How to recurve entry thimble?

[chopperusa]

I have a not so small problem with a rifle i am working on. Originaly i thought i had enough radius to the thumb part of the entry thimle. But after doing the final shaping i find the radius is to big or flat resulting in a almost square side profile. i am using a 3/4" barrel that leaves me little area to work with.
What i need to do is recurve or bring down the outer edges of the thumb part. The thimble is already inlet and if i need to i will have to use a new one if i end up having to move the thimble back slightly. Hopefully i can find a way to bend and shrink slightly some of the material by the thimble barrel and thumb transition.
Anyone have any luck doing this, and if so what worked best for you?

 

[Packdog]

That's a pretty common thing. There are several ways to fix the problem.
One, find a piece of either 3/4 or 1 inch pipe, soft piece of wood and a vice. Sandwich your thimble skirt between the soft wood and pipe and crank the vice down. It will force the skirt into shape.
Another, not so controlled way is take that same round object/pipe with the radius or less than the radius you need. Take about 3 layers of cardboard and lay the cardboard on a concrete floor. Lay your thimble on the cardboard. lay your round object on top of that and give it a whack. The cardboard will give enough to make the thimble skirt wrap around you pipe or whatever you use.
Ken

 

[Herb]

I just put more curve into an entry pipe skirt. I found an object with a smaller radius than the inside of the skirt. It was a spark plug socket. I put the socket inside the skirt up to the shoulder and closed my vise on the brass skirt below the center line of the skirt, held horizontally. This lets it stick up above the vise jaw and you will see it sticking away from the socket. I held a piece of brass against the skirt edge and with a ball peen hammer tapped the skirt down to the socket. Then I turned the skirt to have the other side up and did the same thing to it. Had to tap down the crease at the shoulder on each side. This worked good.

 

[rich pierce]

If it's already inlet you still have a problem as the skirt will be more narrow now that it is curved more.

 

[crockett]

One of the muzzle loading magazines- I forget which one- had an article about making your own pipes. The author said the entry thimble or pipe was just as easy to make even though it had a skirt. Does anyone know how to do this? I am stocking a gun and making a stock out of a blank piece of wood and I want to go the opposite, in other words I want a little extra wood between the bottom of the ramrod hole and the bottom of the stock so I need the skirt to bend out a little more.