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Part III
(click here for Part I)
(click here for Part II)
The next day Bert was off from the bus stop at a run. Paula Thompson had made fun of him in class and with that illusion shattered, he was free to dwell on more important matters. When he got to Willy’s shop he found a rusty old Packard in the drive.
This meant that the old Man would probably be busy with a customer. When he pushed the door open was he was disappointed to find the Ballard lying on the bench in much the same place as it was the evening before. Willy was worrying a long rod into the back end of an old Mauser barreled action clamped in his barrel vise. He was sweating a bit and muttering under his breath. In the chair by the stove, watching him closely was a man called Dutch. He had close cropped hair and uneven teeth and Bert had never heard him say much.“Hello Bert. Wanna see what happens when you get stupid?” Willy walked over the bench and tossed Bert the back half of a cartridge case that had been badly mangled. “Somebody decided that if 45 grains of powder was good, then 50 grains would be better, dammit!”
Dutch snarled from his chair by the stove. “It was YOU who said I could go up to 50 grain! You!”
Willy just harrumphed. “Sure I did.” With his back turned from the glaring eyes of his customer he smiled at Bert and rolled his eyes.He returned to the rod he was gently twisting into the action and said to Bert. “Take that brass rod right there and slip it down the barrel until you feel it stop”
Bert picked up the long rod and slid it into the barrel, pushing forward gently until it came up hard against something.
“Good” said Willy “Now take that 5 pound hammer and give the rod a gentle tap”
Bert picked up the hammer and gave it a tap.
“A little harder” said the Old Man.
Bert tapped it a little harder.
“Now just give it a smack” said Willy. Bert drew the hammer back about a foot and swung through. There was a clatter as the rod Willy was supporting shot past his palm and fell to the floor. Brazed to the end was a small pipe tap and onto that was affixed what was left of an 8mm Mauser casing.
Willy picked up the rod and unscrewed the remains of the cartridge case from the threaded tap. He tossed it to Dutch and said, “Three dollars.” Dutch looked at the casing, then Willy, and sneered, “I shouldna haf to pay fer what yeur advice did ta me!” His accent more pronounced with his anger. “Mebbe I should take my business elsewheres?” he asked.
“Three dollars.” was all Willy said, assembling the barreled action into the stock and slipping a small gage into the chamber before carefully closing the partially stripped bolt. The bolt stopped before it completed its downward arc towards lock-up.
“You got lucky, you old fool. Your headspace is Ok. It’s still safe to shoot". Willy removed the bolt and replaced the extractor.
Dutch looked a little less perturbed. “I’ll haf to bring you d money” he said.
Willy nodded and handed the man his rifle. “Pull the rest of those loads, Dutch, and get some fresh brass! That old stuff you have is from before the War! It would have let go soon enough even without your, help.”
Dutch took his rifle, pushed past Bert without comment and pulled open the shop door. He adjusted his collar as he stepped out into the chill and pulled the door shut behind him. The mood was suddenly lighter.
“What was that about?” asked the Boy.
“Nothing” said Willy. “Just an old timer mistaking 4895 for 4831.”
Looking at the gunsmith Bert wondered how old one must be to qualify as an ‘old timer’ but decided not to ask.
“Want to help me chamber the Ballard?” asked Willy
What a question. “Sure! What do you want me to do?”
“Wait a minute and I’ll show you.”
The old Man took a look at the location of the scope block screw-holes on the newly fitted barrel, then got out a piece of paper and began some mathematical calculations that left Bert wishing he’d paid more attention to the actual math in math class than Paula Thompson.
When Willy was done with his ciphering he said that they needed to remove eight one-thousandths of an inch from the shoulder of the barrel to have the holes line up but, since they were going to need the barrel to seat with pressure, he was subtracting two thousandths of an inch for what he called ‘crush’.
“We need to cut off six thousandths of an inch from that shoulder” he said, looking at the boy.
“How’d you know that?” asked the boy. “I mean, how did you figure that out?”
“Geometry, of course. Every gunsmith need so know geometry. Didn’t I tell you that??”
“No. All you ever said was that I needed to study hard in school if I ever wanted to be a machinist.”
“Well” said the old Man “Now you know why, don’t you? Come around here and watch me mount this barrel in the lathe between centers.”
Well. This was something new. The Boy had never been allowed to touch the lathe except for wiping it down and emptying the chip pan.
The Boy watched as the gunsmith placed a drive dog on the muzzle end of the barrel and slipped the bore over the center sticking out of the drive plate. He then slid the tailstock forward until it was close to entering the chamber end of the barrel and cranked the tailstrock hand wheel while guiding the center into breech end of the barrel. When the barrel and the center met the Old Man turned the hand wheel, pushing the tailstock backwards a bit. He then locked the tailstock.
“That’s about all the pressure it takes to hold the barrel in place” he said. He gave the barrel shank a tug to illustrate that the barrel was securely held between the centers of the lathe.
He then positioned the lathe dog in the slot of the drive plate, showing how to place a bit of brass shim stock under the screw that clamped the dog to the barrel, and gave the barrel a twist back and forth so that Bert saw that the tail of the lathe dog was free to move in the slot on the drive plate.When all was checked for tightness, the gunsmith flicked the lathe on and then off, causing the barrel to spin briefly. He showed Bert how to again check that everything remained tight and then swung the top slide of the lathe over so that it was set at 90 degrees. He then moved the cutting tool around and after some jockeying to set it to center, positioned the Boy in front of the carriage and turned the machine on. He leaned into Bert’s right ear and told him how to advance the tool until it just barely skimmed the shoulder of the barrel. The old Man then had Bert take note of the setting on the top slide infeed micrometer and carefully advance it six places to feed the tool in to the metal six thousandths of an inch. When he reached the desired mark, the Boy was instructed to slowly feed the tool outward using the cross slide screw. When he did, he was rewarded by seeing a feathery shaving of steel slough off of the shoulder and onto the tool. He was thrilled.
