The Ugly Gun Lives!

I had intended to make this project another tutorial. Unfortunately it took forever for me to get going on the project. Then a friend wanted a beater rifle to hunt with. You see the area we hunt was until this past year shotguns only. When they opened it to rifles, guys with shotguns stopped seeing deer within range. The deer got smart fast. He was in a big hurry to get it before his wife spent the tax return. I was going to rust blue the gun for practice. He wants a duracoat finish. I don't have access to an oven that big, so I left the metal as is.

The gun was priced at $100 when I bought it. I did some trading with the dealer and it only ended up sosting me about $60. I've told you in the past about swagbucks . Using swagbucks enabled me to get the stock and scope mount for free. Both were purchased off of Amazon using gift cards earned with swagbucks. The scope is a Tasco long eye relief pistol scope purchsed in a consignment shop for $20. The rings are Millets and at $30 break the low budget theme of this rifle. More about that later.

I can highly recomend the Fajen F34 stock  . This stock was nearly drop in and well worth the $65 price tag. It only required minor fitting. I used a dremel with a sanding drum on the lowest speed. It could also be easily accomplished with a four in hand file. There was only one minor hitch. After doing some minor relief work at the front action ring and along the sides of the sight base. The action still wouldn't  seat into stock. The hole for the front action screw had some heavy flash. This flash prevented the recoil lug of the action from mating with it's counterpart in the stock. A quick pass with my Dremel and everything dropped right in as it should.

The scope base install was uneventful after finding a little trick. The base came with no instructions. So, I just went online and read the instructions for similar units. You have to remove the leaf from the rear sight. There is a spring under the leaf that needs to be left in place. This spring is pretty strong. The problem is getting the holes lined up. Actually keeping them lined up. It takes both hands to compress the spring. You either need a second person to thread the screw through the hole or a third hand. I didn't have either. What I did was line the holes up then drop the shank of a jewelers screwdriver through the holes. Then I used two thin blocks of wood and a large C clamp to hold everything in place. Remove the screwdriver and install the screw. Be careful, the sight base is made of aluminum. It will be real easy to bugger up the threads.  I had trouble finding a set of rings that would drop right on to this base. The rings I did find while not outrageously expensive weren't the cheapest I could find. The slots on my base were slightly under size. This could be easily corrected with a fine file. Doing so will remove finish from the base.

The only other work done to this gun involved lapping the crown to correct some damage. I'm not a huge fan of the 8x57 cartridge. So, I decided to sell it rather than add another cartridge to the stable. Should another VZ24 action come my way I will probably buy it. The next one will be a little more involved.

Woods

32 Kit gun step one

It was never my intention to swap out grips on my 32 Hand Ejector. However today I stopped in at a consignment shop a couple towns over and found this nice set of Herrett grips. Really they were meant to go on a post 1953 Chiefs special or 22 Kit Gun. For $6.00 I took a chance. They fit pretty nice. There is a small gap at the backstrap where the newer guns is longer than mine. I can live with that seeing it's only a 32 that barely recoils. Other than that I only need to dimple the back of the right stock where it sits high because of one of the sideplate screws. The next modification will be an adjustable rear sight. I'm thinking a Wondersight because it won't require any permanant modifications to the gun. Also because it has a vintage cool look to it. Which wouldn't matter at all if it wouldn't do the job.

I also managed to pick up a really nice vintage 22 caliber cartridge belt for another $6.00 while I was there. It almost fits me even, which is rare for old time stuff. Our forefathers were usually much smaller than the current generation. I can make a small extender from another old belt if I use it. The main reason I bought it was to use it as a pattern to make a similar one for 32 caliber cartridges. Most of the belts I've seen had sewn cartridge loops, which is beyond my abilities. This one however is only sewn on the end loops. All the loops in between are woven into the belt itself. I may even try to eliminate a few of the end loops in order to stretch these out to 32 caliber. Though I will probably just leave it alone and use it as a pattern for a new one. I may just also try my hand at a home made flap holster while I'm at it.

