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Part II
(click here for Part I)It was three days later when Bert finally managed to get back to the Shop. The school bus had dropped him off at his stop and he’d
trudged homeward under threatening black clouds that smelled of snow -his mind much occupied with Paula Thompson; a girl in his math class. He saw smoke rising from the shop chimney as he approached the Newton farm and turned into the short lane that led past the house to the barn. Paula was gone for the time being.
He swung open the door to see the Old Man hunched over his lathe with his glasses slid down his nose to that spot where they seemed to be most at home –a fraction of an inch from ending up in the machinery. A barrel was spinning under his watchful eye; a sharp tool curling chips that broke off and lay in a small pile on the carriage of the lathe, tinting hay field gold as they fell. The boy knew better than to speak right then. Willy just gave him a quick glance in acknowledgment of his arrival. He set his book bag by the door and wandered closer to coal stove to chase off the chill; his eyes casting about, taking in the view.
The Shop was a thirteen year old boy’s paradise; or at least this thirteen year old boy’s paradise. Along the
walls there were waist-high racks full of barrels and barrel blanks as well as actions of every description hanging from wooden pegs over head. Gun stocks and blocks of rough stock wood were tucked into the rafters. As cluttered and haphazard as it all looked, the Old Man knew where everything was, what it was, and why the Boy shouldn’t be fiddling with it without asking –and moreover, what level of hell awaited anyone who neglected to put whatever it was, back exactly where it had been. Bert always kept that last part in mind and his hands, for the most part at least, in his pockets.
Bert looked around the shop. In one corner of the shop stood an ancient milling machine and in another, a grinder and a drill press. Occupying a spot in the center of the floor was the big barrel vise Bert helped cinch down when the old Man was going to remove a barrel. Blocks of wood and odd shaped wrenches were stacked neatly against the concrete pillar the vise was bolted to.
The lathe stood in the space directly across from the shop door and behind that was the long bench that Willy did his metal work on.
Along the back of the bench were oak tool chests and underneath, drawers full of screwdrivers, files and other tools that Bert wasn’t often allowed to touch. There was a large iron vise mounted on this bench and clamped between wooden jaw-inserts was the Ballard action. Lying beyond the vise on a clean white shop rag were the rifle’s internal parts. Bert wanted to go have a closer look but didn’t dare do so without being invited. Instead he watched the mesmerizing cascade of metal chips fall from the barrel as the tool passed back and forth under the old man’s guidance.
The whole shop had the enticing aroma of coal smoke, oil, walnut, and steel. Bert inhaled deeply. He just couldn’t get enough of it.
Willy’s grandfather had been a gunsmith of local fame, building muzzle loading and cartridge target rifles over a 60 year span- and Willy had learned the trade from him while coming to love shooting under his tutelage; Willy and his grandfather were feared arrivals on the shooting line of the local turkey shoots. As happens some times, this love of shooting had skipped a generation before settling on Willy. Willy’s dad had only been a seasonal gunner despite having grown up obligated to help Willy’s grandfather in the shop as an extension of the farm duties he was born to. The Grandfather died while Willy was overseas during the war and with his passing, the county had no gunsmith. Willy’s dad had refused to do any gun work. He converted the shop to a storage building and took a job in town to help with the war effort. The Grand Elder Newton’s lathe and barrel rifling machine were stowed in the old carriage shed on the opposite end of the barn where they remained at this time: not having seen use for many years. Willy’s dad passed on some years later, after the War. Of Willy’s late wife he had never spoken though it was generally known she died of illness, young, and long before Bert was born.Willy had trained to be a machinist during the war and he brought that skill home with him to the farm, along with his back wages and an old Ford flat bed carrying the lathe, a large drill press, and the mill. Almost as soon as he’d stepped off the train he’d found them outside of a tool plant that had pulled them off the line when they retooled with new machines for the war effort. They were filthy and neglected when Willy paid scrap prices for them.
They were still somewhat dirty -but in a good way; with metal chips and the signs of use. The kid would wipe a kerosene rag over them every so often then oil the ways and fill oil cups. He especially liked to polish the enameled brass plaque that diagramed the belt positions needed to get different speeds on the mill. Willy had shown him how to read the diagram and allowed Bert to change spindle speeds for him sometimes. He was wondering if the plaque needed another wiping when the lathe spun to a stop.
“What happened to you last Saturday?” Willy asked, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose as he straightened up. “I could have used your help.”
“Chores. What’d you need my help with?” He was amazed that Old Man Newton would need his help at anything.“The bellows.”
Oh. That was the one thing that the Old Man enlisted his help on at every occasion. There was an old portable blacksmith’s forge out behind the shop that required the expenditure of a good deal of sweat and effort to keep a fire at white hot. Its old crank bellows required so much cranking that the Old Man never seemed to fire it up unless he had a willing volunteer ready to crank the handle. Most of the adult hang-a-bouts quit coming by so as to avoid being enlisted to help with the bellows.
