Any projects ???

[Jeremy]

On the bench behind the jig is a homemade barrel vise. I'll post better pictures of that later on with the bushings. 

[AckleyFan]

Been AWOL for a while... are you still in need of the forging blocks and welding jig?  If my brothers didn't run off with them they're in my workshop.  I'll lay eyes on them before committing, but happy to send them to you for the cost of shipping when I locate them.  -Rob

[Dr.Hess]

For projects, back when I had a J.O.B. and before I went all John Galt, I bought 2 silencers from silencer central.  Well, the Banish 45 came in .  Back then, almost a year ago, I bought barrels for a 45, 9, and 22.  Everything I touched turned to pootie.  The SIG M17 did nothing but stovepipes.  I finally got a Glock 17 working with it.  Then turned to the 45, which was a disaster.  I somehow managed to buy a 1911 9mm threaded barrel instead of a 45 bbl, so if anyone needs a 9mm threaded 1911 bbl, I got one here.  I ordered a 45 threaded bbl from Midway.  It came in.  It would not screw into the silencer.  Thread protectors, no problem.  But not the tight fit of the actual silencer booster thingie.  I found a die on Amazon of all places, 37/64thsx28, not exactly common, and got the threads cleaned up.  So that screwed on.  Then I pulled a 1911 out of the safe and... it was junk.  After much research and work, I determined that the whole receiver was out of spec and gave up.  Next up was a Norinco I bought myself for Christmas a few years ago at a local pawn shop.  Dropped right in.  That one works.  So played with that for a few mags this afternoon.  Definitely quieter than the 9 with no super sonic crack.  The Banish 22 I ordered back then is due in 2 weeks.  We'll see how that one works out.

[shootz]

I'm stuck on this one with the inletting. I'll pick it up again.

Chllean action, RSI 19" barrel, 3 pos safety

 

 

[Dr.Hess]

The top pic on the vice, right?  Nice piece of wood, and a nice vice too.

[Jeremy]

I have been busy being daddy day care. My wife and I had a little girl on March 18 Charolette Grace. She has been keeping me young.

I decided to save the Cherry fore-end tip blank and instead use re-claimed ebony piano keys to make the fore-end tip. It took 15 piano keys and some tight bond III to make the blank. 

[Jeremy]

I have 2 more complete actions that need barrels and furniture. Stay tuned for pictures. 

[Dr.Hess]

Congrats, Jeremy!

 

I have this Turk small ring complete action/barrel.  Everything but the stock.  I kinda bought it to sporterize, but the whole thing is matching.  Even the bolt matches the receiver.  For a Turk, that's like virtually unheard of. 

[Jeremy]

Thank you.

Yes that is almost unheard of a numbers matching small ring Turk. I too would be apprehensive about making it into a sporter. I hope you have some good luck finding a worthy stock. 

I have been looking and waiting for the right time to get the stocks and barrels. It may be a while for me to get everything together. 

 

I noticed as of lately the price of parts has ballooned since the pandemic and availability of original parts has all but disappeared. 

[Dr.Hess]

I think the supplies just all dried up.  Who knows what SARCO has buried in the back warehouse(s), and they only catalog/list a small part of what they have available.  They are probably the last great parts supplier and they don't seem interested in the small stuff.  It is just getting hard to find parts.  And ebay, man, people want a fortune for scrap.  I've seen some small ring Turk stocks on eBay, but prices are just too much, not to mention they usually are missing something or many things.

[Jeremy]

You're probably right about SARCO and I've come to the same conclusion about eBay. I still watch eBay closely because deals can be had. I do the same with gunbroker too.

[Jeremy]

After the past couple of days of being a keyboard commando and searching the web for the elusive stock that I want use to fit the new project that I want to tackle I pulled down one of the stock blanks that I have on hand. The one I have chosen to use is one that I made from scrap pieces of yellow birch and walnut that I laminated together last year.

 

These pictures were taken last year before I glued it together and after to show the figure of the wood that I used. The birch was left over from a longer piece that I used to make into transition molding and the walnut was from other projects that I had from on time or another. Some being loading blocks of all things. 

Stay tuned for more pictures of my progress. 

[Jeremy]

Here is the pattern drawn onto the blank.

[Dr.Hess]

That's a good project.  I sort of have a make-a-gunstock project myself.  I have this elm tree, probably 100 years old, on the ground.  If I can cut a gun stock blank out of it before it rots away, that's a start. 

 

Please post lots of pics of your progress with this.

[Jeremy]

If you get a blank out of it that would be really cool. Just leave the heart wood alone and try to get a nice piece of crotch. The heart wood will be too soft. 

 

I will post more pictures as I progress into the project. 

[Jeremy]

Boy do I ever. I just picked up 11 bolts and 11 receivers from my local FFL. They are all 1893 actions. I won them on a gun broker auction for $67. Lets just say I'll be busy for quite a while. Now I am on the hunt for the rest of the parts I need and some tooling.

[Dr.Hess]

Wow, that's a score.  Six bucks each.  Spanish?

[Jeremy]

 

All of them are Spanish from the Oveido arsenal. This is all of the bolt bodies, receivers and other parts that came in the lot. 

