Building The Steven's Favorite

[TomG]

I made a bar to hold a triangular carbide insert to square the corners out on the pockets. Since there was no clapper built in, I had to limit the feed to .001-.002" at a time to keep from chipping the carbide. It did a good job though, it was just slow going. One down, three to go. I also started filing and polishing the machining marks out.

Tonight's task was to make a slotting tool to square the corners in the trigger and hammer pockets. I made the tool out of O1 the full width of the slots with a 1º lengthwise taper on each side, 10º clearance on each side and 10º end clearance. All that is left to do on the receiver is to file out the rest of the machining marks, polish and color case harden. The hardening will wait until all of the internals are finished and installed in case any "engineering changes" need to be made.

I was working on the honey-do list this weekend so there wasn't much time for the rifle, but I did manage to make a few screws. The following pics show the procedure to make two 8-32UNC slotted, fillister head screws, a typical style used in gunsmithing. They were made two at a time, one on each end of a piece of .25" O1 round stock.

The ends shown faced and center drilled.

A slick way to set the threading tool is to place some paper under the tool and shine the work light on it. That makes it really easy to see the gap between the thread gauge and the tool. Leave the locking screws loose and just slide the gauge back and forth until the tool is lined up.

Checking the pitch diameter of the thread.

Threads are fun to cut on the Hardinge because it has a lever to quickly lift the tool at the end of the cut without disturbing the setting. This makes a relief cut at the end of the thread unnecessary.

Next, the screws were parted off, the heads turned to the finish diameter and faced to length.

A form tool was ground to machine the crown on the heads.

The slots were cut with a .035" slitting saw. A collet block would be a better way to hold such small screws but the right sized collet was lacking in my selection.