Kibler SMR ramrod issues

[Tn poor boy]

Put a brass brush in hole back and forth works then sand your ram rod down

 

[dave_person]

Hi Onewas,
Others have given you good insight. Just remember when you finally fit the rod that humidity may swell it in place in the ramrod hole so don't make the fit too precise. Also stain and finish will swell the diameter a little too.

dave

 

[oncewas]

Hi Onewas,
Others have given you good insight. Just remember when you finally fit the rod that humidity may swell it in place in the ramrod hole so don't make the fit too precise. Also stain and finish will swell the diameter a little too.

dave

Thanks Dave I finished the rod that came with the rifle and two other rods I purchased from Kibler before. Sanded the other two down stained and tru oiled all three. And everything is fine until I install the ferrule against the stock or even just put the ferrule where it should go. Once in place the rod will not go into the ramrod tube in the stock beyond the ferrule. And this is the end of the rod with the narrowed end cap Kibler sent with the kit.

 

[2 shots]

i had the same issue yesterday, not a kibler kit. used a rat tail file to open [ flare] the front and the rear of the pipe and also tapered the entry hole in the stock. then filed some more with ferrel pinned in. all is well. my ferrels are cast so there was material to be removed , on sheet ferrels maybe try just tapering the entry hole in the wood to help guide the rod. on mine the rod fit the ferrel fine when not installed and the stock, i guess it was an alinement issue. when pinned in

 

[martin9]

I'm surprised other builders have not mentioned this but ramrods always need a good bit of sanding to lessen the overall diameter. I've never built a Kibler but have built about 2 dozen guns from blanks. You can buy a brand new 3/8" ramrod and a new 3/8" ramrod pipe and the rod will be very tight or maybe not fit at all before sanding the rod down. Just the way it is. for a 3/8" pipe the rod really winds up around 11/32"

 

[martin9]

They do all need to aligned and pinned correctly but before you start trying to redrill or anything like that........ I'd just take all 3 rod pipes off and slide them on the rod. If they all bind in the same place...sand the ramrod. If only the entry pipe in the culprit I'd swage a 11/32 and then 3/8 drill bit through it.

 

[oncewas]

Okay let me explain one more time. I have three ramrods I bought from Kiblers and one I bought from TotW not to mention an delrin one that is now a range rod. All the rods were 5/16in rods. The only one that fix the piping on the stock was the one that came with it. This was before I did anything to the rifle or the rods. I sanded they other three rods, two Kiblers and one TotW down so they would fit the piping for the ramrod in the stock. I also sanded the ramrod that came with the rifle just to smooth it down. Now all ramrods will slide into the ramrod piping in the stock, all the way to the bottom. No problems. Everything is fine. I finish the ramrods with stain and one coat of Tru-oil. Try them in the piping. Everything is good. I take the gun in the white and stain it. I then install all the metal parts. I make sure everything is seated properly, I even use my drill press with Kiblers bit guide just to make sure I don't screw anything up like I did on my first stock. Now all put together but not Tru-oiled I put the ramrod down the ferrules and it will not go beyond the last ferrule into the ramrod piping in the stock. I take off the ferrule like someone recommended and try the ramrod down the first two ferrules and into the piping and everything is fine. I take the last ferrule and place it on the ramrod as it sets in the first two ferrules and try to set the last ferrule into the slot for it in the stock. No problem, until I try to push the ramrod into the piping. It won't go. I remove the ferrule and the ramrod slides right down the piping like they were meant for each other. Put the ferrule back on and the ramrod stops as it is entering the piping. There does that make sense?
I really do appreciate all the advise and helpful hints everyone has given me. But at this time I think my best recourse is to call Monday and talk with Jim and see what he has to say. I will post back with what the final outcome is once we've reached it. Again thanks everyone.

 

[deerstalkert]

on my Mortimer i have to rotate the rod as it reaches the pipe. there is a slight bow to the rod and it hangs up every time. might be your problem. just my $ .002 worth.

 

[martin9]

The slot the entry thimble tab sits in most likely needs widening a bit is my bet after reading your last post. You could put a little lamp black or something similar on it and check that.

 

[BadDaditood]

Sounds like the hole in the entry pipe is cockeyed, steering the ramrod into the stock instead of the center of the hole.
The ramrod will bend easily from the first two pipes into the ramrod hole but is steered into the stock and stops when the entry pipe is in place.
I would hog out the entry pipe at the finial end and enlarge the hole in the stock for a couple three inches.
I do ramrods last, sometimes weeks later (cuz I wanna shoot it!)
If it’s all stained and finished you’re not going to feel like tapering it to fit

 

[Siringo]

Maybe I missed this on this thread, but are you attempting the ramrod work with the barrel installed? If so, have you made sure the thimble tabs are not contacting the barrel? I had to trim mine considerably.
Also, the rear tenion (?) on the barrel protruded into the ramrod hole on my first kit (2 years ago). I had to file a bit off of that too.

 

[Eric Krewson]

This is one reason I keep a bore scope in the house, they are real cheap off ebay and will show you an obstruction in the ramrod hole.

