doublegunshop.com - home Forums Thread Like Summary - Project Guns thrill of victory- agony of defeat

Another thread about values breached the subject of project guns, the lure and reality. I have undertaken specific fixer-uppers due to the fact I couldn't find or afford the specific Model. I did this recently with a Remington Model 3200 "Live Bird" Competition gun. All was good except the forend wood was a different color than the butt stock. Lots of work stripping the Kryptonite plastic finish! I feel pretty good about what I'm in $ and the results of the work.
Other projects......not as cool, some still in limbo.....

As a followup to my earlier post, I took my son shooting after school today. We experienced the "thrill of victory."
I am one very happy dad.

Fred, when I first started shooting flintlocks, I was under the impression that the little delay in firing was normal. Everyone said so. Then I read an excellent article in Rifle Magazine by the noted flintlock gunsmith John Bivens titled "Care and Feeding of the Flintlock Rifle". He went into great detail about every llittle aspect such as touch hole size and location, pan powder, correctly priming the pan, choosing the best and most reliable flints, setting the flint in the jaws of the cock, frizzen hardness, etc. He said the difference in lock time between a flintlock and a percussion rifle should be mere milliseconds.

I applied what he said and I was amazed that the ignition of my flintlock was nearly as fast as my center fire rifles. What I learned from that single article shortened my learning curve immensely. And there is a learning curve. It's a real sense of accomplishment to hunt all day in the rain, and have perfect ignition when you finally get a shot at a deer. Now, if I notice a bit of a delay, I know I'm doing something wrong. Don't believe anyone who tells you that a half second delay is normal. It's a lot of fun to work it out and get better performance, and fast consistent ignition makes for much smaller groups too.

This thread and another about project guns sent me down one of those rabbit hole. It was a former member named Rabbit I came across and one of his last post was on this thread this photo is in. We have been blessed by a lot of top notch posters over the years. Too many are now gone, a few got pissed off and left and a few newer ones have come along. I miss Bill and was gland to get to know him as much as I did. The Rabbit triggered a purchase of two NID Ithaca 12's I bought from him for the princely total of $700.00 for the pair. Nice shooters, at what I thought was a bargain price. NIDs do not command a lot of attention.

I can't imagine what emoji I would use to accompany a reply to that grossly embellished post.

Given that it's Old Ed's work product, I would suggest a flaming turd.

One of the wags, right here says you make your money on a gun when you buy it.

I’ve had a few project guns, and, a universal truth, is, I lost my shorts on almost all of them. They did keep me out of the pool hall, and the education was worth something, but, the more expensive the project gun was, the more I lost.

I have two I feel I won on, a Nitro Special in 16 gauge that was listed on an internet sight for $250, minimum bid. I bid $257, after coming home from a pool hall, and the next day, I was the only bid. The barrel exterior was covered in furry rust. The balance of the gun, varnish, wood, case colors was no less than 99%. Our own Ken61 (haven’t seen him for a few years, hope he is OK) blued the tubes for the princely sum of $50.

The gun is gorgeous. 26” tubes that everybody hates, Cyl and Mod chokes that are worthless, 1938 vintage with factory 2 3/4” chambers, and the original butt plate. I pretend to hunt grouse with it, with heavy metal ammunition at a Federal WMA that requires non toxic shot.

I know I can get $300+ for it, so, I won.

The other is a Mossberg 500 pump, that was given to me. It was broken (guy originally asked for a hacksaw to cut it up, then just gave it to me) and I repaired it, and epoxied the broken buttstock, a laid a spectacular coat of black automotive chip guard paint on the repaired wood. It gets used for duck hunting in Canada every year for two weeks, and then I clean it, and put it away. I know I can get at least $50 for it, so, again, I’m up.

Best,
Ted

I made a 16 gauge set of barrels for one of my 3200s

That adage hold true on projects guns as well. I love projects but you have to be ruthless about the acquisition cost and you have to cost out everything before you buy and decide if that’s the road you want to go down. I lost money on a couple that went down the road. The rest I’m likely above water if I was to sell. But selling them is never why I do them. All hobbies cost something. You want to blow through cash with no return…..buy a 30’ plus boat.

I had a buddy at work years ago and he came up to me once and said "I just got a Mossberg 500 yesterday for only $50!!" My reply was - "That's not too bad, the guy only had to pay you $50 for you to take a Mossberg." Haha!

