doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com European screw slots

I recently purchased an Italian double gun. Naturally it had to be stripped down,cleaned, lubed,raw wood sealed, ect. Why do they make the screw slots so damn narrow ? I had to grind down the thinnest Brownell thin bits in my set. They are now more like small knife blades than screw driver tips. I know there going to draw blood sooner or later.
Thanks, terc

Brownell's sell a complete set of Magna-Tip bits, specifically ground for thin European-style screw slots. It's a very worthwhile investment!

The Europeans are just showing out! I've never seen factory bits thin enough, either.
I have taken to sealing the inner wood with liquid Acraglass thinned with acetone so it soaks in like water...but oh, when it hardens is your wood sealed but good...STeve

[quote=Ron Vella]

"Brownell's sell a complete set of Magna-Tip bits, specifically ground for thin European-style screw slots. It's a very worthwhile investment!"


The Brownell's thin bit sets are still too thick for most Italian guns. Still worth the purchase as you have less grinding to do than the standard set!

I was told sometime in the past that guns here in Britland where fitted with screws having such a narrow screwdriver slot to stop the public using ordinary screwdrivers available just about every where to take guns apart and generally fiddling with them. And because of �we have always done it that way� the practice has continued well that was the reason I was given true or false who knows.
I was at a small factory that was closing down some thirty years ago, it was a long established specialist manufacture of fixings in Sheffield included in its customers where some in the Birmingham gun trade.
While I was here I collected up a handful of specialist slitting saws used in the manufacture of gun screws. In the photographs are some of the saws such small things that give us such a big screwdriver headache, the battery is for scale.

Can you cut those screw slots with a jeweler's hand saw ?

I've always cut & recut the needed thin slots w/a jewelers saw. Blades available in widths down to any of those knife thin thicknesses.

It wouldn't do for production but works perfectly and quickly for doing up the screws on a new project or restoration.

I have found the Brownells set fits my two Berettas (S57EL and SO6) perfectly, but I have had to use some watchmakers screwdrivers for the tiny lock screws/pins used to lock the main pins on the SO6. Brownells also sell some handy correct radius grinding stones if you do have to make small adjustments.

Kutter, thanks. Can you recommend a blade size or width that you find most helpful ? Maybe a range of sizes.

Daryl,
For German custom guns,at least, they are usually cut with a jewelers saw.When they are "clocking"or "timing"the screws, they turn in a screw with a temporary slot in an extra thick head.Then they mark the location of a new slot"fore and aft",and saw or file the new slot to depth and file the head to the necessary thickness(thereby removing the old slot).Of course they could cut the new slot in the milling machine with a slitting saw, but the set up would take up a lot more time than doing it by hand.
Mike