheel. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, maybe because it made a prettier radiused transition under the stock line. It has been a shop ornament ever since.
 
I've done them on a surface grinder and tool post grinder. In school they had a jig that looked somewhat like a coat hanger for grinding the top radius. The flats were ground using the feed and the top radius was just indexed by hand. The coat hanger jig mounted to the mandrel prevented you from rotating into the flat by hand. Everything was ground along the bolt axis in school, even the front receiver ring. It worked well enough to get into Gesswein range. :) I learned a hard lesson a long time ago by bending the shaft on my own tool post grinder grinding radially. I let one slip and it got sucked into the wheel. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, maybe because it made a prettier radiused transition under the stock line. It has been a shop ornament ever since.
Been there, done that , don't feel bad ..
 

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