Ramerod hole woes

[Eric Krewson]

On my precarve from hell stock I carefully laid out centerline and inletted the ramrod entry pipe to be perfectly into the wood. I tried insert a ramrod and it was a no go. About this time I realized the ramrod groove had a distinct 1/2" bow to the left and the hole in the forestock went every which way to create a 3/8" web at the breech.

My fix was to take the square end of a 5/16" ramrod drill (the hole I am working on is a 3/8" hole) and upend it with a ball peen hammer to create a burr. I sharpened the burr to be as sharp as a razor.

I blackened my ramrod with soot and shoved it as far as I could get it in the hole, a quick look with my bore scope showed the position of the black in the hole and what wood needed to be removed.

I didn't notice this was blurry picture until I was done and had everything reinstalled.

I removed the entry pipe and shimmed up my rod scraper with leather to make it hit the wood that needed to be removed;

I gave the scraper 12 strokes reinstalled the entry pipe and tried to insert the ramrod, it was better but still a little tight. 5 more 12 stroke scrape sessions and the ramrod slid right in with just enough resistance to hold it in place. My little scraper removed wood slowly and precisely which is what I wanted it to do.

Success;

 

[cornstalk]

Very clever

 

[Larry (Omaha)]

On my precarve from hell stock I carefully laid out centerline and inletted the ramrod entry pipe to be perfectly into the wood. I tried insert a ramrod and it was a no go. About this time I realized the ramrod groove had a distinct 1/2" bow to the left and the hole in the forestock went every which way to create a 3/8" web at the breech.

My fix was to take the square end of a 5/16" ramrod drill (the hole I am working on is a 3/8" hole) and upend it with a ball peen hammer to create a burr. I sharpened the burr to be as sharp as a razor.

View attachment 102467

I blackened my ramrod with soot and shoved it as far as I could get it in the hole, a quick look with my bore scope showed the position of the black in the hole and what wood needed to be removed.

I didn't notice this was blurry picture until I was done and had everything reinstalled.

I removed the entry pipe and shimmed up my rod scraper with leather to make it hit the wood that needed to be removed;



I gave the scraper 12 strokes reinstalled the entry pipe and tried to insert the ramrod, it was better but still a little tight. 5 more 12 stroke scrape sessions and the ramrod slid right in with just enough resistance to hold it in place. My little scraper removed wood slowly and precisely which is what I wanted it to do.

Success;

Good job! There is usually more than one way to skin a rat. Thanks for sharing your idea.
I had a roto rooter issue once too. Here is what I did. I used just a regular hot rolled 3/8" steel rod, no hardness and cut the end with a hacksaw and then tweaked it out of 180 deg a few thousands.
Larry

 

[springfield art]

On my precarve from hell stock I carefully laid out centerline and inletted the ramrod entry pipe to be perfectly into the wood. I tried insert a ramrod and it was a no go. About this time I realized the ramrod groove had a distinct 1/2" bow to the left and the hole in the forestock went every which way to create a 3/8" web at the breech.

My fix was to take the square end of a 5/16" ramrod drill (the hole I am working on is a 3/8" hole) and upend it with a ball peen hammer to create a burr. I sharpened the burr to be as sharp as a razor.

View attachment 102467

I blackened my ramrod with soot and shoved it as far as I could get it in the hole, a quick look with my bore scope showed the position of the black in the hole and what wood needed to be removed.

I didn't notice this was blurry picture until I was done and had everything reinstalled.

I removed the entry pipe and shimmed up my rod scraper with leather to make it hit the wood that needed to be removed;

View attachment 102468

I gave the scraper 12 strokes reinstalled the entry pipe and tried to insert the ramrod, it was better but still a little tight. 5 more 12 stroke scrape sessions and the ramrod slid right in with just enough resistance to hold it in place. My little scraper removed wood slowly and precisely which is what I wanted it to do.

Success;

View attachment 102469

Clever! Well done!

 

[PathfinderNC]

These are very good tips! Thanks

 

[zerosprk]

That's using your head for more than just growing hair, awesome solution!

 

[Red Owl]

I did exactly the same thing. One of the best parts of muzzle loading- we often have to make special tools to do a job.

 

[rich pierce]

That’s how it’s done!

 

[1950DAVE]

Country boy engineering!

 

[holzwurm]

I had a similar problem with the new Jaeger I'm building. I had to repair a mortise bole that split out using 2X epoxy and some of it migrated into the RR hole. I screwed a machine screw into the brass fineal of a RR, filed the head to approximate a sharp drill tip and ran it through with my drill spining the tip. Worked fine.

