My lovely and most faithful smoothbore finally stripped her 8-32 lock bolt. Yes, I do remove the lock for water dunk cleaning after every shooting session, doesn't everyone? Well, ya should, cause powder residue loves to eat locks.
For whatever reason (methinks it was a change in the breech plug) the first lock bolt hole in the lock plate has a snapped 8-32 bolt, either in err or as a plug. A new lock bolt hole was drilled through the stock, into the breech plug tang, back into the stock and through the lock plate. The angle of the drilling was off by about 1/32" and over time the 8-32 bolt got stripped. The bolt hole in the plate was purty good, but I wanted it all to get done right, so I ordered a new Trade lock plate from L&R. I also ordered a back up lock for future use. Bbls and locks are the most important parts of a flinter, or any other flavor of trad front stuffer.
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I colored the new lock plate's bolster with black Sharpie and used a sharpened nail that snugly fit the lock bolt hole to tick a mark in the black coloring. Showed me the current bolt hole in the stock and breech tang were off that 1/32" and it sure shows in the old lock as the 8-32 thread in the plate just about kisses the edge of the bolster - no way could I drill that out for a 10-32 lock screw.
I drilled the new plate hole 1/32" above the tick mark, which is pretty much the center of the bolster height, and used a drill press to make the plate hole. A bit of 7/32" drilling in the offside "dragon" side plate, stock, tang, and stock got the lock bolt to square up with the plate hole.
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I secured the lock plate in the stock with a mini Jorgenson clamp and 8-32 tapped the plate hole.
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The 8-32 bolt needed cutting to become flush with the lock plate, and I created a "thread fixer" by drilling and tapping a scrap piece of metal and running the just cut bolt into it, then filing the just cut bolt end smooth and backing it out of the "fixer" made sure the threads were good for the lock bolt.
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All done with getting the lock plate on and bolted well to the gun, next up is to true the plate and then move over all the components of the old lock. A bit more to come.
Topic: A .62 Smoothbore Repair (Read 1287 times)