George's Sheridan Stock

George is mainly into firearms but he does own a transitional Benjamin-Sheridan Silver Streak. He brought it by "open shop" the other night to show the stock he made for it.

What do you think?

He fabricated the trigger guard.

That wood! It's even better in person...

He extended the forearm to provide more leverage.

Recessed stock screw. Most guys wouldn't think to wrap the forearm around the stock like that.

Inlet entirely by hand.

The trigger guard is perfect.

He used three roll pins to attach the forearm.

George is intent on selling it and I'm severly tempted.

Fabricating a Replacement Front SIght for the Slavia 630, Part 2

On I go.

Drilling some 5/8" diameter bar.

Reaming 1/2"

Soldered (silver soldered) the two parts together. Notice the large area of solder overun...things shifted a bit while they were red hot and I was poking solder into them.

Cleaned up.

Drilling for the sight post.

Tapping #8-32

Turning down the end of a #8-32 setscrew to make the post.

Facing the end.

Tapping #4-40 for the clamp screw.

Installed.

Another lame cold blue job by yours truly. The upside is that I can now shoot the air rifle and hit what I'm aiming at, which was the whole point of this little exercise...

Fabricating a Replacement Front Sight for the Slavia 630, Part 1

I finally got to work making a replacement for the missing front sight on the Slavia 630.

My question was, what is the dovetail angle for the front sight? So I measured over some PeeDee thread wires. Then I repeated the measurement with a 2nd set of different diameter wires.

Here's the result. By drawing the diameters and distances of the wires I was able to draw a line tangent to the two circles (the thread wires) and measure the angle. I also did a bunch of math based on the Machinery's Handbook formulas for measuring dovetail slides, using the pair of measurments to solve the unknown "a" and then using that value to solve for θ. I shouldn't go into it as it's a tad boring. But it is fun if you like math...
x[distance over wires]=D[diameter of wire](1+cot 1/2θ)+a
Which means that ((x-a)/D)-1 = cot 1/2θ
So ((x1-a)/D1)=((x2-a)/D2)
Solve for a...

The dovetail angle is likely 60 degrees and the measurements were thrown off by the small magnitude of the measurements, burrs, etc...

Oh right, I'm getting ahead of myself...here's the old rear sight.

Now with a new thin rubber pad...

Here's my first attempt at making the sight, milling from solid with a rotary table.

I found the finish and result to be less than ideal. Not sure if the mandrel was flexing or I need to read up on peripheral milling. In any case a good experiment but a poor job...

So now what? I drilled and tapped the end of a 3/8" diameter bar with a #10-32 thread.

Using my fancy center finder.

On center.

Drilled then reamed 3/16"

A small cutter was ground from a broken 3/16" shank endmill and set to cut a 5/8" diameter circle as it revolved, ((measurement-1/2 bar diameter)*2=cut diameter) making it a poor man's boring head.

A small block of steel was milled to the proper dimensions.

Edgefinding.

Milling a channel.

Set at an angle to mill the 60 deg. dovetail. This method is better than using a dovetail cutter (and I didn't have a proper one that size anyway) as it provides relief for the curve of the barrel.

More edgefinder fun, finding the centerline again.

I took several passes to cut the radius with my boring tool.

Nice finish. Poor man's boring head wins again.

Fits the radius gage perfectly.

And fits the dovetail (after several iterations of cutting and fitting) snugly.
More to come...

Hammer Spring Adjuster for Crosman 22XX

I've got a Crosman 2250 that's morphed into a .177 cal pistol. I guess that makes it a 1750 of sorts. I wanted this gun to primarily be a low powered paper puncher--but I wanted to also easily have the option of full power for metal silhouettes. A quick and dirty hammer spring adjuster was the obvious answer.

Removed the rear grip frame and rear breech bolts. The end cap and hammer spring pop right out.

Chucked the end cap into the 3-jaw on the Taig lathe and spotted with a center drill.

I've got more metric blots lying around than SAE, so I though drilled with a #8 (0.1990") bit...

...and tapped the hole M6 x 1.0mm

Chucked an M6 socket head bolt...

...and turned the head down to fit inside the end of the hammer spring.

Like so.

Now I need an unobtrusive adjuster handle. A small M6 aluminum nut will do the trick.

I center punched a dimple into one of the flats and drilled through with a #43 (0.0890") bit.
Not shown: Tapped the hole with a 4-40 tap.

(don't forget to use cutting fluid when tapping threads)

Set screw installed in the nut. The M6 adjuster bolt is too long.

Eyeballed, guessed, and crossed my fingers for luck.

Pretty straightforward.

Spring was shortened by about 3 coils to make up for the length of the base on the M6 bolt.

The hammer spring isn't stock. Something I found in a box of springs that looked promising.

Snugged down the set screw then tightened the adjuster all the way in. Mounted it in the lathe and faced down the end of the nut and M6 bolt. Blued the end of the steel M6 bolt with my old standby, Brownell's 44/40.

Adjuster at about mid range.

Wanted enough speed to punch clean scoring holes in those heavy card stock Gamo targets. They seem to need about 385--400 fps to cut easy to score holes. Lower power will also increase shot count and decrease sound--good things for indoor use. With the adjuster full out, Crosman .177 cal wadcutters were clocking right around 435 fps. Turned fully in, the same pellet was averaging just over 550 fps.

Just a bit more speed than I truly need, but it's more than close enough to be in the ballpark. A slightly softer spring could be substituted if further refinement was necessary. I suppose it's also now possible to play with velocity and fine tune for a given pellet.