Octagon router bit

[Pork Chop]

Where can I beg, borrow, buy a 15/16" octagon router bit?

 

[Erzulis boat]

You do not have to use a 15/16 octagonal cutter if you cannot find one, in fact, you are better off without one.

I inlet barrel channels on the Bridgeport now, but used to do it with a router.

Clean up your barrel first by draw filing and sanding to get it close to the finished dimension. Zonie wrote a great post about it.

Measure the width of a flat and cut this width to depth in the stock blank. Then rout a channel to overall barrel width more than half a side flat deep.

An octagons "sides" are at 45 degrees. Get a 90 degree included angle cutter, and make a fence for the router.

You rout each side of the channel until a PERFECT custom channel for your barrel is inlet. You are just connecting the bottom channel and sides. Make the channel a tiny bit undersize for final whiskering.

When you install the lock, you will have plenty of room to align the flashhole or drum.

This is the only way to perfectly inlet a truly custom channel. Just practice on some scrap and make your router fence bulletproof. This method is more precise and forgiving than going for the whole shebang at once.

I hope that the forend is square and not shaped yet.

:m2c:

 

[Pork Chop]

Thanks, that sounds like a good method. The more I think about it, the more that I think that I should just table this project, or hire out the inletting and rough shaping. I lost access to my woodshop, so I would be making do with some less than ideal tools...

 

[Erzulis boat]

It sounds like you were planning to build a rifle. If you have any trepidation about shaping and inletting, build a pistol.

A halfstock flintlock without a ramrod provision is a perfect first scratchbuilt project.

The shaping is whatever suits you, the barrel channel is only 5 inches long, and the money invested in parts is peanuts compared to a rifle. As there is no ramrod provision, that step is eliminated. Basically make a dueller.

Building a pistol is fast, fun, and best of all, you can go crazy with details and decoration. Silver inlay, carving, the works.

 

[Pork Chop]

I have built a few pistol kits. Working one one now. I have assisted in building a rifle. I bought a CVA Bobcat with the intent to restock it in cherry. That is why I ask these questions.

 

[Zonie]

I used a router bit which is about the same width as the barrel flat is wide.
Several passes cut the center of the channel to full depth.

Using the fence, I then cut the sides to the proper width and stopped at a depth which represented where the side flat would stop, relative to the bottom flat's surface.
This left a T shaped channel.

I then used a chisel to cut the 45 degree surface which connected the bottom of the side flat cuts to the bottom of the channel. Hard to describe without pictures but it wasn't that hard to do.

 

I have taken a V grover bit ground off the bottom to flat. And reshapen the bottom like it is ground on a rabbit bit.
When I do one I hog out most off it with a rabbit and then finish it off with the regound bit.
David