Rebuilding a Fox J Grade SBT

Fox single barrel trap guns aren't the most common of guns, sadly this one had been in the hands of a common "gunsmith" at some point in its life.  It was loose on the face, had two detached rib posts, the stock and forend had been finished in a thick coat of shellac and it had a terrible Pachmayr recoil pad.  Below I will detail the work of properly rebuilding this piece of American trapshooting history.

The first order of business was to correct the off-face situation with a new hinge pin.  While many gunsmiths will simply weld up the barrel hook and refit it, this is not the correct way of doing the job.
Removing the worn hinge is the first task.  The pin is held in place by two lock pins, one of which is hollow to accommodate the ejector trip lever.  The ejector side pin is driven out from the rear, through the mainspring bore.  The opposite side is drilled, tapped and pulled from the front since its hole is blind.
Here is the old hinge pin showing the worn area.

 A new pin blank is turned from the appropriate material...

 

After reaming the hole in the frame, the slightly oversized pin is installed.  The locating pin hole

for the ejector side is drilled from the rear of the frame and the other side is drilled from the front.

 

The ejector side pin is installed along with the opposing lock pin.

They are both filed flush to the action knuckle.

The sides of the new pin are then filed flush to the frame.

The sides of the hinge pin are then engraved to match the original pin.

After the barrel is blacked down on face, the next step was to make and fit a new locking bolt since the horseshoer that worked on the gun prior "refit" it with a dremel tool.
Below are the steps.

A new toplever yoke was also made to correct excessive play in the toplever.

The next step was to make a new sear spring and screw.  These parts were completely missing, replaced by a small coil spring sitting in a hole in the triggerplate.  This spring and the hole that located it are not original to the gun.

The incorrect spring arrangement.

The correct sear spring arrangement.

Obviously, no one who is capable of visiting this level of incompetence upon a gun's innards would leave the screw slots undamaged, so a new breech screw, floorplate screw, hand screw and triggerguard screws were made, indexed and engraved.

The triggerguard had been buffed on a wheel, smearing and partially erasing the engraving.  It had also been incorrectly hot salt blued.  I correctly polished the guard and then recut all of the engraving before nitre bluing the guard.

Next, the dislodged rib posts were addressed.  After removing the rib, the posts and barrel were cleaned of old solder and then resoldered in place.  You might also notice the stray punch marks in the barrel.  Simply inexcusable.  Obviously this will be corrected and the barrel and rib will be correctly finished so that the repair is undetectable.

With the metalwork finished I turned my attention to the buttstock and forend.  After stripping the incorrect finish I raised the myriad dents that existed, recut the checkering and repaired some chips and missing wood.

The final touch was to install a correct Silver's recoil pad.  The Silver's was offered by the factory with a leather face so that was also installed.  Here are some photos of the finished gun.

No More Ivory

Effective immediately, Vicknair Restorations will no longer offer any Elephant ivory products such as bead sights, Colt SAA grips (or grips of any kind), inlays, etc.  I will also not fit any products made of this material, regardless of who supplies it.  I can provide bead sights made of wild boar tusk which is indistinguishable from actual ivory.   The reason for this decision is that I do not wish to profit from or promote the use of Elephant ivory in any way.  These animals are sentient beings and are ruthlessly slaughtered for their tusks, when they aren't being killed as a trophy to live out some Ernest Hemingway fantasy.  They are an endangered species and it is unconscionable destroy them in order to use their ivory as mere decoration, especially with so many substitutes available.  It matters not to me that your ivory grips, sights, whatever are from "legal pre-ban" ivory, an intelligent being died so that those products could be made.  If this has a negative impact upon my business, then so be it.  If you disagree, that's fine too but I'd suggest that you do a little research into Elephants so that your opinion will at least be an informed one.  If you actually do some research you will learn that these are intelligent, self-aware creatures with a social structure and the ability to feel the same range of emotions as humans.  If this offends anyone, in any way, I'm NOT sorry.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140818-elephants-africa-poaching-cites-census/

http://www.soselephants.org/about_elephants.html

http://www.bloodyivory.org/stop-the-ivory-trade

http://onlyelephantsneedivory.weebly.com/

This is where your ivory fill-in-the-blank came from.  Enjoy it.

Making a Southgate Ejector Tumbler

This BLE came in with a broken left-side ejector tumbler so a new part needed to be made.  While the Southgate ejector is very simple in operation, the tumblers are among the most complex of the internal parts to make and fit.  The process is detailed below.

The original part failed at a thin section that was where a sharp inside corner was left.

I selected an appropriately sized piece of  W-1 stock and went to work.  At this point the milling machine work was done and the part would be finished by hand with files.

The part rough shaped...

The finished part, notice the generous inside radius at the point where the original part failed.

The inboard web was also made thicker than the original part to add some strength in this highly stressed area.

The tumbler was heat-treated and polished before installation then fitted so that its timing was perfectly matched to the right ejector.
Total time 7 hours.

A Leather Recoil Pad for a Holland

A leather covered recoil pad adds immeasurable aesthetic appeal to a fine gun, when it's done right.
When it's not done right, few things look so atrocious.  Here's how to do it right.  You will note that the heel and toe of the pad are NOT radiused so much that the pad ends up looking like a cantaloupe that's been cut in half.  A huge radius on the heel and toe certainly makes it easier to stretch the hide over the pad without wrinkles but it also ends up looking very, very bad.

The traditional pad to use as a base is the classic red Silver's but they're pretty heavy which must be taken into account in order to maintain the gun's balance.   This particular gun is a very light 16 ga and the owner wanted to maintain the gun's balance exactly.  With that in mind, I decided that a Pachmayr pad would be the best choice because of its light weight.

The first step is to cut plugs for the screw holes since Pachmayr does not do it themselves.  The plugs are cut with a custom made tubular cutter and a purpose made fixture to assure that the plugs are concentric with the screw holes.

The next step is to remove the length of the pad from the buttstock.  The holes already present in the stock are how the balance was adjusted when the gun was built.

Next, the pad is ground to the contours of the stock.  This is done very carefully, with the pad in place, no half-assed "recoil pad jig" is used.  After that the pad is reduced by the thickness of the leather all around its periphery, by hand.  This is done so that the leather is flush with the wood when it's finished.  The face of the pad is also reshaped because the shape of the Pachmayr pad is completely wrong.

The gun also had a couple of pretty nasty dents in the stock near the heel.  These were also addressed during the pad installation.

With the pad shaped, it's time to start the covering process.  Most any leather is appropriate as long as it's thin enough and undyed.  The classic leather is pig skin and that's what I use unless something else is specified by the client.  No wrinkles allowed.

Gussets are cut into the cover so that it will lay flat on the pad when glued down.   The screw holes are treated the same way.   The entire cover is glued to the pad.

After the cover is glued down the leather is dyed.  Brown or reddish brown is traditional and is what I use unless the client asks for some other color, in which case I politely tell them that they can have brown (or reddish brown).

While the dye is drying on the pad, the plugs can be covered.  First step is to reduce the diameter by twice the leather thickness.  This is because the outside of the plug is covered, as is the inside of the hole into which it must fit.

The finished plugs.

While the dye on the plugs is drying, the pad can be polished in preparation for the final operation before mounting, lining.  Lining is the burnishing of one or (usually) two border lines at the base of the pad.  It is done on a purpose made tool as seen in the photo.  When one line is done, the burnisher head is flipped over to do the second line.

The pad is finished and the dents are repaired.