Franken-"hawken"

[Mad Professor]

Hi everybody, I just got a great deal on a 15/16 GM dropin barrel and have a pretty good heap of parts from TCs and Investarms/Lyman trade rifles.

Does anyone know (or has experience) if the inletting is close enough to allow mix-matching Tangs, triggers, locks? That is will the TC parts fit into Investarms stocks and vice versa?

If they are close, what usually needs to be tinkered with to make em fit?

I'll follow up on this after I start on "Frank"......

Thanks in advance for any suggestions/insight!!!

 

[44-henry]

If it was going to use the barrel as a basis for building a custom rifle I would probably purchase a precarved stock for the TC hawken. I suspect you will have some problems getting components like the lock and tang to work well together if they are not of the same brand, you probably can get away with different triggers and buttplate and triggerguard. I've thought of doing the same thing and in fact I just sold a number of Green Mountain barrels on Ebay some time ago, the ones I have left I might eventually finish into working rifles. It should be an interesting project, good luck.

 

[oldarmy]

I agree, try to buy a "pre-carve TC stock", with out the inletted lock mortice, and trigger inlet.
If there is such a thing. :hmm: You might give one of the stock builders a call and see if they can shape you a Hawken half stock for that barrel.
Then you can fit the parts as you need to.

 

[Mad Professor]

O.K. , first observation, GM IBS barrels do not drop in to Lyman/Investarms tangs precisely.

The problem being the parts line up fine vertically, but the barrel must be ca. 1 mm low for the barrel to seat flush with the tang.

On one stock the inletting is sloppy enough to allow the barrel to be mounted and put in the wedge. For the other stock ( I want to use) the inletting is better ( for original barrel) and if you get close to having the wedge fit you are near spitting the stock from the bend you are inducing in the wood. Besides this it is ugly to have the tang/breech lock up and have the top flat of the tang much higher than the top flat of the barrel.

What to do ?

1) File the top of the hook so the barrel will line up with the top of the tang, may require shimming the staple . Sloppy tang/breech bad accurracy?

I think not a good idea as this will have the barrel "loose" up and down at the tang and have a single pressure point between the lenght of of the barrel and stock, after all why do you bed a barrel? Also will tang/breech be square after this?

2) File the rectangular hole in the tang on the upper flat to achieve the above. This intoduces the same concerns.

3) What I'm considering. The rectangular slot for the hole in the tang of lymann/investarms is centered slightly below center (don't have the calipers out now) It seems the hook in GM barrels is directly centered. Take the lyman/investarms tang(s) and either hard weld or silver solder the bottom, then machine both the top and bottom so the rectangular hole is perfectly centered in the tang. barrel shoud "drop in" now.

Any comments or suggestions on #1-3 will be appreciated. It seems that # 3 is "the right way" to do it. The barrel will fit the original inlet best, no mis-match with the tang/barrel. Barrel is unmolested and will fit TC tangs if I "move" the barrel.

P.S. One other consideration that would work, rebed (add epoxy below)/grind the top of tang.. Would require metal temoval of the top of the tang (so it's not above stock?, filler below the tang, maybe not too bad?

P.P.S. I'm still leaning to modifing the tangs as they are cheap ($5) and the barrels will still fit (my) TCs

Thanks for comments and insights!