{"id":2153,"date":"2008-03-22T11:50:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-22T16:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=2153"},"modified":"2008-03-22T21:06:07","modified_gmt":"2008-03-23T02:06:07","slug":"simple-gunsmithing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/?p=2153","title":{"rendered":"simple gunsmithing"},"content":{"rendered":"

It takes a special sort of a geek to want to be a gunsmith, and that’s me. I am an adequate machinist that I could have headed in that direction professionally, but there’s not a lot of money in it and it’s an on again\/off again business in these parts. I know two people who do it professionally. They get by, and not much more. <\/p>\n

When I rebarreled my 30-30 Marlin to 44 Mag last fall, a dozen people said “No! You can’t do that! You have to be a gunsmith, and you don’t know what you’re doing!!!”. Not only did it work, but quite a few people are jealous of my little levergun. <\/p>\n

I’ve built my own 45 out of gunshow parts, I’m making a 7.62 x 39 bolt gun from an old spanish mauser action. I’m in the process of building a falling block 22 from whole cloth. <\/p>\n

I wouldn’t reccomend anyone do any of this stuff, because a: the legalities of modifying\/working on firearms are complex and you can cross the line and not know it, and b: you can kill or maim yourself damned easily just out of not understanding some basic engineering principles. SO kids, don’t try this at home.<\/p>\n

In fact, the only “gunsmithing” I would reccomend ANYONE do, is learning how to dismantle and clean their weapons. There are a LOT of good primers on this, so I’m not gonna go into detail, but plenty of guns have been kept in good firing condition by keepting them properly clean and nothing else. <\/p>\n

I shot the 45 last weekend, for several hundreds of rounds. THe guys at Precision Cartridge <\/a> know their shit.<\/p>\n

(btw:The reloads fed like butter. And shot reliably- I found one cracked case, but only after it had chambered and shot properly.)<\/p>\n

I did have one stovepipe, and it dawned on me that the feed ramp in the 45 had never done that before. Before I blued it, that was. <\/p>\n

Inspection with a magnifying glass showed that yes, the fine nitride of the blue had made a light “matte” finish on the feed ramp. So today, I did the only thing a person with no knowledge should ever do to an auto, and that was to carefully polish the feed ramp. <\/p>\n

The ramp on my 45 was smooth, but the matte surface of the blue had left a slight roughness- enough to (occasionally) grip the nose of a bullet. This would be enhanced by the soft lead of a silvertip. <\/p>\n

So i took some fine crocus cloth and wrapped it around a dowel, and carefully removed the blue from the feed ramp. And now I have to go to the range and test fire again. Bummer. <\/p>\n

More: <\/strong><\/p>\n

As Tam accurately points out it’s not a stovepipe, it’s failure to feed. There used to be a specific name for that, but stovepipe was what got stuck in my head, and there it is still. Anyone remember that? because obviously I don’t. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It takes a special sort of a geek to want to be a gunsmith, and that’s me. I am an adequate machinist that I could have headed in that direction professionally, but there’s not a lot of money in it and it’s an on again\/off again business in these parts. I know two people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2153\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neanderpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}