Altering a Sousa Grade Knick

Most of the American shotgun makers of the "classic" era made single-barrel trap guns, with Hunter Arms (L.C. Smith), Parker, Baker and Fox offering various grades of their respective designs.  Ithaca however made a number of SBT guns of different design.  The first two were designed by Emil Flues and both were every bit as good as the double that Mr. Flues also designed for Ithaca (I wish there were a font for sarcasm).  The final Ithaca SBT was designed by Frank Knickerbocker and that is the gun that surpassed them all in design, strength and aesthetics.  Indeed, the gun compares well with most modern-day trap singles and many are still in regular use.  It is, objectively, the best of the classic era trap singles.  Unfortunately, the Knick shared one design element with its predecessors, that being a triggerguard that seems to have been designed to win an ugly contest.  The guards on Ithaca trap singles all lacked a "return" on the bow portion of the guard, where the strap portion splits off.  The vast majority of them also possessed shapes that were anything but oval.  The Knick is a good-looking design and it deserves better than the afterthought that passes for a triggerguard that comes from the factory.  This particular Knick is also a Sousa-grade gun (named for John Phillips Sousa), so the new triggerguard would be engraved and inlaid to match the factory pattern.  Apparently, being a very high grade gun didn't stop one (or more) incompetent buffoons (gunsmiths) from wreaking havoc upon it during its lifetime.  The breechscrew was unsurprisingly mangled, as was the trigger's anti-rattle spring.  The sear spring was some sort of "universal" replacement, the sear nose had been welded up (presumably to correct an earlier "trigger job") and the weld had predictably failed (I've written elsewhere about the folly of welding certain parts) and the forend's draw screw was cross-threaded.  Alright, let's get to it.

The original triggerguard, ugh!  (Note the dented wood.)

The new guard was mad to fit the original inletting, so that the gun could be returned to the factory original configuration.  Because of the gold inlays, the frame could not be held in a vise, even with padded jaws (24K gold is REALLY soft), so I made a plate and stand-offs that mounted in the triggerplate screw holes and held the plate in the vise.  The guard was fabricated in the usual fashion: bow, stud and strap, all welded after fitting.  The screws are made in the usual manner.

The triggerplate is relieved where the strap meets it so that there isn't a "bump" in the grip.  Because of the shape of the original guard, this relief is very far rearward and moving the relief forward would be readily apparent if the original guard were reinstalled.  To accommodate this, I put a mating relief in the new guard so that it actually sits atop the triggerplate, and shaped the external contours to make it all blend together. 

Looking better already...

The breechscrew is next.  Beside the slot being mangled, Bubba also removed material from the underside of the head, presumably to align the slot. 

The new screw: I know it's not aligned, that's because it's not tightened.  I engraved the breech, triggerguard and grip cap screws here for two reasons, I can do Ithaca screw patterns asleep and fewer parts to mail to the engraver (and possibly get lost).

Onward and inward.  I have no explanation for the anti-rattle spring, sometimes it's better to not know.  Before I made the new spring, I machined a pocket to locate the bottom end.

Next was the sear.  The previously welded part was scrap so I had to make a replacement from O1.

With the new sear heat treated and fitted, all that was left was to make a proper sear spring, correct the cross-threaded forend draw screw, blue the guard, lube and reassemble.

The finished job, the inlay and engraving of the guard are by Lee Griffiths and duplicate the factory work quite well.  I repaired the dented wood around the guard and refinished and blended the repaired area.

A New Ejector Segment for an A&A 453

This is a common enough failure with many side-by-side ejector guns, and the part usually breaks at one of two places, either at the end of the retaining screw slot, or the point where the half-shaft meets the face of the ejector.  In a design like this, with an integral guide half-pin positioned at twelve o'clock, failure of the guide pin is less common but it does occur.  The most highly stressed point of the part is where the retaining slot impacts the retaining screw.  This is because when the part stops against the screw, inertia carries the rest of the part onward, eventually failing it at the weakest point.
When ejecting spent shells, the weight of the empty hulls does a good job of mitigating this inertia.  Letting the ejectors trip on empty chambers is another matter.  It's always a good idea when opening an empty gun to place a thumb or index finger on the ejectors before they trip, in order to slow their speed, and prolong their life.  As described above, this isn't necessary when opening the gun after actually firing a shell (or shells).  It will never be a factor to even consider if you're not obsessively compelled to "relax" the mainsprings by dropping the hammers (a practice that has been debunked elsewhere on this blog).  Onward ho.....

