I pull every picture I can find off the internet and bring the better photos into AutoCAD where I scale them and trace them and guess at whatever else isn't obvious.....I and a whole lot of other people  can build virtually anything merely from photos pulled off the net. Just takes a heap of time and 'course tools and some appropriate previous experiences...No, all that is mine for better or worse.

I did test very high on IQ tests but that's only because I knew the answers   But I have worked with tools, machines since I was a young kid and now I am an old man, naturally I have learned a good deal along the way. Metalsworking is my passion, I was deep into that well before I ever fooled with a gun project. Gunsmithing however is a whole 'nuther science...Notice I don't fool with anything modern high power chambering. I don't trust myself to build anything that can take the side of my face off if it isn't made egggzackardly right.
   Ohhh hey. let me brag on myself... Two weeks ago friend and I met up at the club to shoot at  steel turkey silhouette.. We first hammered it hard at the 300 meter pig line then friend Paul suggested we set it out at the 500 meter Rams line.. With my home built .45-70 Highwall and iron sights I could not see it at all with my right eye but could just barely see it as a blurry speck with my left eye...So I got down prone and put the rifle butt to my left shoulder and aimed with my left eye but worked the double set trigger with my usual right hand trigger finger...I hit it 5 of 7 shots...Last 3 shots were solid hits but then I quit because the awkward hold was hammering my left shoulder....Fun though. ...Do that with a hobbiest built home made rifle and it is a real good feeling.

Alpha Wolf, you sir are a very talented craftsman and exceptionally intuitive at reverse engineering. I was impressed looking at your photos of the guns you have made from scratch. You use the same thread that I use assembling my Maynard barrels, 13/16"-20. The cam-over locking linkage of the barrel to frame is simple but there is very little room for error and you seem to have nailed it. Overall your Maynards are impressive.

Making things from pictures can be done as you have proved but it is not simple. While in engineering school I had a part time job in the Industrial Engineering machine shop. One of the professors brought back some photos of a device from a conference he had been to and wanted it duplicated. Other full time people in the shop said they needed more information such as drawings or sketches to build it. When I was asked if I could make it I said yes. I got the job and completed it to the satisfaction of the professor. I didn't make any friends in the shop as I was just one of those young upstart college kids passing thru.

I agree with everyone else,you do do some very nice work. From what I see you have a pretty nice shop to work in. Just wish I had access to all the goodies you have as many people will have a lathe, and maybe a mill but you seem to have a grinder to go along with everything an some nice tooling to round things out. As a retired toolmaker, I see many things I easily recognize. Keep up the good work
Sam

I like the idea you suggest to carve the whole thing from a solid that then gets a rifled liner.. But working with what I had I chose the other route which was to thread a Green Mountain blank into a breech end portion....I don't have capability here to drill ,ream and rifle a barrel blank.
..I don't really know how to do any of this stuff..I just figger it out as I go along and hope for the best..Think I spent a month or 6 weeks building the pair of Maynards and spent less than a hundred bucks on each of them.. That is lot of fun hours for little money invested and they come out purty good. 



Gone Fly Fishing wrote on Oct 1^st, 2014 at 8:34am:

No, I've never built an entire Maynard rifle. I started assembling barrels in 2001 on a monobloc barrel stub machined from chrome-moly steel just the way you did it. A friend and retired diemaker made a 1st Model Maynard from scratch and now is making a few more. I have helped him by making the hammer and trigger blanks and I'm supplying the barrels.

By supporting Maynard shooters I've made a lot of parts, 1873 adapter rings, extractor blanks, screws, link blanks, hammers, triggers, anything to keep the rifles working.

The internet is the resource that makes all this possible for me.. Before I got very far along with my Maynards I found a gentleman online who answered a couple questions for me. I needed to know some dimensions so that I could scale it ..You can find good pictures of most any parts on Gunbroker but then you have got to figure out the dimensions. But I find that folks online are very helpful at measuring their own guns/parts and taking pictures when I need another view.