 

[Rudyard]

Putting a slight bend on your scraper rod will pressure the scaping edge . Rod holes commonly had that angled cut so that if it drifted it was less likley to impede the mainspring since it was in effect' aimed' to the opposite side from the lock. Missing the front side nail is the tricky one but again you can scrape up or down to cure that . Braying the rod end with a hammer will increase & sharpen the scrapeing edge, cuts both ways that way .
Rudyards two pennoth

 

[Sidney Smith]

I made a similar tool to scrape the ramrod hole in my .32 caliber gun, in order to allow the rod the clear the front lock bolt, plus the hole had a bad left wander which this also helped to correct.

 

[Norman Brooks]

Thank you Eric and Larry, wished I would of known of them tricks 15 years ago...

 

[Hatchet-Jack]

I did something similar for my Chambers Fowler build. Nice work!

 

[Vaino]

Mainly built from blanks so if anything got screwed up, it was my fault. So....before starting the RR hole. having the RR groove pointing in the correct direction is a good start {this can be somewhat difficult w/ a swamped bbl} and I also used a small gouge to remove a slight amount wood where the RR groove ends so the drill doesn't point uphill when lightly clamped w/ a lubed , grooved pine board.

Was a tool and diemaker for a number of years and thought about the drill tip....which one would cut w/o deflecting and decided on a flat bottom tip which is somewhat like an independent cutting end mill and is also very easy to hand sharpen. When visiting Fred Miller who did bbl/RR work, I looked at his drill tips and they too were flat bottoms.

The RR drills were used in a brace w/ repeated chip clearings and w/ the exception of one hole {had to taper the RR a little more} among the many drilled, all were fairly straight and req'd only a minimal RR diameter reduction.

An errant RR hole is time consuming to correct and I was fortunate in not ever having to do so.....Fred

 

[Eric Krewson]

Here is the crux of the problem; This is my 5th P/C rifle build, I have done a couple of TCs as well. I always took it for granted that the ramrod groove would be straight because all of my past guns done were correctly by folk like Fred Miller.

I didn't notice the bow in this one until I had inletted all the pipes, I drew a centerline from the ramrod groove to the toe of the butt and inletted the entry pipe on this centerline. With the bowed groove the pipe went in a little askew which caused my problem. I didn't notice the bow until after all the pipes were in place.

Anyway, I fixed the problem with my scraper.

This precarve error is just one on a long list from this supplier on this particular stock and why I call it the precarve from hell.

Here it is, in person it is much more visible, the picture doesn't show the bend well, there is no excuse for this:

 

[Eric Krewson]

Oh, I couldn't bend the scraper rod because it was a ramrod drill that I had borrowed from a friend. I always like to give borrowed items back in as good or better shape than I received them.

 

[Ajgall]

I’ll be borrowing this trick great job

 

[Artificer]

On my precarve from hell stock I carefully laid out centerline and inletted the ramrod entry pipe to be perfectly into the wood. I tried insert a ramrod and it was a no go. About this time I realized the ramrod groove had a distinct 1/2" bow to the left and the hole in the forestock went every which way to create a 3/8" web at the breech.

My fix was to take the square end of a 5/16" ramrod drill (the hole I am working on is a 3/8" hole) and upend it with a ball peen hammer to create a burr. I sharpened the burr to be as sharp as a razor.

View attachment 102467

I blackened my ramrod with soot and shoved it as far as I could get it in the hole, a quick look with my bore scope showed the position of the black in the hole and what wood needed to be removed.

I didn't notice this was blurry picture until I was done and had everything reinstalled.

I removed the entry pipe and shimmed up my rod scraper with leather to make it hit the wood that needed to be removed;

View attachment 102468

I gave the scraper 12 strokes reinstalled the entry pipe and tried to insert the ramrod, it was better but still a little tight. 5 more 12 stroke scrape sessions and the ramrod slid right in with just enough resistance to hold it in place. My little scraper removed wood slowly and precisely which is what I wanted it to do.

Success;

View attachment 102469

Thanks for sharing a good idea.

Gus

 

[Billy Boy]

Here is the crux of the problem; This is my 5th P/C rifle build, I have done a couple of TCs as well. I always took it for granted that the ramrod groove would be straight because all of my past guns done were correctly by folk like Fred Miller.

I didn't notice the bow in this one until I had inletted all the pipes, I drew a centerline from the ramrod groove to the toe of the butt and inletted the entry pipe on this centerline. With the bowed groove the pipe went in a little askew which caused my problem. I didn't notice the bow until after all the pipes were in place.

Anyway, I fixed the problem with my scraper.

This precarve error is just one on a long list from this supplier on this particular stock and why I call it the precarve from hell.

Here it is, in person it is much more visible, the picture doesn't show the bend well, there is no excuse for this:

View attachment 102701

I built a Hawkin kit didn’t notice that the ramrod hole was drilled too low. Had done quite a bit of work on the kit, couldn’t return it. Rifle finished up nice, shoots beautifully but has that wart where the ramrod enters the fore end cap. Its a gap approx 3/16 inch that I can’t really get rid of.