Off & crawling on my first build

[paulvallandigham]

The one time I made up a safe file, we just cut a 60 degree angle in a piece of scrap wood, after checking to see it was flat and square on the bottom. The file was place in the groove to hold it to the grinder, as we cranked the table under the grind wheel. I seem to recall we used a router bit in a drill press to cut the groove, but we are talking about an event that happened almost 50 years ago! I am a little fuzzy on the details. If I were making a jig for multiple use, say for a production plant, I would use a vertical mill to cut the jig from alum. alloy, or soft steel, and keep the jig in the tool room for later use. If this were for a tool and die shop, where we would be making hundreds of these safe files, I would make it out of steel and use magnets to hold the file to the jig.

 

[oldarmy]

I have a used dovetail jig you can have.
Found it to be more trouble and just never seemed to work for me.
I just lay the underlug on the barrel. Mark with a felt tip pen.
Cut inside the lines with a hacksaw.. fine blade.
use the saw to remove as much metal as I can between the cuts.
Cold chisle out the remainder.
file the cut out flat and use a standard triangle file.. no "safe side".
Always cut small...but you can peen the dovetail down and always solder if you really make it too big.
the offer for the "JIG" is real.
Send me a private e-mail and it's yours.

 

[mikemeteor]

sitting around the house, the afterglow of the Steelers game worn off, contemplating if and how my navel might ever be useful again, when it occurred to me that if I needed a 3-corner file with a safe side, instead of removing the teeth on one side, I could instead maybe fill in the holes around the teeth, thus making it mostly if not wholely "safe".
people probably do this unintentionally all the time.
was thinking maybe carefully knifing on some sort of epoxy or something.
keeping it flat and flush.
i can see my grinding exercise definetly NOT ending up flat.

any experience or thoughts on this,or what substance might work, or should I stop letting my mind wander.... :hmm:

 

[J.D.]

I don't know if filling the teeth will work all that well. IMHO, the corner of the file needs to cut all the way to the bottom of the dovetail.

I suspect that the filler will hold the corner of the file up off of the bottom of the dovetail.

To be honest, I dunno. Try it on scrap metal and see how it works.

Nice job on the tang inlet. I suspect that the finish will expand the wood surrounding the inlet to hide the small gap.

Continue to take your time. Building these guns is not rocket science, but one does need some basic knowledge and basic skills...and lots of patience. You obviously possess the skills and, apparently, the patience.

 

[bingo1952]

If you are going the safe file route you will have to grind those teeth off unless you have a fairly large diamond file. Those two items I posted on the first page of this topic are hardened and require no file modification at all. Either way you go the end result can be attained with some caution on your part.

 

[mazo kid]

MeteorMan, you are doing the right thing....going slow and asking questions as you go. Several years ago I took a 3 corner file to work and ground the teeth off one side on the belt sander in the shop. And I like the idea of dovetails too. I ordered a Rice 58 caliber swamped barrel (still in the line-up for running a batch) and am having them mill in the sight and lug dovetails. The center lug will be soldered as Jason said he wouldn't cut a dovetail in that thinner section of barrel. Keep up the good work and also keep us up to date on your progress.

 

[mikemeteor]

Well, I dove in to my first dovetail last night. Little nervewracking putting blade to barrel.
Tried to go slow.
I like to use tape to further delineate the out-of-bounds.

series of cuts shown below. I evened out the depths shown in frame B a little, then put the cold chisel to the wafers.

Frame C is after some filing with the 3-corner, and I wasn't at all happy with the rounded cornering that was developing.

Some more concentrated filing got me to frame D, where the corners are sharpening up a little.
I was getting antsy, so I put down the file, took the picture, and went to bed.
Still have a little more to go in the lateral direction, on the left, at bottom of slot.

Right now, the whole thing is a smidge undersized, and I'm going to make a lug tonite and start the fitting process.

Frame D shows my 3-corner file - I'm thinkin it might too big for this process - that contributed to the rounding corners ?

 

[paulvallandigham]

Without watching how you are doing the file work its hard to guess what to recommend you change. Please remember that a file is suppose to cut in only one direction. Usually, that is when its pushed away from your body. Then, you LIFT the file out of the work, and return to the starting position. This keeps the file sharp, and keeps you from rounding edges and corners by dragging the file back over the work.

Take very deliberate strokes as you are reading the bottom of that overhand on the dovetail so that you file a straight line across the flat, and not find a lump in the middle when both ends will fit the lug, hanger, or sight.

 

[THORNAPPLE]

You need to have a "safe" side on your file! That means the teeth on one of the three sides need to be ground off, smooth. That will get you the sharp edge you want instead of rounded. You only want to be cutting one surface at a time...the bottom, or one of the angled sides. Filing the bottom and a side at the same time will get you in trouble when you get down to final fitting.
I grind my file on a belt sander and quench in water frequently to keep it from overheating and ruining the hardness. OK?

 

[Birddog6]

Right now, the whole thing is a smidge undersized, and I'm going to make a lug tonite and start the fitting process.

Frame D shows my 3-corner file - I'm thinkin it might too big for this process - that contributed to the rounding corners ?

I don't use a regular three-cornered file, I use a Ultra-Slim file. It is smaller & has a sharper angle than the regular slim file. I sand off one flat to make the safe side. Lst ones I got were from Fastenal.

And don't worry about getting all of the hacksaw marks out of it, they don't matter & you won't see them.

Take a black magic marker & color the dovetail you cut, then file & see wher to hit & not, If you hit a place you don't want to file, stop, recolor it & start again.

After ya do couple hundred of them, it is a piece of cake....... Takes about 5 min to mark, cut, clean out & install the dovetail. First one I ever did took me bout an hour ! ha ha ! :rotf:

I cut my slots, turn the hacksaw blade at an angle & cut the pieces out in between the cuts, then file them even.

