time to fess up. what is the most unusual firearm repair you have ever attempted by either conventional or , more interestingly, unconventional means?hinking.gif

i tried to make my own hammer spring , for a perazzi o/uhotgun.gif, with a torch and various scraps of metal i had laying in the back of my truck. a dremel tool, some swiss files and a pair of vise grips came into play. where was this? on the tailgate of my truck at the u.s open skeet championships a few years ago. ran the dremel off a portable welder.he
hock.gif  not a success story.

 now it's your turn.

wow, if you can afford a perazzi you can afford some spare parts chief. as a matter of fact...no perazzi owner should be complete without a complete spare trigger assembly. i leanred that the hard way after being without my Grand Italia for 6 weeks waiting on a spring.

not sure if this counts ..but i used the 20lb recoil spring from mycustom springfields a few yrs back to fix my rear brake drum on my 74 harley to get home.... i had no rear brakes and about 60 miles to the next town with an auto parts store..... this one should count.. i picked up several guns in an auction.. one of them was a low budget(but surprisingly accurate ) raven .25 automatic// the firing pin was broke off..so i chucked it in the drill press and drilled out the center of the firing pin body and used a case hardened roll pin as the new "protrusion" it's still shooting to this day(yes i checked the length of the pin against  a factory one.... could you imagine a raven goin full auto from a protruding firing pin).......
one more horror story... bought a Hawes .44 magnum single action at a pawn shop .. 100.00 bucks ..shot good but... the screw that held the ejector rod housing was stripped so i.............jb welded the housing in place......and it's one of my favorite paper killers..ugly but fun to shoot with .44 specials

ok ...someone else fess up now
  john in houston

I replaced the Buffer retainer detent spring with a spring from a pen and cut a piece of staw from a can of WD 40 to replace the half of the takedown pin detent spring that I lost when replacing a buttstock too quickly.

I replaced a broken firing pin in my Hi-Standard by grinding and filing down a door hinge-pin, then heated it and dropped it into a can of oil to harden.

That was 7 years ago, and it's still working like a champ!

Neil

 

 dvldog....... had the springs, and the trigger. the welder just wanted to see if he could do it. i knew better , but it was alot of fun trying.

Lost the safety detent spring while changing out the hand grip! Used a bic lighter spring and short piece of( i/4 inche )#3 finnish nail to make my safety work till i could buy one at gun show for .75$   Went ahead and bought the box of assorted springs and extra firing pin just in case i ever did this (ezzra brooks)late night gunsmithing again!!   bob cole

Quoted: Lost the safety detent spring while changing out the hand grip! Used a bic lighter spring and short piece of( i/4 inche )#3 finnish nail to make my safety work till i could buy one at gun show for .75$   Went ahead and bought the box of assorted springs and extra firing pin just in case i ever did this (ezzra brooks)late night gunsmithing again!!   bob cole

had this POS phoenix .22 and the magazine kept falling out (mag release/mag safety) so i duct taped the thing in.
well, something strange happend , i'm not sure what, but a full auto .22 pistol is cool but scary.  it did that about five times before it totally fell apart and i sold it to someone i didn't like very much.  he actually fixed it and uses it to this day, we never found out about what made it go rock n roll (magic duct tape?)

Nothing against savage, but their mag system in thei bolt guns sucks my ass, fourth time at the range, the mag welds broke.  Luckily it was .308.  You'd be supprised what a dremel and a mag well from a M1A can do  :)

Quoted: Lost the safety detent spring while changing out the hand grip! Used a bic lighter spring and short piece of( i/4 inche )#3 finnish nail to make my safety work till i could buy one at gun show for .75$   Went ahead and bought the box of assorted springs and extra firing pin just in case i ever did this (ezzra brooks)late night gunsmithing again!!   bob cole

Oh, I'm going to hafta try the Bic Lighter Spring.  I'm not sure how long the plastic will hold out

Not really a repair but a modification of sorts. I wanted to put a magazine extension on my Remington 870 Express and found out about... "the dimple." Later I was messing around in the garage when a light bulb went on over my head. I found a Craftsman socket that fit in the mag tube perfectly. So I hammered it in there and backed it out with a ratchet several times. The dimple was pushed out almost all the way and the rest was smoothed out with a Dremel tool. Bingo! A smooth magazine tube and I didn't have to drill a hole in it.

Not a repair but more of a mod. After press fitting a slant break on my SAR1, I didn't like the look with out the muzzle attachment retaining pin. After looking around in the shop I found a nail which fit perfect in the front sight base. I installed the nail in my drill chuck and polished it up. Cut to size I filed the retaining notch in the center of the pin. Lapped the ends to square it up, degreased and blued with cold blue. Now for the spring, dug through our box of old pens till I found a spring of correct diameter, cut this to size. Drove out the front sight retaining pin, installed the spring followed by my homemade pin, reinstalled the sight base pin. Just like the original, can't tell the difference. And "Made in America" increases my parts count. LOL!

I cut down the main and recoil springs in a 22 cal Beretta pistol in an attempt to make the thing more reliable.

It helped some but those little Beretta 22s are the biggest POS gun I ever owned, right up there with Lorcin and Jennings

I got a .22 Jennnings in a trade,The gun would stovepipe everytime,Except when I pushed up on the mag.So I took some epoxy and brushed it on the mag's base to act as a permanent shim.After sanding it feeds and no longer jams-It's still a cheap-POS.-But it's a working POS instead of a throwing object.

Fashioned a safety detent for my AR out of a coat hanger.

After I launched my last one, I had to do something,  and it worked fine until I got the right parts.

My personal favorite field repair?

When my dad was a boy in Northern CA he used a Winchester single shot .22 rifle to hunt squirrels and such to add to the stew.  One time he was out in the field and decided to f#ck around with the elevation adjustment (remember all those guys who say that the A1 is better than the A2 because you can't mess with it so much?) and the metal piece that adjusts the elevation on the rear sight fell out and he couldn't find it.  So he pulled a wooden match stick out of his pocket and put it under the rear sight and it happened to be the correct height.  

Step forward 30 years later to me learning how to shoot and the wooden match stick is still there, stained brown by the oil it has soaked up over the years.