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Posted: 1/17/2017 6:18:54 PM EDT
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Ever have one of those?
Being an untrained amateur blessed with nothing more than inate curiosity, a love of all things firearm related, and a certain amount of fearlessness/stupidity that allows me to dive right in, I have had more than a few. I like to build and fix guns, and often do it for friends, at no charge, telling myself I am learning skills for the future, I entertain the idea of getting an FFL to do some minor repair/refinishing in my retirement. Probably not, but I like to think about it. An old friend of a friend had this rifle, broken, lying out in his barn. I refinished another muzzloader for him, so he asked me if I wanted to have a go at fixing this one. Attached File A Nylon 76 lever gun. Obviously no longer in collector shape, and no longer functioning. Here's why Attached File The receiver is molded out of plastic, and it turns out that the violence of cycling the lever is too much for it, almost all of them fractured thus, they only stayed in production 2 or 3 years; pristine examples are rare and fairly expensive, up around $600. The crack allows it to flex when you cycle the lever, and bad things were happening, pins would move, wouldn't go into battery. etc. So what to do? I tried a variety of epoxies, tried researching it, nothing seemed to bond to it, and there is little info that I could find on a rare rifle from the sixties that had a fatal flaw. With a free hand signed off by the owner, who had long ago given up on it, I decided to experiment. In another life I was a certified plastic seam welder for medntech flooring, so it occurred to me to melt it together. First I tried welding it with other plastics, but nothing would bond to it. So eventually, I took a hot knife and stitched the crack together. Attached File |
Did both sides, cleaned it up, reassembled and tried it out, happily thinking this was going to be simple!
Attached File Nope. 
A dozen cycles and it cracked right through the melted plastic. I needed something stronger. I needed steel. So I started looking at where I could put something, how I could make it stay, and what I could use. This is what I came up with. Crude. Redneck. a piece of strapping metal bent, heated red hot, and imbedded. Attached File Attached File |
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That, crude as it is, along with melting the crack left exposed, seemed to hold.
But now I had a new problem. The piece of steel didn't quite embed flush before it cooled. The steel cover acts like a clamshell, when its two screws are torqued, it clamps the rack& gear that operates the lever in it's track, as well as the ejector from the other side. The new piece of steel kept the cover slightly lifted off the receiver, and allowed the rack to come out of it's track, rendering it non functional again. The rack. Attached File So being the genius that I am. I thought if I put a little bow in it, it would stay put. Turns out it's cast. 
Whooops. Attached File |
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I tried brazing, but just couldn't get it to hold. Parts are available nowhere, Numrich and Classic Firearms Parts both cataloged them, but were sold out. Without hope, I left notification request sand went to work on the problem.
I decided to try my hand at making one. First the round pin that engages the bolt Attached File Then the rack with all of it's teeth, which I hand filed by matching them to the original Attached File Then I drilled and tapped the new rack, threaded the pin in, and trimmed everything up and fitted it to the gun. Attached File |
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It functioned, but as you can see in the photo, my teeth were crude, and it wasn't smooth. In my attempts to clean it up, I went to far, and took too much off a couple teeth until it no longer worked.
Frustrated, I set it aside with plans to engage the neighbor and his mill to see if we could make a better one on the next effort having been successful in the proof of concept. In the meantime, I sanded, polished and rust blued the metal parts. Attached File Attached File The bolt is an Arisaka for another friend Attached File |
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Attached File So I set the rifle aside for a few months, the owner has been having health problems and off the grid, and had low expectations in the first place, And I have been engaged in finishing my shop and doing some remodeling in my house while the weather has been good here. So the other day, I'm out to dinner with the in-laws when my phone dings with an email from Classic Firearms parts; " You asked to be notified when this part came available"  I had ZERO expectation of ever finding the real deal. Months of scouring the web had produced nothing!
I ordered it then and there from the table, on my phone. $47, an expensive lesson for me. So it arrived today, and I put the thing together, and it cycled and fired three CB longs without a hitch. It's been months, but I recall that I had issues with full power .22 loads, the recoil was enough to make the rack jump out of the track, it functions as the bolt lock to lock it in battery during firing. So I'm not home free yet, still need a range trip for a function test with a variety of ammo, but I feel good about where I'm at, a rare, non functioning barn junker into a functioning, decent looking firearm Attached File In retrospect, I wish I had considered taking it to the mill, and milling a slot and a matching bridge, perhaps held in with screws to fix the crack instead of burning it in, melting it was sloppy and crude, and difficult to control. In the end, it may be regulated to shooting CBs if I can't get the rack to stay put under full recoil. Time will tell, maybe I can dress everything to fit well enough. At least I know what NOT to do! 
But still better than laying in the Barn rusting. And I learned a lot.
Thought you guys might enjoy watching the amateur bumble his way through, and add some useful insights. |
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Quoted:
In retrospect, I wish I had considered taking it to the mill, and milling a slot and a matching bridge, perhaps held in with screws to fix the crack instead of burning it in, melting it was sloppy and crude, and difficult to control. I wondered why you didn't. Milled pocket with "teeth" that grab the surrounding nylon and a steel bridge that fits in the pocket should have worked quite wonderfully. Lesson learned; and we all learn some of them the hard way. |
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