In the early design stages I was asked "Will there be any made in Left Hand and if so when ?". How many Left Hand LX-1 receivers will be made is still a guess at this time. In this 1st run of we elected to make 2 to begin with, both of these are dedicated to future projects
D'Arcy Echols & Co.
Sunday, February 5, 2023
From Concept To Prototypes Part 2
There is a point when the mouse, the calipers and in my case even the pencil are set aside and chips need to me made. With most of the initial fixtures now on-line material began to arrive and be cut to length.
With the first machine operation completed the pair is prepped for the next OP. Notice the lower half of the recoil lug located on the northern end of these two billets. Ser # 0001 and #0002 began to take shape.
The quality of the CVM machine finish is always excellent
The receiver is one thing, the additional parts then began to add up. With the exception of the Floor-plate, trigger bows, magazine boxes and followers which I have had produced for decades the rest of the newly designed parts began to fall into place.
Saturday, February 4, 2023
From note pad to concept Part 1
I have often been excused of glacial movement in everything I do. So true to character it took 43 years of pushing a boulder uphill to finally evolve enough and design a bolt action receiver that would be a cut above what I'd been using most of my career.
I knew what I wanted from the basic skeleton. I pushed around some rough sketches in my mind and when time permitted I began working on some prototypes parts. All this R&D was pretty random at first. Without trying to reinvent the basic bolt action design my goal was to incorporate subtle features I liked about a number of receivers such as the Brno ZG-47, Winchester Model 70, and even some of the DNA from the Remington 700.
All of these previous receivers were being made with the current technology of their time but one thing was for sure there were no 5 and 7 axis mills and lathes available in the earlier eras.
In this fantasy atmosphere I wondered what it would be like not to be constrained within a budget that cut corners where you actually needed those damned corners. I've been reattaching those corners for decades, Working within this imagined "no bottom line" framework some ideas began to come together.
For the next couple years every operation I preformed on the lathe or mill I imagined how I could eliminate these modifications or corrections if they were already built into a new platform.
Bret Wursten, the owner of Central Valley Machine would prod me ever so often and ask me when I wanted to put these ideas into motion? Then one day while we sat on a ridge line glassing for mule deer he poked me with a stick and said the following "Starting next week I want you to give me a half a day per week with our Solid Works Engineers and put whatever concepts you have rattling around in that thick skull of yours at least into a digital file". I'd run out of excuses.
We didn't miss very many of those meetings over the next 10 months. I would arrive with a few notes, maybe a sketch drawn on a napkin and we'd go to work. James would be called in to assisted when we needed to know how or if we were going to be even able to hold and machine a certain part. The weeks rolled by. Neal would drive the mouse I would look at the image and say, "We need more Cow Bell right there"Wednesday, February 1, 2023
The sabbatical is over
For anyone that has followed this blog for any length of time I thank you and I appreciate your patience. It has been awhile since I've had any time or energy to devote to this site.
Enough said, I'm dusted off and back in the saddle
The 260 and the Kid, a lethal combination
Another Christmas Turkey invited to dinner
Thursday, August 12, 2021
It took a Texan to state the obvious
The year was 2011 and I was standing in front of an interested crowd giving a power point presentation in a Country Club just outside of San Antonio Texas. I was doing my best to visually show those assembled the steps required to modify, blue print the receiver, then fit and chamber a barrel. The next images showed me modifying the underside of a current production Model 70 receiver to except one of my floor-plate, bow and magazine assemblies. Then I did my best to described the art of surface grinding the receiver to install a set of my scope mounts. Fitting the stock came next and then going over the final finish work to turn the project into a finished Legend rifle.
Sunday, June 6, 2021
Converting a Pre-64 30-06 to 300 H&H Part 3
OK now lets tie all this together. The first thing to do is file the different flat widths we've cut into that wasp waist shape between each feed rail. Had we been using a CNC we could have programed this step hit the RUN button and watched these mirrored contours take shape.
Instead we must make the modification blend by hand. This is best done with 6" to 8" medium cut mill files followed up with a # 4 cut file blending our stepped cuts together in an uninterrupted transition from front to rear. Since we made these mill cuts into the rails with use of the digital readout, both the depth and length these two apposing sides should blend out in almost a mirror image. The upper and lower edge of each rail must also be filed with a slight corner breaking radius. The transition along both rails should feel smooth and interrupted. The plan is to just blend these milled flats not hog out more rail width than is necessary.
Then starting with 180 grit W&D paper both rails should be polished top and bottom, front to rear. This sand paper work should be continued up through 320 grit. Keep the radius theme on both sides of the rails
Next you need to file an angular ejection bevel on the underside right leading edge of the rear bridge as we have left a very sharp corner that will catch on every cases being ejected. In addition any sharp corners generated by and end mill need to be chamfered with a file and then paper.
You must remove the sharp corner at the rear of the feed well wall that we've generated by widening the feed well. 1st with a pillar file, then a stone and finally with paper we need to turn that sharp corner into parabola shape. Failure to do so will cause the belts on the case to hang up on that sharp corner.
Next we begin blending the 90 degree shelf above the leading edge of the magazine box ID we have established by cutting the feed well forward with the existing angle of the 30/06 bullet ramp. Some would suggest making this new angle straight from the top of the mag box to the rear edge of the flat behind the lower recoil lug seat, you could. However if you blend the standing material into the established bullet ramp angle with again a parabola shape you will in fact be leaving much more steel in the ramp area than Winchester ever left behind on factory 300 H&H receiver. This leaves the lower lug area with significantly more material and removes the knife edge effect at the top of the bullet ramp found all too often on a factory 300 or 375 H&H receiver. Another advantage of this extended parabola shaped ramp also puts the bullet nose in contact with the ramp sooner allowing the bullet nose to begin its rise towards the chamber as well as rolling the base of the case into the bolt face and under the extractor sooner. Remember the beaten to death term "controlled round feed" in my experience the sooner this control starts as the bolt is pushed forward the better the entire concept design becomes.
Say what ?????????
As an example the extractor groove diameter on a cross section of six different manufactured 300 Winchester cases I measure a while ago showed a + and - .020 variation in the six brands of brass.
The fit of the extractor hook to the chosen manufacture case should allow the extractor spring away from the bolt body .004 to .006 when the case is rolled and centered into the bolt face in the chambered position in my opinion.
The larger the bullet diameter or the further away the bullet nose is from the centerline of the action the more material will need to be removed. This can take 5 minutes to a number of hours depending on the case and cartridge design. When you feel you have the best shape working for you then you can use a Foredom hand tool with the proper sized cartridge rolls and or the rapid break down stones to go over and remove the file marks and then I paper polish entire bullet ramp. You want that bullet ramp smooth as a Beagle's ear.