Removing drum

[Oldbear63]

This may be a well discussed topic (perhps I am lazy?):

I am working on a kit percussion pistol. The barrel was slightly misaligned to the lock in the pre-inlet stock. When I fitted the barrel to the lock I end up with the nipple slightly misaligned with the hammer.
I am willing to forgo my warranty and try to remove a tiny amount of material from the drum to properly align the hammer and nipple (I have a lathe).
My problem is that the drum is rather tightly installed on the barrel. My attempts at turning off the drum with a screw turned into the drum only bent the screw. I can probably find a better fitting and harder screw and turn off the drum, but I am concerned with damaging the drum or barrel.
How much effort is usually required to remove a factory installed drum? Is there a trick to removing one?
Is this called "clocking"?

 

[Grimord]

It depends on the gun. Some manufacturers (CVA) incorporate the drum into the breach plug, and they warn against removal of the drum.

 

[Grenadier1758]

It will be easier to adjust the nose of the hammer. Heat the neck of the hammer and twist the nose to align the nose of the hammer to the nipple.

 

[Col. Batguano]

If you are going to bend the hammer, make sure you take it out of the lock first. The heat may mess with the temper of the springs.

 

[Carbon 6]

I'll second bending the hammer.

 

[Oldbear63]

Thanks. It seems like removing the drum and polishing it down a bit to seat it a few degrees on would be simple enough, but the drum is on TIGHT.

 

[Grenadier1758]

Life was great for muzzle loading in the 1970's. With the Bicentennial celebrations of the AWI there was a lot of interest in muzzle loaders and a lot of kits were offered. To that extent there was opportunity for the publishing of books to feed the muzzle loader's building passion for building many of the kits being offered. Naturally, the instructions that came with the kits did not cover all the details needed to make a finely finished muzzleloader from the parts supplied. Since Oldbear63's question could have been asked in 1978, I am going to provide two pictures and some text from Ralph T. Walker's book, "Black Powder Gunsmithing", published in 1978. The same instructions were supplied in the chapter for the CVA Mountain Rifle. Most of the details have been provided in other posts, but pictures do a good job of explaining the task at hand which is easier than trying to adjust the drum. The hammer bending is the easiest task and is making adjustments on the easiest to replace part.

Most

You do need to know about how far you need to move the nose of the hammer.

Something similar can be done to change a flint basher to a flint scraper.

 

[Carbon 6]

That's exactly how I do it..