The new ejector was blanked from a bar of O1.  From this point on, it is all handwork, except for the retaining slot, which is done on the mill.

The half-shaft is filed up completely by hand in the following manner.
Once I cut the blank from the parent stock, I filed 45 degree (approximately) bevels, then filed the "points" off the bevels.  Once it started looking half-round, I colored the entire surface with a black marker and then ran the appropriate radius gauge down the length of the half-shaft.  That left bright marks on the spots that needed to come down.  The process is repeated until the entire length matches the gauge.

The above filing stopped about .100" short of the root so that I could create the stress relief radius there.
The radius at the root was done by eye, using small,half-round files and polished using wet/dry paper wrapped around a short length of drill rod.

Next was fitting the face into its recess in the barrels.  Once it is fitted and the chamber ID is cut, the rim cut is made using (funny enough) a rim cutter.  Then the radius at the bottom is filed up and it's ready for the machining of the retaining slot and filing up the extraction cam and hammer striking faces.

Once all of the cutting, filing, fitting and polishing is done, all sharp edges are broken in order to ( in combination with the surface finish) deny cracks a place to start.

After heat treating and repolishing, it's assembled and ready to go back into service.

Oh Yes, Even More WTF?

What can I say that hasn't been said too many times already?  Sometimes all you can do is scratch your head and laugh.

Unsurprisingly, the single trigger in this Parker Repro still didn't work, even after the work that this clearly talented gunsmiff lavished upon it. 

The double-single (not a typo) trigger in this FN SxS was apparently "fixed" by MacGyver, using a pocketknife and a paperclip.

A Dent Repair

This is a set of Parker barrels that had suffered damage in transit.  The right barrel was deeply dented on the underside, about ten inches from the muzzle.  It was quite a time-consuming repair, complicated by a lack of barrel wall thickness and having to refinish and blend the repaired area.  Due to the barrel wall thickness, I did not want to remove ANY significant amount of material from either the inside or outside of the barrel.  This meant that the barrel material had to be "moved" back into its pre-dent condition completely and very, very carefully to conserve what wall thickness was there.

Yikes!

Repaired and ready for refinishing of the repaired area

The repaired area is refinished and blended to the surrounding finish.  Yes it CAN be done.

Can We Just Stop With This Shit?

