How I lost $200.00

[Birddog6]

Hey.... things happen... :idunno:

I had built dozens of rifles, & one day I am working on this beaut of a piece of curly maple, paid $450 for the stock. I now have the rifle built In-the-White, am taking it apart for the last time to check everything before I final sand it & start carving it. I pull the barrel out & it hangs up about midway of the forestock & I snapped the forestock into 3 pieces. Now I mean 3 separate pieces, not a crack. Needless to say, I was pretty upset over it.

Blowing $450 didn't piss me of nearly as much as me getting in a hurry & doing such a dumb act, when I knew better. :cursing: I absolutely KNEW that barrel should come in & out of that barrel inlet easily & freely, but failed to make it that way..... :nono:

So, I glued it back together, then went inside the barrel channel & cut out 3 bottom flat places places 4" long at each break & glass bedded in pieces of hickory Ramrod. This worked well as by slabbing the RR pieces, I had the rounded side that went inside & the flat where I sawed it for the barrel channel flat. Then I bedded the entire barrel.... Man.... :grin: it looked great, could not tel it was ever done. Stained it, it was a awesome repair. Would make me a nice rifle. Problem was, I didn't like the weight or the balance of the rifle for Me..... And in good conscience can't sell it to anyone, as I would always wonder about the repair & know I sold one I did a major screwup on..... If I do a major screwup, I don't patch it, I replace it. Doesn't matter if it is a barrel, stock, lock, or the cost of the part. The part comes off & I use that part for experimentation or it's scrapped & a new part goes on. I think I have ruined 1 stock, 1 barrel, and 1 lockplate in the last ? 75 rifles. So I think it has went well for me. Possible others would have used them, I decided not to.

Anyway, I took the rifle back apart & bent the forestock til it cracked in 2 new places, just to test my repairs. Hey, :idunno: I just gotta know. :rotf:

Then I went to the bandsaw & cut the stock into 6" pieces & tossed it in the scrap pile with exception to a couple of knife handle blanks. Put the parts away for a future build & hopefully I won't screw it up.

Sometimes learning from mistakes is costly, to your wallet & to your self esteem. But those mistakes are valuable assets nobody can give you...... :hmm: And hopefully the ones that cost your wallet allot, are not as frequent as the one that cost less.

The only people that make no mistakes, are people that don't actually do anything.......

Keith Lisle

 

[Vaino]

Since 1977 when I started building MLers, I've scrapped 2 stocks. One was my first attempt and was from a blank. Mis-shaped the upper forend and could have salvaged it, but decded not to and it was used for firewood. The second was a few yrs ago and was from an expensive quarter sawn blank. When shaping the area around the tang and wrist, a long crack occured and I glued it up. Shaping the other side of the tang and wrist, another crack appeared and also glued that up. Got suspicious and started to "poke" around the stock and created 2 more cracks. It seems the grain hadn't fully grown together or in drying it separated and it didn't take much to separate. Once had a stock that cracked through the "web" from the muzzle to just short of the entry pipe. Stained the inside of the crack, quickly applied regular "Super Glue" into the crack and immediately tightened the fixture. Came out good, but then epoxied the muzzlecap on. Also,before gluing, a small hole was drilled at the end of the crack at the entry pipe end and a small piece of dowel was glued in so the crack wouldn't continue. Worked fine.....Fred

 

[longrifle346]

Well, I'll volunteer details of my recent near debacle, it was a precarve too, maybe it'll make ya feel better. I'd pretty much completed the final shaping of my new Hawken halfstock. I was down to fitting the steel forend cap and slimming the forestock to take the last few ounces off of that before a final sanding and finish. I was making a very small cut, more of an indentation line, when a spear of maple about 3" long just fell away from the top right side of the barrel channel adjoining the cap....and I wanted to start kicking and crying like a little kid.

I grabbed some clear adhesive(don't even know the brand but it's proven in the past to be tough stuff), mixed some sanding dust with it, and dobbed onto the broken areas. Put it back together and put a light clamp on it. I backed that up with a thin layer of the mixture in the barrel channel. Gotta know it's there to find it so far. It still has to have the finish sanding done and the finish applied. We'll see.....if it breaks off again I'll try again or call it "character". It's not my first scewup, I'm sure it won't be my last.

 

[sutherland]

That's a beautiful repair job, Mike.