A turd ,

Project guns are neither good nor bad things, unless you are in it to earn money.

It depends entirely on what each of us enjoys. Some like the challenge, enjoy the idiosyncrasies of shooting older guns and some don’t. I know I enjoy the restoration process and am quite happy to find and shoot “boutique” ammo from my vintage guns. Others don’t. No big deal.

A very controversial subject. Some people have the innate ability to properly repair things, and some simply never will. The proof is seen in millions of guns with buggered screw slots and gray epoxy stock repairs. Tools can be bought and techniques can be taught, but I believe real skill is more of a genetic trait. A few days ago, I clicked on a link Ted posted to Dewey Vicknair's blog. While perusing his projects and reading his thoughts on two-year trade school graduates who call themselves gunsmiths, he stated that a proper repair on a gun should be virtually undetectable. He also noted correctly that far too many firearm restorations are not restorations at all, but actually nothing more than refinishing with incorrect materials and methods. Far too many so-called professionals do not even come close to that standard. And while there are some highly skilled amateurs, there are many more who do not know their own limitations.

Then there are the guys who buy a gun with known issues at a somewhat reasonable price. They then promptly ship it out to a high priced gunsmith to make it right. After waiting a year or so to get it back, we see them posting pictures here, and making excuses why they don't care if they are severely upside down, and will never recover their costs. Brilliant!

Still use it every year, I shoot it well.

Reading back over it I would never have the patience to do that now, it would drive me nuts, the hoops I jumped through.

But the experience and knowledge I got by going through it, money well spent.

Hi

I thought I would join in on this, I've both project guns here and there so that I could learn about working on guns
and teach my kids to work on guns. My dad was a typical depression era kid and would buy so many things just because
they were at good prices. So a long time ago, I was on gunboards and someone offered a partially completed Hawken flintlock kit and I
went for it. The kits now are like over $500 and I sure wouldn't want one at that price.

Last summer, I was talking to my 9 year old son, and told him "I always wanted a boy that I could go shooting and hunting with and work on guns with
and long before you were born I got this flintlock kit, hoping for someone to put it together with, would you like to do that?" Of course, he
said yes. And we finished the inletting, sanded and finished stock using some of J.V. Howe's formulas and browned the barrel and put it all together
and then began to discover problems. The set trigger wouldn't. It took a while to come up with a solution. A screw hole in the lock was partially stripped, I fixed that. When assembled the ramrod can't be removed without breaking off the end. So fine, I made a range rod. and the ramrod is now for show. It can be removed, which is good, since you can't remove the barrel when the ramrod is on, (is anyone having a laugh at my expense by now, I hope so?)

Yesterday, I took him to shoot if for the first time. We were at a public shooting range and it really wasn't the place to mess with things, so I brought
a 22 for my son to shoot in case something went wrong with the flintlock. Sure, enough, we gave up after two flashes in the pan and shot the 22.

Last night, I began to try to figure things out. I unscrewed the plug screw for the touch hole and looked in. It looked like a blind hole, shining a flashlight into the hole and looking through the muzzle, I could see only darkness. So I thought I would try to removed the breech plug, having tried and failed at this before,
I poured penetrating oil down the bore and noticed that some was seeping out the hole for the plug screw for the touch hole. I hooked up my compressor and blew air through the muzzle and got a fine mist coming out the plug screw hole. I was like this can't be right. No way is a sufficient amount of powder going
to end up near the touch hole. So, I let my mind stew on things over night and came back to it in the morning. With a set of optivisors, I began to look at the plug hole and what was inside, it was kind of hard to see, but it looked like something was there that wasn't supposed to be, so I got a screwdriver and stuck it in and pried and felt something move toward the muzzle. Pried a bit more, and it moved more, tapped the muzzle on the floor, and about a 3/8 of an inch of a 1/4 inch drill bit fell out. I figure that what happened is that they seated the breech plug too deeply, when they drilled the hole for the touch hole, they
got a blind hole and jammed the breech plug. So they tried to drill from the muzzle and broke off the drill bit in the breech plug and couldn't get it out. And sold it. Hopefully, next weekend, we will try shooting it again.

Through this experience, I hope that I've taught my son a good lesson, when you buy someone else's former project, there is a good chance that they
screwed something up and couldn't figure out how to unscrew it. That being said, I am sure that the same things holds true for project cars. I'd rather have
project guns.