We had a "build party" at my house yesterday and built a rifle from a Romy kit and a Tapco flat. We bent the flat, heat-treated it and so forth. We removed all the scrap from kit and has to disassemble the whole thing.

There was only one rifle being built because it was more of a build tutorial for the others that showed up.

Well.... it was pretty nasty out here in Vegas yesterday and by the time we got around to installing the barrel, it was was pretty cold. One of the guys recommended that we heat the trunion (we all read the thread about freezing the barrel and heating the trunion) first. Well, we gave it a shot and what do you know... it literally dropped half way down on it's own. We used the press the rest of the way without much pressure needed.

I just want to thank the original poster of the cold barrel/hot trunion method because it sure did save us some time and possibly a warped/bend receiver.

thanks,
Ron

It's nice when sometimes all that physics stuff actually works!  I heard about doing that to assemble car parts and it sure helped put a barrel and the horrid barrel pin in the first AK I assembled.  I second the thanks to the person who posted that idea and to all the advice we get from this site...

Next time get yourself some dry ice and alcohol and you wont need a press at all!

I understand the dry ice for the cold, but what purpose does the alchohol serve?  keep moisture off during/after  the freezing process?

Thx,,

John P..

The Alcohol and dry ice mixed together produce a slushy solution that covers a larger area of the barrel and helps in getting the barrel uniformly cold.

the heat from the reciever/trunnion evaporates any residual mositure from the barrel on contact.

Jason

Yep..its for greater surface area. Also, the alcohol has a very low  freezing temp. If you used water for instance, the dry ice would freeze it solid.