Woods

The One Hour Gunsmith makes a score

Well my friends, the one hour gunsmith has another low budget project gun to play with. After many many years of being shotgun only, the state of new york has decided we can be trusted to hunt big game in certain areas of the southern zone with centerfire rifles. While I have a very nice Mannlicher style Interarms Mark X mauser in 7x57 to hunt with. I find myself shying away from taking it out in incliment weather. You see I was too young to purchase one when I first fell in love with that picture in the 1977 interarms catalog. So when one popped up on a local dealers shelf a couple years ago I grabbed it. The date code of 0477 stamped on the reciever sealed the deal for me. So after waiting so long to get it I don't want to abuse it. Add the fact that now the sidekick wants a rifle after shooting mine. And Pelenaka has decided she wants to hunt. So, we find ourselves needing a second rifle. A rifle I don't have to worry about. A gun that can be taken out in the rain, carried and possibly dropped by beginers. I set out calling around for a Handi Gun by New England Firearms. I found a few, but, with one exception all I found were in calibers more suited to varmints than big game. The one and only 30/30 I found was pretty overpriced for a second hand gun. On one call to my favorite dealer he suggested a cheap surplus mauser rifle. So, off to gunbroker.com to look around. Didn't find much for a reasonable price after adding shipping and FFL fees. Then I got an email. The dealer that suggested a surplus gun picked up a collection of them. In the lot was a poorly sporterized BRNO VZ24 in 8mm mauser. Well friends we did some haggling and did some trading. In the end he got some non gun stuff of mine and I walked away with the ugliest gun I've ever owned. When this gun was captured and put away after the war the guy doing the cosmoline held her about 3" from the end of the barrel. How do I know? Because the marks of his fingers are still there lightly rusted to the finish. But, he did a good job with that cosmoline job. The inside of the barrel and action are in near mint condition. So my friends we have a gun project. More to come!

Woods

Feedback please

Looking at the stats page it seems my most popular posts are the ones about amature gunsmithing. My most popular post is over two years old and is still visited daily. I've started the one hour gunsmith label and I am wondering how many of my followers would like it to become a regular feature. I intend to make these projects low budget is in under $100. Also as the title implies projects will be able to be completed in one hour, or be able to be broken down into one hour or less stages.

I will still continue my regular "How to's" and homestead life posts. I will just use the "One hour gunsmith" as a means of keeping the blog posts more frequent.

Also, go recrute me some followers people. I intend to do give aways at the 50 and 100 follower marks.

Woods

The one hour gunsmith puts a new mainspring in a muzzleloader

The subject of todays project is a CVA Squirrel rifle that was built from a kit back in 1990. Over 20+ years the mainspring has gotten weak. Used only for target shooting witha 45 caliber barrel over those years a miss fire now and then was no big deal. This year I've decided it will be a squirrel killer and I have reinstalled the 32 barrel.

After making sure the gun isn't loaded, place the lock on half cock. Then partially loosen these two screws. when the screws are about half way out give them a light tap with the handle of your screwdriver. This loosens the lock from its mortise. When the lock is loose you can remove the screws completely.

Here is the backside of the lock showing the mainspring. Also shown is a replacement spring. Genuine CVA mainsprings bring $15 and up on ebay and you don't know thier history. The spring shown is a Traditions part. The Traditions spring is wider, but otherwise close enough to be an almost drop in part. It was also purchased at a gunshow new in it's package for under $6. The mainspring vice was borrowed from a friend.

After lowering the spring to it's fired position you can remove the spring. Here is the old spring in the vice. I've been told you should only use a proper mainspring vice to avoid breaking the spring. The new spring however had ideas of it's own. CVA left an oxide coating on thier spring and the vice was able to hold it quite well. The Traditions version was highly polished and between the extra strength and the polish it just kept slipping out of the vice. I ended up using a pair of needle nose locking pliers. Even using the pliers I had to use a file to roughen the surface so it wouldn't fly accross the room.

Here is the lock with the new spring installed. I got lucky and the inletting was sufficient to just reinstall the lock. The new spring was easily 30% wider than the old one. While I didn't have to make room for it, you may have to depending on your gun. Now it takes some serious effort to pull the hammer back. Thankfully this gun has set triggers otherwise I may have had to do some trigger work.
A gunsmith would have charged $30-$35 for this job. It cost me $6 and just over half an hours time.

Woods

Installing sights on the $65.00 project shotgun

The first step to making the project shotgun a practical gun we need sights. Here we have a set of TruGlo brand fiber optic sights meant for a Knight brand muzzleloader. I aquired these last summer at a garage sale for $2.00. Also in the photo is a tube of Loctite 380 Black Max cement. This cement is formulated to be used in applications where shock is a factor. I couldn't find this locally, but, was able to special order it from my local Lowes store, which can special order through W.W.Grainger, the industrial supply company. Shipped to my door it was around $7.00. In addition you will need a flat surface to work on, a vice with padded jaws if possible, a square a drill press or a second square,a scriber, some rubber cement, an abrasive of some sort, and alcohol or hot water & detergent to degrease everything.