Willie shut the lathe off.“That should do it, eh? What do you think?”
The Boy just shrugged only half understanding what he had just done but elated that he hadn’t goofed it up.
The gunsmith removed the barrel from the lathe and screwed it into the action. The scope block holes now were just a few degrees away from being upright. Without asking, Berth knew that the holes would line up perfectly when the barrel was tightened into the receiver. Willie unscrewed the barrel. Reassembled the Ballards’ action, and measured the distance between the breech face and the face of the action where the shoulder would butt up against the receiver. He then took the same depth micrometer and measured the barrel shank from face to shoulder.
“Good. Another six thousandths of an inch from the breechface and we’ll have her licked.” he said, “but I’ll take care of this one. You watch.”
Bert watched as Willy removed the lathe dog and unscrewed the drive plate from the lathe, replacing it with a 4 jaw chuck. He spent a few minutes adjusting it until the barrel spun true and then moved the carriage up. He turned on the lathe and touched the tool ever-so lightly to the breech face before locking the carriage and feeding in the tool the appropriate amount. He turned the cross slide handle slowly, leaving a shiny smooth finish. A light stroke of a fine mill file to break the edge finished it.
To the boy it all seemed effortless in its execution.
Willy removed the barrel from the lathe and mounted it in the barrel vice using a pair of oak blocks. Bert took up his usual place with cheater bar in hand but the old man waved him off.
“We only use that when a barrel is coming off and being stubborn about it! For putting them on, I believe the wrench alone will do.” He gave the wrench on the barrel vise nut a firm tug.
“That should do it. Hand me that action, eh? Bert?” Bert grabbed the action off of the white shop towel and placed it into the calloused hand of the gunsmith.
The action was screwed up to the barrel shoulder and with a slight movement of the spanner wrench he’d slipped over the action, turned it into place. He eyed the screw holes critically and, judging them to be in the right place, removed the action from the barrel and placed it on his workbench.
“Loosen up the vise and bring that barrel over here, Bert.”
Bert loosened the massive bolt on the barrel vise and gingerly slid the barrel out of the blocks. As he approached the bench he asked why the gunsmith didn’t want it in the lathe.
“Because you don’t need a lathe to do this one” He replied “Besides, the reamer I made is designed for hand reaming, not machine reaming. Now come over here and watch me”
The Old Man took the barrel and placed it vertically between two wooden blocks in his bench vise with the breech end up, taking great care to align it as close to vertical as possible. On the bench he placed a short cleaning rod with a stack of cotton patches and a small tin filled with the lard oil and kerosene mix he used for cutting the barrel threads. Next to that he placed a small brush. Reaching into the top drawer of one of the oak tool chests he removed a fluted steel reamer and placed it on a shop towel near the other equipment. Then, from the drawers under the bench he removed a large tap wrench and placed the squared end of the reamer in its jaws, tightening it firmly before laying it back onto the shop rag. The last thing he did was to place an empty soup can on the floor under the muzzle.
“I’ll show you how this is done.” he said. He swabbed the barrel with a clean cotton patch and then, picking up the tap wrench, brushed the reamers length with the clean cutting oil. He placed the pilot of the reamer into the bore and gently let the reamer settle until it was stopped by the rifling. Placing his finger tips on each end of the tap wrench, he gently swung his arms in a clockwise motion watching the reamer as it slowly cut into the steel. He repeated the movement and retracted the reamer taking great care to lift it straight from the barrel. He brushed off the chips that had gathered in the flutes and then ran a patch into the barrel, bringing out a few remaining chips.
“See how I did that? Nice and easy with equal pressure on each end of the wrench. Just let gravity feed it in and never back it up. Lift it out cleanly, Ok? Got it? Your turn now.”
Willy positioned the boy in front of the barrel and stepped back with a flowing gesture of the hand as if to say, it’s all yours.
Bert picked up the tap wrench and coated the reamer with oil. He placed it gently into the bore until it settled and then did his best to imitate the movements made by the Old Man. He could feel a smooth, subtle vibration through the wrench handles as the reamer cut a few thousandths chamber depth.
“Can you feel it cut?” the gunsmith asked? Bert nodded as his hands swapped places on the wrench for the second half-turn.
“If you feel it start to bind, stop and take it out. Don’t try to cut too much.” Bert again nodded. He smoothly removed the reamer and cleaned the hole as the gunsmith had showed him.
Willy nodded.
“Ok. You keep at it. I’ll be over making a bushing for the breechblock.”
Bert just nodded again. How is it that he went from errant ‘bellows boy’ to cutting a chamber in the space of a few days? What if he messed up? He looked over his shoulder for the gunsmith. Willy had seemingly lost all interest in him as he dug through a scrap bin of steel round stock. The Boy placed the reamer into the barrel and for once, wished the Old Man was looking over his shoulder.
Two hours later it was time to call it a night. The chamber was almost done looked good, according to Willy. He had milled a recess in the Ballard’s breechblock and was currently working on the lathe machining a disc of steel to act as a bushing to convert it from centerfire to rimfire. The boy was exhausted but happy. It was now well into the dinner hour and he was sure to catch it when he got home, but it was worth it. He imagined himself at the Rexall Drug blithely telling his friends how he chambered Norm Holloway’s .22 Magnum, and, of course it shot well. He mused on that happy thought until he hit the front steps and his mother opened the door.
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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