scott63

1. Yes, the 7 x 10,12, 14 Chinese minilathes have knob adjustable speed - which is really nice. But they have 3/4" spindle holes and weaky motors which really suck.

 

2. It's not easy to wire a motor to adjust speed - especially a powerful one that pulls a lot of current. Its cheap and easy to make sheaves of different diameters for belts to run on. These act as a transmission allowing the motor to run at constant rpm while allowing muliple spindle speeds. You could probably use your lathe to make a custom sheave that would lower the spindle speed to something more comfortable. This sounds like a great second modification, after making a headstock spider.

 

3. Yes! But it would be less hair-raising to run at lower speeds. But once you learn to use a particular machine things become second nature - you'll adapt and get very good at disengaging the spindle feed.

 

This looks like a very flexible machine that should be great to learn on - I wish I had one.

 

But for another few hundred bucks you could step up to a 12 x 36 that you probably won't grow out of (assuming you could figure-out how to move it into your shop).

 

Here's a link to the Grizzly page for others that might be interested. It looks like a really cool little lathe!

The one you linked to is the one I'm looking at, another consideration is size/weight. This one is much more manageable in both areas. The 12x36 is what I would want eventually, but it is about 1300.00 more..........Scott

I tried posting this on the machine work section but it said it was read only.What I'm thinking is starting out with a smaller lathe at first, to learn the basics and get some time on a machine. I'm looking at the 10x22 Grizzly for a starter machine. Now what I'm seeing is that all of the machines smaller than a 12x36 have a low speed of 130 or 150 rpms and the bigger machines have a low speed of 35-70rpms.

After watching some AGI videos, it looks like low speed is more important than the top speed. Here are my questions:

1. Are there any smaller lathes with a low speed of under 90 rpms?

2.Any ideas as to why Grizzly doesn't have lower speeds on their small machines?

3.Will I be able to chamber a barrel at 130 or 150rpms?

Thank you for any answers you can give to these questions.....Scott

I haven't looked at the ad but you might want to drop them a line and see if these are machine gun barrels. Might be long and heavy and with the twist rate likely not any good for lightweight varmit type bullets. My guess a 180gr or heavier bullet would work best.

They're supposed to be barrels for sniper rifles........

Sarco is advertising .30 cal FN barrels with a 1/12 twist, unchambered and straight diameter. Has anyone used/bought one of these? what weight of bullet is that twist good for? I see most 30 cal barrels are 1/10 twist......Thanks...........Scott

Clemson, thanks for the info, I looked up MPI's site and they have some nice stocks. Time to start saving my pennies. I've done a couple of semi-inletted wood stocks, was the stock you did for the FN any more difficult?.......Scott

Z1r, I really like the schnable forearm on that stock. Is that all you or was it machined that way? Is there anything that can SAFELY be done to lighten the receiver? I've seen holes drilled in the magazine side walls, not sure how much that takes off, but every little bit counts.

How do you like the barrel? Is it really that much better than the E.R. Shaw or Remington take-off? Money wise I think they are about the same but the Shilen is unchambered/threaded. If it is worth the extra cost I'll buy one of those next time I am barrel shopping.

Anybody use a synthetic stock they like? My only experience has been with Ramline(cheapo but it worked) and another that was not named, but I suspect is a Bell and Carlson.

Thanks for the pic Z........................Scott

Has anyone tried the feather weight Douglas or Shilen barrels? How about the Bell and Carlson Stocks? I'm sure the H.S. Precision stocks are good, but 350-500 is a bit steep. Any other ideas on making thngs lighter? Thanks for any ideas...Scott

Here is my first complete build. Rod did the bolt to copy a factory bend. It is a 7-08. A&B barrel blank bold trigger boyds stock and m48 action, I used a ptg reamer. Did it all on my South bend 9a.

 

Looks great from what I can see, but I can't make the pics bigger, tried double clicking. Have you shot it yet?...Scott

Well, I'm not disappointed with the accuracy. At 50 yards(range limit, but close to home) Winchester factory 140 grain will put three shots touching. Should end up being about an inch at 100 yards, can't wait to try some handloads. VERY pleasant to shoot, has me thinking about building a fleet of 6.5X55's.

While going through some old posts I got the impression that a lot of people aren't a fan of these. Most of the complaints are for cosmetic reasons. There are things you can easily do to improve the looks.