What shit is that you may wonder?  The wholly inappropriate use of welding to "repair" lockwork parts.  Regardless of how good an idea you may think it is, notwithstanding that "everybody" does it and, regardless of who says it's okay to do, WELDING ON HIGH-CARBON, OIL-HARDENING parts is NOT a good idea!
Just because these parts are steel does not mean that they are suitable for welding!  All steels are NOT necessarily weldable!  The higher a steel's carbon content, the less suitable it is for welding, at least the type of welding that is practiced by most "practitioners of the gunsmithing arts" (IE, hacks) in the business today.  Steels with a carbon content above about 40 points (that's 4/10ths of 1 percent) require special procedures for welding successfully.  Some of those special procedures include pre-heat, post-heat, VERY specific filler materials (some materials can only be successfully welded using the same alloy as the parent material), specific heating and cooling rates, etc.  Most of the lockwork parts in these old guns are made of oil-hardening, plain steels like 1075 or 1095 that contain anywhere between 6/10ths and a bit over a full percent of carbon.  This makes them, for all practical purposes, unweldable by the typical gunsmiff with a TIG welder that he barely knows how to turn on.  Oh sure, you CAN weld the parts and they might even look good.  Hell, they might even hold up for a hundred or maybe even two hundred cycles but, THEY WILL FAIL.  I can't tell you how many failed hammer notches, sear noses, bolts, tumblers and even springs I've seen that were "repaired" by welding.  They all fail in exactly the same way, with the weld portion cleanly separating from the parent metal, right along the weld seam.  Here's a good rule of thumb, if it's a through-hardened part, don't weld it.  Here's another, if it's a case-hardened part, ANNEAL the !@#$%ing thing before you weld it.  And NO, you can't anneal it in your kitchen oven.  The ONLY correct way to repair a part of this type is to replace it.  If no replacement is available, then you make one.  If you can't do that, don't call yourself a gunsmith because you're not.  Owning a TIG welder doesn't make you a weldor any more than having a Brownell's catalog makes you a gunsmith.  The very least you can do is attempt to know the materials with which you're working and act accordingly.  The client is paying for your knowledge, you should at least make an attempt at having some.  Welding is a career/science unto itself that, like any other complex endeavor, can take a lifetime to master.  If you think that welding up half a dozen or so parts a year makes you a weldor, you might want to rethink that.  Welding is also a very valuable component of gunmaking, when properly executed and where it is appropriate.
If, by some chance this is seen by any of the vandals that committed the acts shown below and you are offended: GOOD. 

A mainspring that had been welded, along with its replacement

Cracked weld "repair" of Fox sear nose

An Ithaca Knick sear nose with failed weld "repair"

Birdshit welded tumbler

Here's some truly vile work

Something Really Completely Different

It's not gun related but it is an interesting piece of automotive and industrial history.  What it is, specifically, is the original patent model made to illustrate the function of the catalytic converter, invented in the early 1950s by one Eugene Houdry.  Mr. Houdry was apparently a pretty sharp fellow where chemistry was concerned and has some very interesting accomplishments to his credit, a few of which are outlined here:  https://www.sciencehistory.org/historical-profile/eugene-houdry

What the heck is it doing here, on a gunsmithing blog (you may wonder)?  I'll explain.  One of my clients is a serious "car guy" and his wife happens to be a granddaughter of Eugene Houdry and she had "inherited" the model when her parents passed away.  My client found out about it when he discovered it (and a bag of broken pieces) in a pile of stuff that was to be discarded.  Recognizing what it was (and its historical significance), he rescued it from the discard pile.  Knowing that I'm a fellow "gearhead" and former professional modelmaker, he thought that I'd be interested in restoring the model.  Of course I agreed to do the job.  

The model was apparently originally made using some sort of plaster castings for the rod elements of the catalyst bed.  These are very brittle and easily broken by careless handling and, unsurprisingly, a number of them were broken into multiple pieces.  These rods have a teardrop cross section and are arranged in staggered rows between the endplates.  Unfortunately, many of the broken pieces that were saved had been rendered to dust from bouncing against each other in the bag in which they were stored, so simply reassembling the pieces was not an option.  What I did was to take some of the larger fragments, squared their ends and glued them together, making one piece that was slightly longer than it needed to be.  After leveling the glue joints and sanding the entire surface smooth, I had a plug from which to make a silicone mold.  Once the mold was made, I cast enough copies in urethane to replace all of the missing pieces.  The original was made by trapping the rods in pockets in the endplates.  Since I dared not attempt disassembling the entire model to install the replacement rods, I had to decide how the new parts would be installed.  I could have cut each one to length and simply epoxied them in place or, I could make good use of the urethane's flexibility when heated.  I chose the latter.  After cleaning out all of the debris from the pockets that located the now missing rods, I cut the replacement parts slightly over length, then heated them enough to "flex" them into place.  Prior to installing them, I'd primered and painted them because it would be impossible to access some areas after assembly.  Once in place, I straightened them and quick blast of compressed air cooled the part, leaving it trapped in place and straight again.  This process was repeated for all of the missing pieces.  Once that was done, the replacement parts were touched up with paint.  The final step was to "weather" the new parts to match the aged appearance of the original parts.