Bert however, was a willing bellows boy, all right. As he cranked, Willy would show him the kind of sparks each different metal made when it approached welding temperatures. Or he’d talk of the price of coal. Or he’d talk about shooting. No matter what the topic, the Boy liked the conversation. He was a little sorry he missed out on Saturday but at the same time he was sorry he wasn’t needed for a more skilled task; though what that would be, he had no idea.
“Sorry I missed it” was his mostly genuine reply “What’d you do?”
The gunsmith jerked his head toward the Ballard parts and said, “I reshaped that Ballard’s lever. Couldn’t bend it cold, it would have snapped.”
“I thought you hated Ballards.”
“No.” The Old Man peered at the micrometer poised along the freshly turned barrel shank, “I said I didn’t like them. Especially for centerfire cartridges.”
“So what are you making then?” Bert angled over towards the bench and admired the way the Ballards lever had been reshaped and polished to look like that of a Winchester High Wall.
“It’s a 22 Magnum. I made the reamer yesterday.”
A 22 magnum! This would be the first one that Bert had seen outside of a magazine. They’d only been out a couple of years and rifles for the new varmint round were few and far between in these parts.
“I thought Norm wanted a .218 Bee?” the boy replied, craning his neck to see if there was a box of cartridges lying near the bench.
“He did. Right up until told him he wasn’t getting it on this old Ballard, and then he changed his tune a bit. I sold him this take-off barrel from a Remington Model 37. …Should shoot. The only thing wrong with it was a bulged chamber and I cut that off.”
The kid moved closer to the lathe and looked at the smooth, grey barrel shank resting in the tailstock. It was a heavy barrel and Bert knew that 37’s were accurate. Willy always said that a target shooter only bought a Winchester Model 52 if he couldn’t afford a Model 37 Remington. He would know.
Willy was mounting a sharp threading bit in the lathe, setting it’s height at dead center and using a small gage to set it squarely at right angles to the work. Bert loved watching Willy cut threads. It was like magic watching the faint mark on the shank progress into a single v-cut and then into the formed thread. The Old man moved the feed levers to the correct position and then threw another that dropped the gearing, causing the lathe to run with a smooth, low, growling noise.
The old man touched the tool to the freshly turned shank and then cranked the tool carriage towards the tailstock. He made an adjustment on the top slide to advance the tool in a bit. At the right moment he flipped a lever on the carriage and the tool moved smoothly along the shank leaving a light spiral cut in its wake. Willie flipped the feed lever again, backed the tool away and repeated the process: each time feeding the point a little deeper. How he got into the right track every time was still a bit of a mystery to the Boy. Soon the cuts were deepening and the old gunsmith was daubing a mixture of kerosene and lard oil onto the work to act as a cutting lubricant. Bert liked the smell of the serpentine wisps of smoke generated by the collision of hot steel and oil.
When the edges of the spiraling groove met forming a sharp peak the old man shut the lathe off and backed the tailstock out. He tried the action on the freshly cut threads, working it on and off the action by hand. He placed the barrel back in the lathe and set it to spinning, taking a light swipe with a mill file over the top of the threads and running a V-shaped file along the bottom of the cut he’d made. When he tried the Ballard action again, it screwed on snugly by hand.
“That’s enough for today. How’d that turkey taste??”
Bert thought a minute. “Dry” he said.
The old man laughed. “Was that your mother’s doing, or the birds?” he asked.
“Mom’s, I guess” Bert responded, a little offended that anyone would think the turkey he shot would be anything less than delectable.
The old man laid the barreled receiver on the bench. “Don’t let your mom here you talk like that.” He said with mock seriousness, “Women take issue with criticism of their cooking skills!” Bert was well aware of that aspect of female psyche.
“When are you going to finish that 22 magnum?” Bert asked, hoping to change the subject towards something that didn’t remind him that he was already going to have to explain to his mom why he wasn’t home doing homework.
“Tomorrow morning” Willy said. “Why?”
“Oh, I just wanted to be around when you shot it” he replied. “Are you going to put a scope on it?”
“Yeah but I’m going use the scope blocks that came on the Remington barrel. I’m just going to fit the barrel shank so that the holes turn up properly.” The old man looked critically at the location of the set of holes drilled into the barrel. Bert noticed that they were a ways off to the side.
“How are you going to do that?” he asked.
Willy laid the work down. “Magic.” He said. “Now you get yourself out of here and get home. My supper is waiting, too.”
Willy pushed him out of the shop and pulled the door shut behind him, putting the brass padlock into place. “See you, Bert” he said and walked off towards the house.
It was dark out. Mom would certainly have some choice words for him when he got home.
Continued Next Month
Editor's Note: Andrew Moe is a life-long reloader and dedicated shooter. Unlike some of his past articles, this latest story is a bit different. Or, in Andy's words, "a trip into fictional writing combined with old memories".
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