-Don

Left is done per pme's directions and the right is a improved way recomended by Glen Chapman, Both ones I used pme wings.

I really like then, but they look like they require a mill to install. Not sure if my hand is steady enough to do with a dremel. Do you have any pics with them disassembled, showing the machine cuts? Thanks....scott

Excellent to say the least!! You showed some real creativity with the stock. Bondo is wonderfull stuff but from the picture I can't see it. Just curious, why are you picking 250 Savage instead of 257 Bob for your daughter's project??

Only reason for the 250 Savage is that I already have one, and all the reloading equipment for that caliber. Where I live, Northern Ca--2.5 hrs from Oregon, the deer aren't that big and the smaller calibers work well. I like everything I've read about the 257, but didn't want to start all over with the reloading aspect.

The barrel channel that I filled in with the bondo came out nice, well a lot nicer than the huge gap that was there, and the bondo is very tough but easy to sand/shape..............Scott

nice job, that looks fantastic. i was wondering if you always blued your bolt? i never have, but it looks great.

Thanks for both the compliments, I've only done two rifles and I blued the bolts on both. I also satin nickel plated a Remington action, including the bolt. I masked off the bolt head and lug contacts before plating. I'm considering trying a black nickel plate, but not anytime soon. My next rifle is a swede mauser in .250 savage for my daughter. She's chosen a black synthetic stock (gasp!) so it should be pretty easy......Scott

Here is what I hoped would be a light tweed. The action is a 1944 K.Kale and the barrel is a 6.5X55 96 swede cut down to 24 inches. The barrel was a left over from a project for my daughter. I borrowed a lathe from an acquaintance and he helped me cut and crown it similar to how Remington does it now. I drilled and tapped it for two piece mounts, but after putting them on I think I’ll go with the one piece base.

The stock was free from a friend who was tired of it taking up space. The only thing I know about the stock is that it is a fiberglass shell, is foam filled and was inletted for a sporter barrel.

Because of this, there was enough room around the swede barrel to grow a potted plant. I tightly wrapped the front of the action and barrel with saran wrap and lightly sprayed it with Pam cooking oil. Then I mixed up a batch of bondo, filled in the sides of the barrel channel and tightened down the action. After the bondo set I re-shaped the barrel channel and it came out pretty good. I glass bedded the front and rear of the action. I primed the stock then painted it with textured paint. After it cured for a few days I sanded it with 400 grit paper which smoothed out the sharpness of the texture quite nicely. I installed a limbsaver grind to fit recoil pad.

I contoured the trigger guard with files and it came out pretty decent. I installed a Bold trigger and a Timney safety, that I reshaped. The pics have an unblued cocking piece as I haven’t modified the blued cocking piece yet. All the metal was glass bead blasted and I blued everything except the barreled action as it was ¼ inch too long for my tank! The action was blued by a friend who blues commercially, and it came out great. The bolt was already welded for scope mounting. I tried to contour the military bolt ball a bit and it came out ok, but I’ve already posted my thoughts on that waste of time. Weight on a digital scale as pictured is 6 pounds 12 ounces, not exactly a featherweight.

I learn a lot with each project, and here’s what I learned on this one:

1. Measure object to be blued prior to firing up the tanks! 2. If I’d known how much swede 96 barrels are fetching on ebay I would have sold this one and bought a nice sporter barrel in whatever caliber I wanted. 3. Don’t contour a military bolt ball, cut it off and weld on a brownells bolt handle. 4. Bondo has a thousand and one uses.

I wonder what it would look like if the metal was acid etched first. I've read about "acid striking" before bluing to help prevent purple colors associated with carburized parts. I deal with platers every day but not nickel. I'm guessing your action is or will be carburized. I could etch some carburized parts of ours and send them to you to practice with. I don't know that they would be any duller than the blasted finish you already tried, but it's easy to do on my end if you want to try. However, when something is hardened above say 30 RC and has hydrogen introduced to it (hydrochloric acid), precautions should be taken to prevent or eliminate hydrogen embrittlement. This is a very real cause of catastrophic failure in a stressed item such as a torqued thread. Inhibitors in the acid would help and then baking after neutralizing the etched part. I edited this post afterwards thinking you might try to etch a hardened receiver with hydrochloric. My e-mail is in my file if you're interested.