[Dr.Hess]

Those receivers are in great condition, and the bolts at least have extractor collars.  That's a score.  Sarco sells extractors from a 91 that they say fits on the 93.  And there's a guy on ebay selling firing pins that he makes.  I hope you didn't have to pay $25*6 for the FFL fee.

[Jeremy]

I was cut a deal with my FFL fee. I'm a regular customer for them. It is a steeper fee than $25 per background check to the tune of $40 and the limit of 4 serial numbers per form 4473. So the grand total of my investment was $183. $67 for the wining bid $30 for shipping and $6 tax. The entire lot has a total of 40 individual parts so that is $4.57 per part and still a smoking deal. 

Unfortunately none of the bolt bodies and receivers aren't numbers matching. 4 of the receivers don't have any pitting they are just dirty as hell. 6 of the receivers had broken action screws in the holes below the ring. I was able to easily remove 4 with a hammer and chisel and the last 2 I had to use an easy out.

 

[Dr.Hess]

Yeah, still a smokin' deal.  A matching Spanish receiver/bolt is unheard of, as it is.  And any Spanish receiver without pitting is good.  I don't think I've ever seen one myself.

[ken98k]

On 7/20/2023 at 6:45 PM, Jeremy said:

 

All of them are Spanish from the Oveido arsenal. This is all of the bolt bodies, receivers and other parts that came in the lot. 

Wow! Now that is a score! 

 

[Jeremy]

I cleaned the entire lot and made some headway between daddy duty. I matched the receivers to bolt bodies. 4 receivers have very little to almost no pitting. I can't believe it. The best ones are on the right. Even the ones that do have moderate pitting are still in very usable shape. There is only one receiver that is unusable because it is cracked along with a bolt body. It was likely the victim of someones experiment to prove or disprove the strength of the actions once upon a time. Who knows? This was still an excellent haul.

If you look closely you can see the crack. 

[Dr.Hess]

A really excellent haul.

 

I have been fiddling with my Spanish Mauser.  A bit.  I am having some health issues and not moving around very fast or for very long, so I have to work around that.  The one I'm working on is now on it's 4th barrel.  This one is off a Mexican.  When I put it on and headspaced it, I shot a few cast bullets through it to see if it was going to keyhole like the rest.  With a long area to grab rifling it was stabelizing them, but I was just shooting the barreled action with no sights at close range.  When they keyhole, you get 2' patterns at 20'.  Anyway, I want to know if this barrel is worth further work before doing the work.  So I put a zip tie on the front, zip tie on the back of the barrel and loaded up some real ammo.  I went through my 7mm bullet stash and found some 140gr.  Powder stash came up with some Varget.  37.7gr Varget should do it.  I also found some big bullets in a pill bottle that AZ (Dave) gave me years ago.  RIP Dave.  I loaded up 5 of the 140s over Varget and called it a day.  Small steps.

[Dr.Hess]

I'm at 229 Enemy KIA in the GWoS (Global War on Squirrels.)  I keep an eye on the bird feeder rail area every time I walk by the window or sliding glass door.  A RECON scout will show up first, then the Squad, then the Company.  If you can stop them at the scout level, the rest will move on.  If you get Company or Army level, you're pretty screwed.  So when I see a scout, I exit the house on the opposite side and stalk, blocked from view by the house and careful not to step on leaves or branches, until I get to the corner of the house.  Then I move laterally until I can see the X-Ray, as we call them in GWoS counter terrorist operations.  At that point, I'm usually about 15' from the enemy. 

My weapon is a Remington 514 that I found for $20 with no bolt handle and other issues.  I put a $5 garage sale 2x scope on it, and it shoots like you would not believe.  The problem is that at 15' or so, the point of impact is about a half inch to an inch below the point of aim through the scope, the scope sitting up above the barrel and all.  That "Kentucky Elevation" is hard to estimate on the little bastards and I've had clouds of squirrel hair and no confirmed kill, only to get them another day and see the bullet streak of no hair on their belly, or collateral damage on whatever they were sitting on.  Iron sights would be a better choice here, being right on the barrel and much closer to the bore.  But I don't want to loose my long distance ability from the scope.  I've nailed them out of trees at 60', easy.  With my eyes getting old here, no way I could make that shot without a scope. 

So I dug around the safe and came up with a Rossi pump action 22, the gallery kind.  In testing it out, I think it will be much better for the 15' stalking shots, but it was shooting a bit to the right.  Whacking the front sight in the dovetail didn't get it to budge.  I was trying with a field expedient plastic bottle opener and claw hammer.  Then I recalled the pistol slide sight adjuster tool I bought some time ago.  I was whacking on basically a $2000 Desert Eagle pistol with a hammer and a piece of brass when it dawned on me that somebody made a tool for that, and it would probably be better to use that than beat on a $2000 handgun.  So I bought the tool but never used it, the hammer/brass having done the job. 

I dug the tool out and looked it over.  It is really a nice tool with little blocks to hold everything and a big hand thing to move the sight in the dovetail.  I managed to get "enough" grip on the Rossi barrel and wiggled everything enough to get the windage on target.  Look out Squirrels!