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.
