Get by with a little help from my friends
Mar 28, 2023 12:13:54 GMT -5
bisleyfan41, bushog, and 3 more like this
Post by kings6 on Mar 28, 2023 12:13:54 GMT -5
If a person looks at my Avatar picture they see my 41 Special L'il Gun built by Andy Horvath. After that picture was taken I had a good friend who was in declining health who told me he loved the brass birds head and ivory combo so I sent it to hem to enjoy while he was still here. That grip frame was one of the two piece brass units from Ron Powers and the ivories were bright white with very little variation in color. When Ronnie Wells started offering grip frames I asked for an old model birds head which he did not offer yet. He accommodated my request and after some tweaking one landed here and I did the filing and fitting to get it to match the main frame. Once that occurred it was sent off to Zane along with a piece os snake wood for new grips and my favorite set of old ivories to be fit to it as well
As you guys have seen by the pictures, Zane did his usual awesome job of making the snakewood grips but he ran into a problem with the ivories. The ivories were made for the original XR-3 grip frame and I believe Ronnie said the grip frame I received was based on a different iteration of that frame. What it meant is the the grip screw landed almost directly behind the main hammer spring with no clearance to clear the spring. Zane let me know then the grip frame with the snakewood and the untouched ivories made the return trip to Oregon.
Being a kind of hard headed old guy I decided to see what we could do to make things work. After consulting with Ronnie and trading pictures back and forth I decided to see if I could make a new, longer strut seat piece, enlarge the seat where this C shaped piece sets on the internal webbing then remove extra webbing material to allow for the new spring and strut position clearance to let the gun properly function.
I have a friend with a small Harbour Freight mill and he is always looking for little projects to try so off to his place it went. I had a piece of the leaf spring from my '56 Chevy redo that I h ad used to make the knife last year so I figured that would be good raw material for the new part. Unfortunately, it was harder than he wanted to try cutting with is machine so I stuck the spring back in the truck and he pulled out a 3/4" diameter piece of bronze rod and we decided to use that. I headed back home so he didn't have to feel like he had to do the machining right then and I went home and gave in to my stubbornness and decided I would try to make the piece out of the spring so out came the hand held air cutter, the die grinder, hack saw and files. WE got the part made but I have to admit it was not the prettiest part in the word.
Little did I know that I had my phone on silent and with all the equipment running in the shop I did not feel his phone call messages so when I went b ack in the house I found he had called my wife to make sure I had not keeled over in teh shop since I wasn't responding!
I ran back to his p[lace and he had roughed out about a 3" length of bronze in the basic shape I needed. I gave him the oak and black walnut we traded for the machine work and headed back to the shop. Long story short, after sanding, filling and drilling along with a dremel and the die grinder, the mission was accomplished and by using a grip screw that was slightly thinned in the middle section I can now start carving down the ivories to fit the grip frame. I ended up lengthening the new bronze piece about 3/32" and moving the hole the end of the strut slides though down to the lower end. Had it not been for Ronnie looking at what I wanted and needed to do and giving me the okay that it would not change the geometry nor weaken the grip frame and Bobs time on his hobby mill, it would not have happened. At least not nearly as neatly as it did!
As you guys have seen by the pictures, Zane did his usual awesome job of making the snakewood grips but he ran into a problem with the ivories. The ivories were made for the original XR-3 grip frame and I believe Ronnie said the grip frame I received was based on a different iteration of that frame. What it meant is the the grip screw landed almost directly behind the main hammer spring with no clearance to clear the spring. Zane let me know then the grip frame with the snakewood and the untouched ivories made the return trip to Oregon.
Being a kind of hard headed old guy I decided to see what we could do to make things work. After consulting with Ronnie and trading pictures back and forth I decided to see if I could make a new, longer strut seat piece, enlarge the seat where this C shaped piece sets on the internal webbing then remove extra webbing material to allow for the new spring and strut position clearance to let the gun properly function.
I have a friend with a small Harbour Freight mill and he is always looking for little projects to try so off to his place it went. I had a piece of the leaf spring from my '56 Chevy redo that I h ad used to make the knife last year so I figured that would be good raw material for the new part. Unfortunately, it was harder than he wanted to try cutting with is machine so I stuck the spring back in the truck and he pulled out a 3/4" diameter piece of bronze rod and we decided to use that. I headed back home so he didn't have to feel like he had to do the machining right then and I went home and gave in to my stubbornness and decided I would try to make the piece out of the spring so out came the hand held air cutter, the die grinder, hack saw and files. WE got the part made but I have to admit it was not the prettiest part in the word.
Little did I know that I had my phone on silent and with all the equipment running in the shop I did not feel his phone call messages so when I went b ack in the house I found he had called my wife to make sure I had not keeled over in teh shop since I wasn't responding!
I ran back to his p[lace and he had roughed out about a 3" length of bronze in the basic shape I needed. I gave him the oak and black walnut we traded for the machine work and headed back to the shop. Long story short, after sanding, filling and drilling along with a dremel and the die grinder, the mission was accomplished and by using a grip screw that was slightly thinned in the middle section I can now start carving down the ivories to fit the grip frame. I ended up lengthening the new bronze piece about 3/32" and moving the hole the end of the strut slides though down to the lower end. Had it not been for Ronnie looking at what I wanted and needed to do and giving me the okay that it would not change the geometry nor weaken the grip frame and Bobs time on his hobby mill, it would not have happened. At least not nearly as neatly as it did!