• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

peening pin heads

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Well . . . It's your gun . . . removing a pin only one way makes some sense to me . . . moreover, I think what you did looks pretty neat. Just my two cents.
 
My dad had a bunch of old muzzleloaders when I was growing up. He taught me how to take them apart and reassemble them. I remember him telling me pins go “in from the right, out from the left.” That was his habit, although now I don’t think it was a universal practice. We know that original Hawken rifles had the barrel wedges inserted from left to right, for example.

I don’t remember peened pins on any of those old originals. Not on the barrel pins, anyway. I don’t think I ever tried to remove ramrod pipes, but as far as I know, those were permanently installed, and the pins were meant to be unobtrusive. Peening the ends would make them larger and more visible.

I can’t think of a historical precedent for peening the ends of pins for barrels or ramrod pipes or triggerguards. I think the “return” on the buttplate of some old smoothbores was also pinned, but I don’t recall seeing one peened.

I can think of reasons not to peen the pins for barrel lugs and mountings, but, respectfully, I don’t know of a practical reason or any historical precedent for peening them.

I’ll admit, I learn something new every day, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this before.

Best regards,

Notchy Bob
 
The best practice is to chamfer the end of hardened steel pins. Just break that cut sharp edge and flatten the end. Music wire is excellent. Make the pins a bit short. Cover the hole in the stock with bee's wax or whatever. Making the pins a bit short has a purpose. IT guides your punch later when it is time to remove the barrel. If you don's do that the punch will not line up with the line perfectly and you will damage the surrounding wood. Using hard pins prevents them from bending and binding up in the wood. That will also cause damage to the stock. This can happen especially if the pin get rusty.
 
Back
Top