Ron

I will probably not try etching, but I was actually thinking of muriatic acid. Thank you for the offer, but I think I will try another method. I may wait and see if this tarnishes at all, if so it will be perfect, as it is it is ok. Just not exactly what I had in mind.........Scott

I previously posted a nickel plating project that came out too bright for my liking. I tried lightly sand blasting the finish with fine glass beads, but as soon as it started looking good, the plate was blown off. So I contacted the company that sold me the kit, they said bead blast it prior to plating for a matte finish, which is what I tried the first time.

I then chemically stripped the nickel off to try it again. Soooo, I blasted it first with ground glass blasting media, with produced a very coarse, almost sharp finish. That was followed with lightly blasting with fine glass beads to just take the sharpness off the first finish. I then plated the parts again, and it came out closer to what I wanted and better than the first attempt, but not quite what I wanted. What I was trying to get was a satin nickel finish like the top of a 70 series Colt 1911 with the factory nickel finish.

I was trying this out on this Rem action in anticipation of doing the same thing on a Turk action for a lightweight Rem 700 stainless barrel in 30/06. Not sure I'm still going to do this, I may try one of the bake on finishes, even though I'm sure it won't be near as tough as the nickel plate.

A couple things I learned: 1. The pint sized container of "Mask It" to protect an area from plating (locking lugs..etc) is enough to last a couple lifetimes of plating. 2. I am not impressed with the chemical nickel stripper, fine glass bead blasting is way faster and more thorough. 3. Electroless nickel plating will never be close in color to matte stainless. 4. Electroless nickel plating is easy and does look pretty good. Any thoughts/questions/comments? Thanks guys........................Scott

Grinding a crest (if done correctly) is not cause for heat treating. If the interior (locking lug seat) are hard enough then it matters not if you grind on the outside.

 

If they are removing the charger hump then you should take a long the bases you intend to use so that the surafces can be ground so that the bases are at the same height. I lean toward taking more off the front than the rear when tryingto eventhings out because the bolt guide slot is fairly thin and the base screw can strip if you take too much off.

Won't "machining off" the crest also remove the case hardening? I understand what you're saying about the locking lug seat being the critical area, but isn't the outside case hardening important?.....Scott

Here is the bolt stop for my "Free Swede". I cut off the checkered section of the cocking piece, ground the little projection off the bolt stop and silver soldered it in place. Some filing, cold blue and Ta da! I'm pretty sure I read about this somewhere long ago and I like it.........Scott

i have a tool making company who will machine the stripper guide off my reciever. if i want them to also macine the crest off the front , will they also need to machine the same amount of metal off the rear or will it not make that much difference. will the reciever need to be reheat treated. thanks

kingsman OPERA NON VERBA

YES. If you search for "heat treat" it should bring up previous topics that have some places you can send it. The crest should be covered by the scope mount, and after it is polished or bead blasted it won't be that noticeable. Heat treat is gonna run you about 70-90 dollars. Is it worth not having the crest?...........Scott

Based on the article:

 

A "Watts-bath" is a nickel-sulfate solution.

 

For the Watts bath, a ph of 4.5-5.0 and higher temperatures gives a matte finish. The table included ran the Watts bath to 160.

 

If you're using a sulfate solution and the kit gives ranges for ph and temp, I'd try the extremes on each and see what gives. I've never nickel plated something. I've seen it done for increasing diameters for tolerancing (worn shaft sleeves, bearing areas, etc). The area was copper plated first then nickeled. Doing a full nickel is neat but new to me. The copper first stuff had a tendency to peel.

 

I have a "nickeled" 45 Gvt. frame done by Metaloy and am very happy with it. A darker, matted nickel. I had talked to the guy on the phone about doing a rifle, but he said they only did smaller stuff. I guess a stripped receiver would be small. Dunno...

I was looking at Brown Precisions website today, cause they are relativley close to where I live, and I saw that they offer an electroless nickel finish on their rifles. I've never seen one of their rifles finished this way, and didn't see one on their site, but they must be dulled down. Now I'm waiting for chemical stripper to retry mine with some vigorous beadblasting.....Scott

i REALLY like how sharp you kept all the lines on the gun! fantastic! the metal looks pristine! and for FREE?! we all hate you.

