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Stoker:
Looking good.
Thanks Leroy
Eric Krewson:
I was going to put the gun together yesterday but gave the barrel a swipe with a piece of blue jean and came up with some rust. I need to wait until the barrel stops rusting before assembly, from past experience I know it will.
I didn't like the way the finish came out, way too blotchy. I had an old half filled bottle of Tru-oil so I gave the stock a coat to even things out. Like all old bottles of Tru-oil, the finish was thick and I found out after I applied it that it got to the tacky stage and cured no further, dang.
My shop doors face west, it is like an oven in front of them all day, I put the stock on a lawn chair in front of the shop doors and let it bake. From 9:00am until 4:00pm it cooked in the sun, by 4:00 I could tell the finish had finally hardened, what a relief.
sleek:
I'm really looking forward to seeing this completed.
Eric Krewson:
Yesterday I started assembling some of the gun, I had lost track of what pins went where so I made new pins to attach the ramrod pipes and trigger guard. The wood had shrunk around the trigger inlet so I had to chisel out just a little wood to get the trigger plate installed in the gun.
When I installed the trigger I realized I had forgotten to brown the rear attachment screw head as well as the set trigger adjustment screw head. Both stood out like a sore thumb so I pulled them and applied my browning solution to them, they should be properly rusted today.
I was surprised that Davis actually sent me a pack of screws to replace the one they had stripped in the initial trigger assembly. I tapped the hole inserted a screw and found it to be too long. I put on my Optivisors and was able to cut the screw and file the threads enough to get the screw to screw into the hole. This is a 3-48 screw, a tiny little thing. After re-tapping the stripped threads in the trigger plate the screw fit is too loose, it can be turned in easily with my fingers but it will work.
The barrel is still rusting, I keep wiping off the rust but it returns in short order. It may be while before I am ready to install the barrel. The barrel is beautiful now with a deep, dark brown patina. When I say rusting, there is no visible rust showing but I am picking up some rust stain on my blue jean patch when I wipe it down.
Eric Krewson:
In order to stop the barrel rusting I tried an experiment yesterday; I wiped down the barrel with a thick coat of motor oil and reheated it my torch to a little over 200 degrees. My thinking was to drive the hot motor oil into the metal pores and flush out any remaining browning solution.
I let the barrel sit overnight and wiped it down with a paper towel the next morning, the paper towel was stained with solid rust, this got me worried. I carded the barrel heavily with my blue jeans patch and got a ton of rust on the patch.
I just tip toed out to the shop this morning and looked a the barrel, it didn't have that sandy rusty appearance, my blue jean patch didn't show any rust. My experiment may have worked, I will know by this afternoon, the humidity here is 100% with rain, If I don't see any rusting by the afternoon it is assembly time for the gun.
My precarve was so badly cut I thought about trashing it and starting over with the parts, the spectacular curl in the stock kept me forging ahead with what I had to work with.
Here it is with the last coat of finish;
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