Recently, I carved a set of custom pistol grips for a guy at work, and evidently that was just the thing everyone and his uncle is looking for. So, I've got orders for more coming in at a fairly rapid clip, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about fitting stocks to the barrels of rifles, and to bore out shotgun pump slides.
To clarify, I am not carving things into existing gunstocks and grips- I am making entirely new ones out of exotic wood, hence the interest in boring.
So I'm trying to figure out a way to bore these on my wood lathe, rather than trying to hand-carve channels. I've gotten as far as realizing that I will need to mount the stock blanks to the ways, then mount a boring bar in the head stock- but what is stumping me is figuring out a way to bore an accurate taper (since it's wood, I figure a 1/32 tolerance is probably acceptable- though I shoot for better, there's no good reason to worry about thousandths with a material that moves with seasonal changes)
Anyone ever done a project like this? If so, any pointers on how to bore a tapered hole? At first glance, I thought I might be able to shim the back side of the blank, but on reflection, all that is going to do for me is bore a hole at an angle.
Wow, you are taking on a difficult problem trying to drill the channel for a gun barrel. In my gunsmithing days, I made quite a few gunstocks and the channels were all cut with a hand chisel and L-shaped scraper. The barrels were coated with something like lamp black and oil to mark the high spots. In the final analysis, a rifle barrel should be mounted to the stock so that a strip of tablet paper will pass smoothly between the barrel and the stock. Otherwise, as the barrel heats up the wood will place pressure on it and your shots will walk right off the target. Not so important for hunting guns, but very important for target rifles. Also, as the weather changes a tight fitting stock will make the gun shoot to a different location than where it was sighted in for. Because the forestock is often very small on shotguns, you might be able to come up with a tapered reamer to shape the channel to fit the barrel, but each gun would likely require a different taper. Inlet them by hand!
With guns having hexagon barrels, you can use a router to cut the channel and for muzzle loaders you can fit the wood directly to the barrel because rapid fire is not a problem and the barrels are generally heavy and not so prone to changing from the rapid firing heating of modern rifles.
Sorry, this doesn't really answer your question on how to drill a tapered hole for a gun barrel. I think the factories probably use duplicating machines to do the shaping and inletting, which is not a practical solution for one off gunstocks for different makes of weapons.
Get a good set of carving chisels and make a few L-shaped scrapers with round cutting blades. Good luck with your projects.
Yep- I know I'll have to inlet them by hand, but I'd rather that was for the final fitting, instead of starting from a flat piece of wood. What I came up with with my research is that .06" is about right for clearance, though I would imagine that depends on a person's preferences and shooting habits.
On further reflection, I'm not sure this can be done with a lathe at all, but I am going to try and make a jig for the router with a core box bit that will speed things up a little- that may do the trick. Like I said, it's a matter of hogging away the rough stock quickly so that the hand work (and by extension, the price and lead time) is reduced.
I also found that a guy can buy stocks that are already inlet- but the trouble is that the guy wants his Remington with a Zebrawood stock, and that's not that easy to come by. Could be that after this one, I'll have to write off the stocks as money-makers, and tell people I'll only do grips. Unless people are willing to pay more than I'd feel right charging for a stock, I don't know that I can afford to spend as much time on them as they really require.
Then again, I may find it is easier than I am currently anticipating. I know I can carve pisol grips in about an hour per set (less for colt
1911 grips)- but they're little, and much less complex!
No problem- the closest thing I can figure to a lathe solution is to make a carriage on the bed that will actually push on the boring bar to deflect it as it is fed into the bit. Not only would that require a sloppy boring rig, but it might be really dangerous to boot.
Already have that- and I'm also a good hand with a right-angle die grinder. With a 2" 60 grit disk in the quick-lock, I can rough-shape just about anything really quickly, and then it's just a matter of careful final fitting and sanding.
I haven't tried this, but if I understand the problem...
How about grinding-down and sharpening a spade bit, or even a file, with the required taper? If you had a piece of sacrificial scrap to fill the open side, drilled a pilot hole, and pecked the tool while cutting, you might be able to rough it out fairly close. Rigidity and planning always affect success.
Or, you could just straight-bore a series of steps and chisel the taper between them by hand.
I'm assuming a lot of experience, please be very careful.
That wouldn't be a bad idea- but the taper goes from a smaller diameter at the end of the stock to a larger one near the reciever. So to do what you've suggested, I'd need to somehow rig up a tiny belt and pulley inside the stock, and bore from the inside out. While that may be possible, I'm thinking it's not really worth my time! :) However, I think I may turn myself a custom sanding block with the correct taper to make the hand inletting easier.
That's fairly similar to what I think I'm going to try in the prototype (using 2x4 pine instead of Zebrawood!) If I make a pair of runners for my router that angle away from one another and down, I'm hoping it will be an effective jig for most of the stock removal. It won't be perfect- and really couldn't be unless I made some kind of hemi-spherical router base that would allow me to rock it back and forth while running it down the jig (and I may try just that- I do have a lathe for such things, after all)
I figure I've got what could be considered a lot of experience between work and my projects at home, but there is always someone better and more experienced no matter what you're doing! In any case, caution will be the beginning, middle and end of this project- I simply cannot afford to mess up $100 worth of exotic lumber without a payday at the end of the project!
On a more lathe-related note, I did figure out a way to speed up Colt
1911 grips by using the lathe, and it may be of interest to anyone who has some similar need.
Goofing around with CAD, I figured out the diameter of the circle that describes the radius on each end of the grips at two set points and laid my blanks over it (in the case of these particular grips, four fit onto one circle) Then I pulled the dims from the inside of the those four squares, and cut a truncated pyramid shape out on the table saw. After bisecting each side the long way, I mounted the pyramid between centers on my lathe, and attached one blank to each side with wood screws- taking extra care that the screws fell exactly on the centerline I had marked (it worked out nicely because the grips have countersunk holes to mount them- but double sided tape or hot glue might work as well.)
Then, I set the tool rest parallel to the face of the pyramid jig, and turned all four peices at once by using my finger running along the tool rest as a depth stop. (A stop collar might be called for in the future, but this was the first run)
Works pretty well for making a consistantly shrinking radius along the edges of the part, and I'd imagine it would work for just about anything that might require a portion of a cone with a flat back
For anyone who may be wondering what the point of all that was, I had determined that the factory grips I was attempting to replicate were effectively slices off the edge of a long, narrow cone- And while I could have carved that freehand, I am guessing that consistancy is a virtue when it comes to such a popular firearm. I don't have any real trouble making matching pairs, but for some reason, different sets have a tendancy to end up with minor variations. Even though those variations are relatively small in measurement (1/32"-1/64",) they end up looking like giant flaws to my eyes.
At any rate, this rig (along with a drilling jig and a scroll saw) let me make two sets of grips from start to finish in under a half-hour. Not too shabby, IMO. Even if I charge 1/2-1/4 of the going rate for the suckers, I might be able to actually turn a profit on them!
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