Cowboy said:
The only concern I would have with you trying this option is with the Acetone. It might ruin the bluing/browning finish on the barrel?
Respectfully, Cowboy :hatsoff:
Cowboy,
The only way Acetone would hurt the finish of the barrel is if the finish was done with a poor quality "cold" blue. However, Transmission Fluid and Actetone or Acetone only - that drips/runs down onto the wood WILL screw up the top finish of the wood.
To the OP:
IF you have a freezer you can put the barrel in overnight (as Neechi mentioned) and whip it out the next day when you can work on it right away, it will often free up a stuck nipple.
If after you try that and possibly try the transmission fluid/Acetone mixture and it doesn't work, then time to try some heat. BUT I would advise holding a nail in a pair of pliers and heating the tip of the nail to red color and then placing the heated nail tip on the nipple. That way the heat will transfer down the nipple with almost zero chance of heating up too much around the barrel. I can not even remember how many stuck nipples I removed at NSSA Spring and Fall National Championships over the years between 1974 and 2005 and this worked a fair amount of time.
After that, what I always did was pull out my Industrial Size Dremel Tool with a round Carbide Burr/Cutter. Before I went to grinding on the nipple, I made a shield out of thin metal stock with a hole to clear the nipple and wrap that around the barrel/lock. You could also use leather to make such a shield.
I always began by hack sawing off the flattened cone of the nipple. Then burr cutting down the center of the nipple below the surface of where the flattened cone had been and into the main body of the nipple. Then I tried using an Easy Out. The vibration of the bur cutting usually vibrated the nipple enough to break free even many rusted in nipples.
The absolute WORST stuck nipple I ever had to remove was in an Original M1863 Rifle Musket with the original Iron Nipple. The Rifle Musket was in super great shape and I'm sure many Museums would have displayed it, BUT the nipple had rusted and been battered pretty bad over the years. So the nipple had almost been hammer forged into the threads on the barrel. Oh and that was not all, the owner had saved the Musket for a few months because he did not trust anyone else to work on it AND he brought it up to our booth around 7:00 PM and needed it to shoot the following morning. I did not have even a good drill press to work on it in the booth. Oh yeah, not much pressure there! :haha:
Everything else I normally did had failed up to and including what I mentioned above. What I wound up doing was burr cutting a screw driver type slot down into the thick/main part of the nipple. Then I stuck a rather thick and hardened screw driver into the slot and used a wrench to turn the screwdriver blade. It actually turned loose easier than I expected and no doubt due to the additional vibration from burr cutting out the screw driver slot in the nipple.
Now, this took almost 2 hours to do as I was going slow, taking little breaks and being extremely careful not to scratch/mar that original Musket in any way. The customer stopped by the booth about a half hour later and was very pleased the job was done. I was happy I never again ran across a nipple that was that difficult to remove.
Gus
