Guns and Ammo Thread

Heh, there's no way I could own a gun and not want to take it apart and reassemble it.

 

This is the best write-up on cleaning .22s that I know of: http://www.rrdvegas.com/rimfire-cleaning.html

You don't need to go crazy like I do with my target rifle (cleaning after every target, a common practice in the benchrest world) but overall the thought that .22s don't need to be cleaned is a myth.

10/22s are pretty simple and easy to disassemble. Remove two screws, pull the barrel band off, and you can separate the stock and barreled action. Pop three pins and you can take the trigger and bolt assembly out. Bill Ruger was a smart guy.

$35 for disassembly and inspection ain't bad. Reading this makes makes me cringe though... a basic set of hollow-ground screwdriver bits that fit your guns screws is worth every penny. Standard drivers with a tapered bit are good at wrecking screw slots a la that previous owner.

 

That particular PO was my father-in-law. I think I've spoken ill of the man on this thread or in a pm to you before. One of the worst gun abusers on the planet, that guy.

 

I am celebrating Independence Day by finishing up the blueprint for a new project... another stock for my CZ 452 .22lr rifle. The first custom stock I made for it wasn't bad but featured some butcher grade workmanship in areas, frankly because I didn't know what the hell I was doing then and can do way better now. So here's a very slim and sharp little sporter design with some classic looks and dimensions to fit my frame.



The blank I'll use is a lightweight stick of claro walnut that was one of the best out of a dozen "factory second" blanks I got for about $35 each off Ebay a few years ago. It was a screaming good deal for a guy like myself who wanted to learn and fuck up some cheap blanks and a few were worth saving for projects like this one now.



Its flaw was a bunch of drying cracks along the underside of the butt area but I filled them in with epoxy and will try to avoid that area while carving out the stock too. It's probably not suitable for a paying job and is too soft and porous for really fine checkering but since it won't leave my possession I can deal with it- lots of nice color and figure in here.



No idea when I'll have it finished up since I'm about to take on another big commissioned job that will dominate my time (a pair of Ruger no. 1 rifles, hopefully more on this soon), but I have wanted to re-do that CZ stock ever since completing the first one I made for it.

 

A buddy didn't zip his gun case all the way up and as a result his Miroku (Korean made, Browning designs) 12 gauge double shotgun fell onto pavement- cracking and chipping the toe of the stock. Ouch. Fortunately the rest of the gun was fine, but I've got some work to do. He wants the stock fixed, plus a soft recoil pad added and I have suggested the checkering is re-cut to complete the patterns while I'm refinishing the stock. Step one was fixing the crack.



Next was cutting and fitting a wedge of wood to the stock to make a patch, and epoxying it on.



Contoured it to match the rest of the stock.



Now I'm a little pissed because I did a pretty good job fitting the wood to patch the stock up, but the color of the stock itself is a lot lighter since removing some of the toned topcoat and doesn't match the patch as well as I thought it would. Now I can either cut it off and try again with a different chunk of wood or try re-coloring the rest of the stock some to reduce the contrast between the two. I only have a limited supply of English walnut scraps on hand to pick from for patch pieces and I was already planning on refinishing it with some more reddish-toned color so we'll see what happens.

 

Or you could put some kind of inlay either on or completely covering the new wood piece. Not sure if you have much experience doing inlays or if your friend even likes them, but it'd be a nice touch on it.

 

I'm feeling a little too traditional for doing something that adds even more contrast. My original goal was a seamless repair, the kind of thing I'd have to point out to people when they check out the shotgun.

 

Okay this is better.







Not perfect, but better. Next step is curving and grinding down the buttpad to fit, then sanding, finishing, and re-cutting the checkering.

 

This next project is going to be a lot of fun. I should have a pair of Ruger no. 1A Light Model .270 rifles in my hands next week with Leupold VX-3i 2.5-8x scopes and Warne QR rings for them, thanks to Cabelas. They happen to have a bunch of no. 1s in stock that were made in 2015 and sent directly from Ruger with minor cosmetic defects. So in other words, a good value and ideal for me to re-stock.