:thumbsup:

 

[kansas_volunteer]

Consider getting an actual dovetail slot cutting file:
http://www.brownells.com/aspx/ns/store/productdetail.aspx?p=698

 

[Zonie]

MeteorMan :
Actually it looks pretty good to me for a first try.

I suspect, like the others, that you are using a standard, unmodified 3 corner file.
If you look closely at it you will see that the corners where the flats meet are not very sharp. That is the reason for the large radius in the corners of your dovetail.

You either need to grind the teeth off of one flat leaving a very sharp edge where the toothless flat meets the side flats, get a smaller 3 cornered file or buy a special file made for dovetailing.

If you have a grinder or a very fine grit belt sander removing the teeth isn't that hard to do. Just be sure to keep the file cool while your doing it.

 

[mikemeteor]

Ohhh..the humanity... I come before you ashamed and (mostly) guilty as charged. :shake:
I did indeed attempt a work around - back-hauled my 3-square on the corner edge of an old file many times to dull the teeth - I think it worked OK in one respect - that side wasn't cutting, but it doesn't take a spaceship biologist to see that the geometry of that mongrel wasn't going to give sharp corners.

Now I have done as told, like I should have done earlier, and I was actually shocked at how easy it was to make a slick safe side with my belt sander.

First dovetail prior to final cleanup.

so... another lesson learned! - the voices of experience herein trump ill-conceived cleverness everytime.

Take note fellow first-timers - a teachable moment. (Anyone notice how I'm attempting to spin my own personal screw-up into a positive lecture for others? :shake: :shake: )

and Birddog6 - 5 minutes to do one start to finish ! - Great Leaping Horney Toads ! Doubt I'll ever get near that.
Any tricks for layout ?
do you have a template cut, or just measure it out by hand.

sorry for all this minutiae, boring you veterans, but I reckon it's this detail stuff that eventually makes the difference between an OK build and a good build a very nice build.
as always, thanks to all for the constructive words.

 

[paulvallandigham]

You practice doing the underlugs, where it won't show when you bobble a dovetail a bit, so that by the time you begin working on the dovetails for the sights, you don't screw them up! At least that is suppose to be how it works! :wink:

 

[Zonie]

MeteorMan
You have learned well Grasshopper. :grin:

Now, the second lesson:

After a nice dovetail is formed in the barrel, "It is always wise to do your work on the cheapest piece."

That boils down to, if a part needs to be filed to fit it is easier and cheaper to replace a little sight or underlug than it is to replace a barrel that has oversize dovetail slots in it. :thumbsup:

 

[oldarmy]

It doesn't look that bad to me.
Nice photos by the way.
I would just clean up the bottom with a square file
No one is going to see it/them anyway... the same reason no one draw files, or finishes the bottom flats
The key point is does the under lug fit tight??
By the time you get three of them done, you will be ready to work on the top of the barrel where the sights go :thumbsup:

 

[boondocker]

Meteor that does"nt look that bad besides who is going to see it like oldarmy says as long as its tight. I did the same as you with an old file would"nt cut butter. $4.00 at Home Depot was a godsend. Put them in there and peen them tight and your good to go. Watch that wood between the rr channel and the barrel is purty darn thin don"t ask. Carry on with the good work. :thumbsup:

 

[Birddog6]

Ya just lay the dove tail on there where ya want it, scribe the barrel with the back side of a exacto knife blade, take the hacksaw & make 8 full strokes with it (for me) all about 1/32 apart & stop shy of the scribe mark on each die about 1/16. Lay the saw blade on the first slot at an angle & cut the next piece out. Go to the next one & keep laying the sawblade on over as ya go & cut them all out. Then I lay the sawblade flat in the dovetail I cut & I make 1 cut on each side of the dovetail where I am going to file the beveled edge. (less to file out) Take the file & clean it up. Then file the beveled edges & start trying the fit.

Also, if you knock that very sharp edge off the dovetail, it will help allot as you are not going to find that sharp a file edge & that usually gets peeled off upon installation anyway. So just round it off just a bit from the bottom a lil with a file. Start filing & fitting, trying both sides each time in case you are not filing straight. When it is starts going in take a couple more careful file cuts & I usually want it to go about 1/2 way in by hand. Tap it on in with a engraving hammer, then I stake it 3 times on each lug normally, about 1/32 from the edge to insure the cut bevel edge is down on the lug tight..
The take a needle belt sander & sand the lug sides off flat with the barrel flat. If ya don't have that file them off or you can grind the down as you fit them. Some guys leave them sticking out & inlet the whole underlug, base & all. Just depends on the person building it. I don't like them stickingout so I sand mine off flush with the barrel flat.

:thumbsup:

 

[Birddog6]

No one is going to see it/them anyway... the same reason no one draw files, or finishes the bottom flats

WHAT !! You mean I am the only one drawfiling the entire barrels !! :shocked2: :redface: :cursing:

Depends on the barrel maker. Rice barrels I don't cause they are smooth as glass. But Colerains I drawfile all of the flats. They look like manure & I know it and that is all that matters to me. It also give he a hairsbreath of room in the barrel inlet for the finish & not make it so tight you could break the stock getting the barrel out. I want the barrel snug, but not so tight I have to worry about getting it out. :wink:

 

[Geoff Jones]

Great job for the 1st build.

One comment, Am I the only one that thinks these dovetails look too deep? I think back a few years to a comment that Birddog made to me when I was in the same spot you are now. He said, "Whoa... why so deep? you trying to anchor your boat with these things?" Immediately after that i changed to making my own lugs (ala Mike Brooks tutorial) and making them quite shallow. Best of luck with the rest of the build. You're surrounded by tons of talent to help you along...