When building a rifle from a blank or kit, are there any steps U dislike?

[Larry (Omaha)]

Thought it would be fun to see who dislikes any procedure in a build? Don't get me wrong, we wouldn't build em if we didn't like this great hobby so much.
If you do have a dislike step in a scratch build or kit, list it, and maybe tell why.
Two items for me stick right out: I do not like cleaning up metal castings especially the trigger guard. Too much work and mundane. My second item is a royal pain in the butt........ installing the butt plate! I get it done, but struggle while in the process.
Let the fun begin

 

[ohio ramrod]

Inletting the barrel is my least liked part of a build . It is critical and takes a lot of time.

 

[rchas]

Inletting a buttplate is my most disliked, but what causes me the greatest anxiety is drilling the ramrod hole

 

[Vaino]

One of the attributes learned while in a 5 yr tool and diemaker apprenticeship was patience. ....just naturally applied patience when building MLers. The result was that I enjoyed every aspect of mainly building from blanks although some items did require more hrs to finish. ....TGs and buttplates. Also learned in my apprenticeship that "good enough " wasn't good enough....building contemporary versions of very old original MLers didn't mean building them in a "shoddy" or incomplete manner

While visiting w/ Jim Ripplinger the owner of TOW, a customer proudly brought in a LR he made from a parts set from TOW and wanted Jim to give him a price on his build. Jim really didn't want to hurt the guy's feelings but the customer insisted. The problem was that the price Jim would quote to the customer couldn't be inflated seeing the customer might want to sell it to TOW. So Jim gave him an honest quote that was quite a bit below the cost of the parts set and the customer got mad and left. Jim turned to me and said....."that LR reeked of impatience and if he had spent some more time on some of the items, the price would at least be the same as the parts set".

I've sold all but 3 personal MLers {approx. 24 } and never had a return and saw only one ad selling a LR I made. I think the quality was responsible for this. Hopefully this won't be taken as bragging, because it's not.....Fred

 

[Bob McBride]

Entry pipe and lock prep is my least favorite.

 

[pooch156]

It's the buttplate for me. Takes a lot of time & patience. But then . . . there is the sandcast brass . . .

 

[andy52]

I'm doing one right now, the cheekpiece. This is a kit gun not from scratch.

 

[Eric Krewson]

My least favorite part from a kit gun is correcting all the goof-ups that the stock profiler made while he had the stock blank on his duplicator. This statement doesn't apply to Kibler kits, they are as close to flawless as a precarve can be.

 

[oldwood]

Quit doing total "scratch builds" in about 1974. To me , hacking out barrel channels and drilling perfect r/r holes , is a bore , when I could pay a master stock shaper a $120 to mill the barrel channel , shape the stock to one of 50+ patterns taken from existing originals , and he would also drill a r/r hole to near perfection , all in 1.5 hours. The $125 just was added on to the price of the wood blank. Since I had a real job and a family to support , those three very time consuming chores on a gun , was money well spent in buying back a week of evenings plus time on weekends spent doing the three above jobs on a build. I enjoy all the rest of the procedures in building m/l rifles.
Butt plates are time consuming , but a chore I prefer to do myself , as an incorrectly installed butt plate can ruin the looks of a rifle. The tools used to simplify a mundane job are a band saw , 1/4" wood chisel , a "safed " wood rasp , 1/4" die grinder w/ 1/2 " rasp bit , and Dremel type tool with 1/4 " drum shaped bit. Also , to speed up and maintain accuracy in positioning the already prepped sand cast butt plate , I've made a portable slightly elevated platform on which are mounted two identical cheap 4" jaw rotating base vises to hold the partially assembled gun. The additional 10" height of the contraption above my work bench allows me to see the alignment of butt plate to barrel sight plain. To speed prep of rough sand castings , if b/p tang has flats a 4" x 36" belt sander cuts time filing flats to zero. 1" X 42" belt sander eliminates the rest of butt plate prep to minutes. As they say, time is money, or time out on the shooting range , is priceless.........oldwood

 

[Tom A Hawk]

Buttplate for me also. There are 7 different contact points to be managed to get a perfect fit. I have found this to be very tedious and time consuming work. Scrape, scrape, scrape..

 

[kje54]

My least favorite part is almost everything leading up to the final assembly............

 

[Larry (Omaha)]

Buttplate for me also. There are 7 different contact points to be managed to get a perfect fit. I have found this to be very tedious and time consuming work. Scrape, scrape, scrape..

Ha, you forgot, more work scrape, scrape, fit, scrape scrape.
Thanks for posting

 

[Col. Batguano]

Least favorite; correcting or compensating for someone else's mistakes. (barrel inletter, parts maker)
Second least favorite; correcting my own mistakes

 

[Robby]

I don't think there is any aspect I dislike. I try to make as much of the gun and parts as I can and if, say, something like inletting a barrel becomes tedious, I take a break and make a rod pipe or some other project that I will be using in the gun eventually. Heck, I've even cut the tree I plan to use.
Robby

 

[dave_person]

Hi,
All of it until I get to the final shaping, carving, silver wire inlays, casting inlays, engraving, and all other detail and skilled work, which is why I don't care to build plain, Jane guns. I need Minions to do the grunt work. Just kidding. I like it all except maybe inletting barrels. I'd rather Dave Keck do that for me as I don't need to prove to anyone I can do it anymore and it hurts my right elbow. I have a love-hate relationship with kits. I hate being trapped by someone else's idea of what the gun should be, but I do like the challenge of modifying them and making them into unique and historically correct guns. A special smile comes over my face when I attack a precarved kit stock with chisels, rasps, and a mallet, and fire up my gas welder to work over a lock.

dave

 

[Larry (Omaha)]

Hi,
All of it until I get to the final shaping, carving, silver wire inlays, casting inlays, engraving, and all other detail and skilled work, which is why I don't care to build plain, Jane guns. I need Minions to do the grunt work. Just kidding. I like it all except maybe inletting barrels. I'd rather Dave Keck do that for me as I don't need to prove to anyone I can do it anymore and it hurts my right elbow.

dave

Do it left handed
Thanks Dave

 

[billraby]

I like every part of building

 

[sdilts]

Polishing metal. Nothing more aggravating than spending time filing down castings only to have a big void magically appear.

 

[Lippy984]

I only have experience putting together a Lyman GPR kit, but I bought a stock from Pecatonica river to replace my TC Renegade stock. I wasn’t thinking to ask, but I received it without having the ram rod hole drilled. I haven’t started the project yet, but that’s got me nervous.

 

[Barry Strickland]

Drilling the ramrod hole is always a trying experience for me. The rest of it is just cut and try.