I am 99% on these being the blanks for the pair, some nice marbled French walnut (likely grown in California):

Spoiler: got wood?

The pair is for some cousins here in MN, commissioned by my awesome great aunt so they can hunt big game in style. Yeah like I said, this is gonna be fun.

Was busy over the weekend and managed to build up a new checkering cradle frame out of cherry wood in just a couple of days, thanks to help from a neighbor and his table saw. The frame I made a few months ago was just a couple inches too short, which was a painful mistake to realize. This has five layers of 3/4" thickness lumber laminated together with epoxy again.



Cradle 2.2 is now up and running using the same mounting hardware as 2.1 and this makes me happy.



Back to work.



Finally here's that shotgun stock with the buttpad attached and ground down to fit. I still have some touchup work to do on the rubber but the dirty work is over.



Now I'm on to finishing the stock and made a mix of polyurethane, Waterlox, Ship n' Shore sealer, alkanet root powder for color, and some mineral spirits to thin it down some. It looks good and cures really hard, which is a necessity for an upland hunting gun. The alkanet root powder makes it look exactly like an aged red wine and my buddy who owns this shotgun is big on French wines so I said the finish is Burgundy red color, which we went apeshit over. Late afternoon light makes everything look especially red but it has a nice glow to it now rather than the muddy brown that used to cover it. I can't wait to rechecker this thing, it will look so much better.

 

Nothing like some time with a single line checkering cutter to clean things up. It is very satisfying to watch what looks like a muddy plowed field turn into rows of sharp diamonds under the tool. Looks and feels worlds better compared to how it used to be, and this is only after the first pass with the cutter.

 

Here we go, ready to take this brand new pair of .270s to the range for the first time to see if they are worthy of taking to the next level. I made a tool for lapping scope rings with a stick of 1" ground drill rod and mounted the 2.5-8x Leupold scopes to them last night (not necessary for everyone but I'm anal), the Warne QD rings are well made and rock solid- you get what you pay for. The rifles weigh about 8 lbs. scoped and are balanced well, a good compromise between being something you can carry all day without having bad recoil.



After range testing I will go to work modifying the factory stocks to create pattern stocks with custom dimensions and will add a checkered steel buttplate, skeletonized grip cap, inletted swivel stud, etc. before sending them off to a guy who will duplicate the pattern stocks with the walnut blanks I supply. It will save me a shit ton of time, which will be a factor since I've got two rifles to stock here. Speaking of which the blanks are supposed to arrive tomorrow, holy shit. Photos are one thing but having them in hand is another.

 

Yeah this is how you get jaded as a woodworker. This English walnut (likely grown in California from French seed) arrived yesterday and I have a hard time not doing a Ric Flair style Wooo! every time I see it. The swirling, gnarly grain with inky black lines defines the description of "marbling" and yet the grain in both pieces still has great flow through the head of the stock for strength and stability.



One piece was cut in 2002 and the other in 2006, and they match up way better than I expected. This is the most expensive wood I've selected for a project yet but I still think we got some pretty good bang for our buck here, it's going to look just wild once its carved into a stock.

 

The puns are inevitable... it's true I spend a lot of time down in the basement, oiling and rubbing my wood to make it even harder. Can't wait to take it to the range and fire off a few loads.

I got the blanks from a guy in Las Vegas, apparently its a good place for wood whores like myself too.

 

One of my best friends had his house tossed, the thieves found and took three of his rifles, an AK, an AR and some cool, folding stock paratrooper rifle.

Anyway, like three years later, the police have recovered a couple of the rifles, come down and claim your property. I went with him, he was pretty excited, as you would be. That didn't last....the rifles had not been held well, they were all rust and shit. He took them, but it was a total loss.

 

It's been about 12 years since mine were stolen. The detectives haven't recovered any of them. They did track me down, detectiving my new phone number, and ask if they were still missing.