Here is one example of why my ramrod wouldn't go in the hole on my Kibler SMR as pointed out by my el-cheapo borescope, the barrel lug was in the way. I have a Teslong now but the $8 one off eBay worked.

When I had a problem like yours I blacked the ramrod then tried to get it in the hole and then looked for the black marks inside the hole with my borescope to know where to start removing wood.

 

[Sandy Jarrell]

Maybe I missed this on this thread, but are you attempting the ramrod work with the barrel installed? If so, have you made sure the thimble tabs are not contacting the barrel? I had to trim mine considerably.

Had to do the same thing on my last 2 builds. Take the barrel out. Lay something flat across the barrel channel, then clamp the thimble in place and see how much of the tab extends into the channel. Do this for all the thimbles. You are marking which thimble goes where and which end goes forward, aren't you?

 

[Scota@4570]

Measure the ID of the pipe. Mine is much larger than an unsanded rod. After that check off other possibilities one at a time. . The rod will be burnished where it binds. That will give clues to where the problem is. Does it slide over the rod off the rifle? IS the pipe misaligned in the stock. Is a barrel lug in the way? Does the rod fit the tapered ramrod hole?

When I looked at mine for you last night I found the rod had swollen a bit and needed more sanding.

 

[oncewas]

Everyone thank you so much for all the help. But please, please read post #27. As a new note I took the ferrule/ramrod tube and placed it on the slot location of the rifle but upside down so the tab was sticking up. Not down into the slot as it will when installed and it still would not let the ramrod go into the ramrod tube in the stock. Once again I removed the ferrule completely and using the two other ferrules further out the rod slips into the ramrod tube with no problem.
I've got a call into Jim and am waiting for a return call. I'll see what he says and go from there.
Thanks again for everyone looking into this and all your thoughts on how to fix it or what could be causing it.

 

[FishDFly]

In Eric Bye's book there is a chapter on Flint Lock Trouble Shooting with 30 questions and answers. It might answer some questions when pitting a kit together.

 

[Coinneach]

On my SMR the ramrod channel was drilled just about into the lock inlet (one of the early kits), when I did the final inletting for the mainspring I broke into the ramrod channel quite a bit. I opened up the hole in the lock inlet and made a scraper I could use from inside he lock inlet to turn the hole more toward the opposite side which corrected the problem. I didn't want to taper the 5/16" ramrod to make it fit because I feared going any smaller would make it too fragile so I chose to enlarge the hole instead.

I sanded the oversized ramrod some but not enough, in a brief senior moment I pushed it a little too hard into the hole opening trying to make it go in the forestock and cracked the wood at the entry pipe, superglue to the rescue.

A little more ramrod sanding at I had a perfect fit.

On my latest build had a bow in the ramrod groove that I didn't notice until after I inletted the pipes, this put the groove and the drilled hole on the forestock at a bad angle and the ramrod wasn't going in.

This time I peened a burr on the square end of a 5/16 ramrod drill and filed to be razer sharp and used this burr as a scraper to take out the bad angle in my ramrod hole. It took a surprisingly small amount of scraping to remove the obstruction for an easy ramrod fit.

I posted these pictures on another poor ramrod fit thread. I think you would need a 1/4" rod to make a scraper for a 5/16" hole in a SMR, seems like a 5/16" rod would get stuck. I am scraping out a 3/8" hole in the pictures.

My scraper;

View attachment 110046

Shimming the entry hole with leather to to put pressure on the scraper to make it hit the area that needed wood removal.

View attachment 110047

I've used an old M60 GPMG sectioned cleaning rod with a Drill bit carefully braised square on the end for the same problem, not so much to drill the Ramrod entry channel out more; but to ream a little at a time as you show in the photo above.

 

[oncewas]

Well for those that are interested I was able to fix my ramrod issues. First I had to take the pipping indent down a little more, because that's where the major blockage was, then I bought a 5/16 in. steel rod and threaded the end about one half inch. I worked this in and out until it cleared all the blockage from the tube in the stock. All four wood ramrods work the only exception is the delrin one I bought. Again that's everyone for your input.

 

[MSW]

i had exactly the same problem, and tried sanding down the rod, which didn't work. then i enlarged the hole (a bit of bar stock with a slot cut in it, then thread some cloth backed abrasive trough the slot and check the other end into a drill .... GO SLOWLY and you'll be safe .. this provided a very small improvement, but i could feel that the rod wasn't bottoming out. out of curiosity, i dropped a plain old bit of dowel down the hole and - thunk - it hit bottom with no problem... i chucked the rod in my drill and while spinning, eased the whole mess into the hole and when i could feel it start to bind up, pulled it back out... there were two burnished sections (opposite each other) so i figured that the rod itself was out of true and i sanded the [blank[ out of the shiny parts a few times, and that fixed it ... i suspect that his CNC machine needs a comp.

not so bad after all ...

i did buy another rod, 'cause i neede some other stuff and it wasn't expensive.

 

[geb324]

Same problem I took my range rod and screwed in a cleaning tip cut small pieces of 220 sand paper and inserted them in the cleaning tip like you would a cleaning patch. Incerted that into the ramrod hole and worked it back and forth until it was enlarged enough for the ramrod to easily go in I have a deer antler handle on the range rod so it went fairley easy.