Thank you for the compliments, the metal came out pretty good for a newbie with files. I am looking forward to getting better. Every step was a learning process and I think sucessive projects will get better. I have a twede that I blued all the small metal, had to have the barreled action blued by a friend cause my tanks were 1/4 inch too short! Believe me, there was no small amount of cussin going on when that problem materialized. That project will be posted next, probably be at least a week. There were several lessons learned on that project too.......Scott

And about how much money do you reckon you have in that "Free" Swede now?

 

Nice work!

 

Clemson

About 20 bucks for the safety, and when I bought the stock I believe it was 80.00. The bluing process took 5 years off my life, so that was the expensive part. Salts and tanks were a gift from a friend who upgraded.

Great American Gunstocks

 

I can't vouch for this company, but here's the link. They do lever action stocks too. I do see there's a dissatisfied customer posting regarding this company. Has anybody purchased from them?

They really are a crap shoot. I used to live about 45 min from their shop and only purchased two stocks from them and picked them out myself. I was very happy with the service, the manager/owner was very helpful, BUT I was doing business in person. I have read about MANY, MANY unhappy customers on the net and they were all mail order business. I would buy from them again, but just be prepared for possible headaches. Both stocks are supposed to be 95% inletted and I think that is a little optimistic, but for me I'd rather do a little more inletting than have a gap. It seems to me there are a lot of companies out there that have a really good reputation. BTW the rifle in the "Free Swede" is wearing one of the stocks I bought from them....Good luck........Scott

Here’s the story on this rifle: I was talking to a coworker about hunting and guns when he asked me if I had ever heard of the 6.5X55 cartridge. I told him that I owned two Swedish mausers that are chambered for that same cartridge and that I reload the ammo. He then told me that he has a rifle in that caliber that I can have.

He tells me that several years ago he had a swede mauser rebarreled with a Hart 18.5 inch barrel for his girlfriend for a deer rifle. They broke up and he never finished the rifle, so I could have it.

It was drilled and tapped, headspaced, and the bolt had been re-welded but not finished, and it was in a cut down junker stock.

I finished the file work on the bolt and prefer a straighter bolt, but couldn’t do much about the sweep since that was done. I narrowed the trigger guard, draw filed the guard metal to clean it up and installed a low safety. I bought a semi finished stock and inletted it and glass bedded it. Finish is with an oil finish topped off with lin-speed.

I don’t have the bolt stop in, I’m doing something a little different with that and will show that in a week or so.

I was expecting 2 inch groups with this gun and was very happy to get honest 1-1.25 inch groups with nosler 140 gr. partitions at about 2500 fps. At first I just painted the barrel to protect it and took two nice mule deer with it. At any range under 300 yards I am very confident of this rifle/cartridge abilities.

After owning this rifle for several years I finally decided to bead blast and re-blue this rifle and did just that the other day with oxynate 7. This and another rifle (not yet reassembled) was my first attempt at the caustic salt bluing method. I honestly doubt if I will try this again, it just isn’t worth the trouble. I will probably try another method next, but this method is really a pain unless you were doing this full time with numerous rifles at a time. Don’t get me wrong, this was a great learning experience, just now that I’ve done it I’m ready to try other methods.

No, unfortunately, my coworker has no more guns he wants to give away!

http://www.pfonline.com/articles/040102.html

 

"Other Types of Nickel. To obtain other types of finishes such as satin nickel, organic additives are used and deposition conditions are altered. Deposits from a Watts bath are usually 7-10 mm thick, with the appearance dependent on the temperature and/or pH. At higher temperatures and a pH of 4.5-5.0, nickel deposits are matte. At 122F and a pH of 2.5-3.5, deposits are bright."

Thank you for the info, I'm wondering what "...organic additives..." are? Maybe filtering through charcoal? I called the company that produced my kit and they told me that basically I need to bead blast it more aggressively. I'm trying for the matte nickel look like on the top of a slide of a nickeled 70 series .45 auto. I'm going to buy some stripping chemical, strip it, and blast it some more and re-plate it. We'll see what happens. On the parts I re-blasted/plated, they are closer to what I want so I think that is the ticket.....Scott

Hey, you can always use it at parades and funerals with the VFW...

ROFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!That is a good one. Seriously, if anyone knows of a chemical that will dull nickel let me know. I'm calling the company that sold me the kit tomorrow to see if they have any ideas....Scott