Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Another Legend leaves the shop

Today John Nienstadt arrived at our shop to pick up and test fire his 5th Legend. Number 5 was chambered for 7mm Remington magnum and may be on it's way for Leopard soon. I say maybe as the PH he hunts with in Namibia has nicked named his 300 Winchester Legend the "Black Mamba" for the  reputation it has gained over the last Safari's.

We swung by the range at 8:30 this morning and fired 4 different factory loads through this rifle to confirm the zero and give John a chance to test drive it. We then cleaned the bore one last time, pack it in a soft case for the trip back to Portland and then moved on to the next project.

                                       

                                                              Many thank's John !




Saturday, May 19, 2012

Classic Rifle Upgrades

In the past we have had many clients with nice old bolt action hunting rifles that have been used for many years.  Affectionately called "working rifles" some of these rifles could use more than a little help getting back to their full potential.

For this we offer an upgrade service for a variety of classic bolt action rifles such as the Pre-64 Winchester Model-70, Mauser 98 sporter's and Classic custom rifles from a variety of pedigrees based on these two actions.

The upgrades typically involve thorough evaluation, bore cleaning, feeding work, spot bedding, trigger work, fixing cracked stocks, recoil pad installation or replacement, scope mounting and iron sight revival or conversion, replacement of coil and main springs, extractor, ejector and safety work as well as accuracy testing at our range. In extreme cases, we have re-barreled rifles with shot out bores with custom barrels from Krieger or Lilja.

All work is done at our standard shop rate of $75/hour.  Turn around time on these projects is fairly rapid. Please call if you have any questions in regard to this service.


Doweling up a cracked grip



Converting a magazine that would not feed properly 


Re-barreling a Classic that had accuracy and bedding issues

 
Repairing a crack through the grip

                                             Installing a wing safety on Harry Selby's 416 

Friday, May 4, 2012

Pinning a Model 70 bolt

In our shop we call this procedure the Robin Hurt conversion. As it was Robin, at an SCI Convention, who made us first aware of the necessity to do so. It seems he had the bolt handle come loose on one of his personal G-series Model 70s. We took note of what Robin said and filed it away as a "act of God" failure. Not 60 days after the SCI convention we had the very same things happen in our shop. Now we took real serious notice. Having the bolt handle fall off a rifle is not a situation we wanted one of our clients to face.

Our solution was to set up every G-series Model 70 bolt in the milling machine,  drill and ream a 3/32" hole through both the investment cast bolt handle collar and the bolt body and then solder a 3/32" dowel pin into the new hole. The pin is then filed and polished flush with the major bolt diameter and the same is done in the  inside diameter of the bolt body.   The bolt handle and the bolt body are now joined mechanically in addition to the original copper induction brazed joint.  No fuss, no issues later on.

We implemented this procedure on every G-series based rifle leaving our shop, and also on all of our older Legend and Classic rifles that return to us for routine maintenance, at no charge.