The weather has turned cold again and my workshop has no heat. Lucky for me an old friend offered me the use of his engineering lab at work. While I suddenly found myself in a high tech setting, the environment we were in was overkill, so don't let it intimidate you. The important thing was having a warm place to work so the cement could bond properlyHere's the gun set in the vice. Careful adjustment was made to make sure the gun was vertical. The fore end had been removed and we clamped on the barrel lump. Had this vice had padded jaws we could have clamped on the reciever itself. After clamping the gun in the vice we moved it around unti it was vertical. To do this we placed a square on our smooth surface and checked it against the sides of the reciever. This gun has an investment cast reciever, the right side of the gun was milled true during manufacture, the left side however was anything but flat. The right side is what we used to put our square against. The next step is to find the very top of the gun barrel. This is done by placing the second square against the first or by placing a piece of rod in your drill press. This is gently brought down on top of the barrel where it touches the top of the radius, which you then mark with your scriber.

Here the barrel has been marked and using the scribe marks to center the sights I have rubber cemented the sights in place. This allowed me to make sure of where I wanted the sights on the barrel. Having decided the permanant location of the sights I'm scribing around thier bases. After this step I removed the sights and used the scribe marks as a guide in removing the bluing and roughing the barrel surface beneath the sights. I didn't try to remove the bluing all the way to my scribe lines, I needed them to use as a reference when finally cementing the sights in place. While I was at it, I used my abrasive to remove the anodizing from the bottom of the sights themselves. I then degreased the barrel with alcohol and applied a bead of black max to the barrel where the bluing was removed.
Here is the finished job. All we have to due is put the fore end back on. I'm going to wait a few days before trying to shoot it. This should give the cement time to fully cure. You may think the sight locations look a little funny. There was a method to my madness. The rear sight was located in front of rather than on top of the chamber. When a gun fires the barrel actually expands slightly in the chamber area. A microscopic and temporary stretch of the metal for sure, but, why risk the cement bond eventually breaking because of it. Also being in the over 40 crowd my eyes are starting to feel thier age. The farther away that rear sight is, the easier it is to see. And yes there is 3/4 of an inch between the end of the barrel and the front sight. I mentioned in the first post about this gun that it might get screw in chokes. There has been another development on that front. A recent talk with a gunsmith friend put me on another track. Back in the days before screw in chokes, add on choke devices were popular. Sold under the names of polychoke, cutts compensator, etc. It was popular to take older shotguns with very tight chokes and convert them to these adjustable systems. When these devices were installed, it destroyed any collector value these guns might have had. Well, now it's popular to take those old often worn out shotguns and make coach style guns for cowboy action shooting. This has left my gunsmith friend with a huge parts box full of old style choke devices. And that box is mine to pick through with whatever I select costing between $5.00 and $15.00 depending on what I pick. These devices mount to the outside of the barrel, so we'll need that 3/4" to mount one.

Next time we'll either pick and install a choke device, or we will make our cast lead butt plate.

Oh! BTW, when we were finished my friend passed along 14 boxes of cast bullet 9mm handgun reloads. Can anybody guess what our first chamber insert will be? THANKS Jeff!

Woods

The $65.00 project shotgun part 1

Here's the $65.00 project shotgun. That was the dealers price tag. I was out trying to find a new owner for a box full of old gun books when I came accross this gun. After selling the books my out of pocket costs are more like $35.00. It's a 12ga 3" Rossi single shot. Cut down to a youth gun of sorts. 19" barrel, 33" oal, 12.5"lop. Previous owner cut it down for his grandson to shoot. Shortening the barrel left it a cylinder bore, and sightless. The length of pull is so short my short armed teenage daughter even has trouble holding it. Though she did call it "kinda cute" when she first saw it. I shot it with trap loads and it kicks like a minature mule. Though it's bark isn't as bad as I expected. So, I suppose it is "kinda cute", pit bull puppy cute, that is. We're going to make it into a deer/turkey hunting machine. We're also going to play with some chamber inserts allowing it to shoot various rifle and pistol ammo. Future instalments on this project will include.

Installing a set of fiber optic sights purchased last summer for $2.00 (garage sale)

Making a cast lead buttplate to lengthen the stock and add some recoil absorbing weight.

Making a slip on leather recoil pad, to hide the lead buttplate and lessen recoil.

We will test several brands and types of chamber inserts.

We may also try our hand at installing screw in chokes, providing the expense doesn't take us out of the low budget category.

Woods