fitting a barrel

[Sinner]

I've got another question as I prepare to buy a barrel for my project:
I believe the fitting of the breech plug would be pretty straight forward (file/mill the shoulder until it fit tight with the alignment properly indexed), but how about the wedge pin fitting? How are they attached?

 

[Zonie]

There are several ways of attaching the underlugs for barrel wedges or pins.

The strongest and oldest is to dovetail them in place.

The next strongest method is to buy special underlugs which have two little feet on them.
Matching holes are drilled into the barrel wall. The underlugs are then installed and the holes are swaged inward with a installation tool that can be purchased from the folks who sell the underlugs.

Weakest is the soldered joint where the underlug is soldered directly to the barrel using a silver bearing solder.

I've often used the swaged lugs and then soldered them to make sure they would never come out.

A word of warning about the swaged underlug installation. Be very careful not to drill completely thru the barrel wall.

As for fitting the breech plug, you will have to remove the first one or two threads from the threaded end of the plug. This will accommodate the missing threads at the very bottom of the barrels breech.
To remove the threads, use a small flat file and file the thread down until the very bottom of each one has disappeared. Do not remove material deeper than that.

Usually lightly filing the face of the breech plug will allow it to be screwed in place but to make sure things are working like they should apply a light coating of inletting black, Prussian blue, or black permanent felt tip marker ink to the face of the breech plug.
When the plug is finished the shoulder at the rear of the bore will leave a circular mark on the breech plugs face at the same time that the tang shoulder bottoms out on the rear of the barrel at the same time that the top of the breech plug tang matches the top barrel flat.
Simple, No? :grin:

 

[J.D.]

I suggest getting a good book on gun building. "Recreating the American Longrifle" is a good one, as is the "Gunsmith of Grenville County", if you can find a copy.

The books will take you all the way though the building process, from raw components to finished piece.

For those of us who are more visual, there are DVDs available on gunbuilding. While the videos are a good resource, they leave out a lot of details that are contained in the books.

Some of those vids are available for rent at Smartflix for a small fee.
http://smartflix.com/store/category/75/Kits-Scratchbuilt

I have no connection with Smartflix, other than a satisfied customer.

God bless

 

[Sinner]

Sounds about like I imagined. Is there a dovetail cutting fixture available, or can it be done carefully by hand with a dremel?

 

[Sinner]

Thanks J.D., I'll check out that site a little closer, as well as look for some books.

 

[Birddog6]

I will touch on the underlug part a bit:

IMHO, Best thing to do is get the dremmel out of the thought process & out of the building equation.... :shake: Every one I ever saw start with a dremmel ended up with disaster. :surrender:
That being said, I do use one at times, but it was a long time before I did & only on certain areas. The one to get has a 4' flex shaft with a tool head about the size of your index finger. One as such you can keep a hold on & control much better than the ones with the tool head at the motor, and also buy Carbide bits for all you can for it as they will outlast the others 4 to 1.

Note: Barrel & Tang should be inlet into the stock & in proper placement of the to allow the vent liner to be in the correct place, in reference to the flashpan of the lock, IF you are using a pre-inlet stock. On a pre-inlet stock that has the lock inlet started, it is Lock inlet first, then barrel second, then tang put on barrel & tang inlet third.


You don't need a jig for dovetails for the underlugs, ya just cut them with a hacksaw. I have done dozens upon dozens of them with no jig & never messed one up. First one took me over an hour, as I was so scared I would mess up. Now I do 4 of them in less than 20 min. :thumbsup:

Here are some old photos I found doing one, can't find the one me filing the bottoms & edges of the dovetail, but this will give ya the idea. I have since found prefer a 24 tooth saw blade rather than the 18 tooth blade.

It is important you locate where they will go in reference to where your RR pipes as well, as it is a problem when you have a pipe & underlug in the same place, and also makes a weak spot in the forestock if the underlug & RR pipe are right against each other. (makes if fragile taking the barrel in & out of the forestock & subject to breakage of the forestock.

File the back side of the underlug sharp edge off, as you can't file a slot that sharp anyway. When finished, if it is a tad loose, don't fret. Just stake it in 4 places with a centerpunch. I usually stake all of mine regardless. Don't know why, they can't fall out anyway once they are in the barrel channel, I just like them snug.
Don't hoss them in too tight or you will just distort the underlug or dovetail slot or both & really don't need to be so tight it tears the underlug up.

I inlet the underlugs into the barrel channel & then I file the corners off a little as to keep from snagging my hand on them, as I will have that barrel in & out of the firestock dozens of times, and they will gouge your hand. I grind the sides of the dovetails flush with the barrel flat.

This is a ultra-slim 3 sided file with one side sanded down on a belt sander.

Maybe this will give you an idea where you are headed anyway. I am sure others do it differently, this is just what works for me.

:thumbsup:

Keith Lisle

 

[Roy]

wow... your bench is clean :bow: :haha: :thumbsup:

 

[Birddog6]

Notice those are cropped shots, so you can't really encompass the total disaster !! ha ha ha !! :haha: :rotf: :rotf:

 

[Roy]

I don't think I ever made any $$ cleaning my bench.. but sure did lose some time lookin :haha:

Perfect pictures on the barrel lugs. :thumbsup: Thats how I do mine. They go a lot quicker now then what I remembered when I first started out :haha: must be a practice thing.

 

[Birddog6]

Yes, it is confidence in doing it over & over & over. I do them & don't even think of what I am doing now, once I have them all marked. On the sawing, if it is a Colerain, Getz or Rice barrel, I do 8 strokes with the saw per cut, Green Mtn. takes 11 as it is tougher steel. Also if I mess a underlug up, I toss it & grab another one & go on, buy them 50 at a time & don't worry about messing one up.

I start on a rifle & clean the bench when I am down to the sanding stage. I don't clean up the normal disaster tho, :haha: as the bench is always a mess. But when I am done with the rifle I reorganize all my tools & vaccume all the dust & chips up & start fresh.

Keith Lisle

 

[MikeChapin]

Sounds about like I imagined. Is there a dovetail cutting fixture available, or can it be done carefully by hand with a dremel?

As Birddog6 said, a dremel can be used in a few places but dovetailing is not one of them.

I have done a lot of dovetailing free hand like the tutorial said. I picked up a dovetail jig from Cain's a few years ago and it made life a lot easier. I just looked on Cain's site a moment ago and didn't see it listed but you should be able to find one around the net somewhere.

 

[Sinner]

Thanks, I believe I could do that! The stock is completely inletted, as it was a complete rifle at one time, now is missing the barrel only. The tang is also on the stock.
Thanks!

 

[mikemeteor]

Here's some more pics of the very same thing.
underlugs

Note that the same pics are also on Mike B.s tutorial.
Redundant, but always helps me to see more pics.
:thumbsup:

Note that Birddog's hacksaw cuts are much neater than mine !
I then adopted Keith's technique of counting hacksaw strokes, as opposed to trying to saw to a line, and it works much better.
For me anyway. :thumbsup: