I read somewhere that ASSRA has 1885 Winchester plans for sale. How would I find this out and who should I contact? Mori

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Cheers,
Laurie

I sure appreciate every compliment I get like this one. Thank you Harry.My Dad lived to 90 years old and I called him every Saturday for 25 years and not once did he ever compliment me on anything....

     Want to say that there are some errors in every set of plans you will encounter..I had built a few Low walls and Highwalls before I ever tried building one faithfully to a set of plans- then I really had trouble...Several places on the net I documented where the uhh-ohhs and Gotchas are in the Highwall plans...Evenso I ended up with a rifle I was able to compete with for a couple years..

   Hey,hey,hey, I am presently working on the worlds only .22 caliber Spencer rifle and expect to use it to achieve Master class rating in small bore silhouette matches...There is NOTHING quite as satisfying as building your own gun and win a shooting match with it...I have already won some matches with my home built Marlin 1892 .22 ...A better shooter could have used that rifle to win a heap more matches.
  Anyway.. Have fun with your builds.

Chawk,
If I can butt in here, most of the plans are drawn by taking the dimensions from original rifles, however some of these may be up to 2 centuries old and considerable wear may have taken place during that time. Therefore getting the precise measurement can be difficult and the draftsman may have to take an educated guess as to what certain dimensions are and they may be right or wrong. Then again two old rifles double your costs in expenditure and depending on the age of the firearms, (they may have been made many years apart) and changes made by the manufacturer because of some wear or breakage in regular use. Manufacturers still do that today but don't always advertise that fact. Just look at how many recalls there are on cars for fixing or upgrading or fitting beefed up parts.

Very few detailed blueprint drawings exist from the days when these old rifles were made and that's why working builders have to work off original actions. The rarer the rifle the higher the price because of demand from collectors and shooters. Eventually you have to draw the line somewhere (no pun intended). That's why most plans available are back engineered from mass produced weapons that are still affordable. 
Harry

All of that makes such perfect sense I am a little mad at myself for not seeing that earlier.  Thanks guys.

Can say from experience that the ASSRA drawings are pretty darn good.
Have not built the Winchester, but have built the Hepburn, Ballard and tang sights from the drawings and they do not require an apology.
The most obvious error is the upside down tang piece on the Ballard drawings.
I make it a point to draw each piece before trying to machine it. The old saw is, "if you cannot draw it, you cannot build it."
Have not found a missing critical dimension and cannot resist trying to "improve" things. Sometimes works, sometimes not.
May have to make some changes to accommodate your tools. Don't have all the tools that were available in the factory.
Makes for interesting projects and the plans are most reasonably priced.
Chuck

I'm currently "in the middle of" building a Winchester Highwall from the ASSRA plans.
"Alphawolf" is absolutely correct in saying there are some "gotchas" in those plans, though I had read most of his comments and suggested solutions before starting my build, so have avoided most of them. The one I did not forsee is the breechblock angle showing as 6 degrees rather than the 5 it is supposed to be. Not a "fatal error" though and still workable.
I imported my plans into AutoCAD and have re-drawn a lot of them. Must say I'd be lost without the AutoCAD. Just 2D for me though. I can see where something like "SolidWorks" would be quite a useful tool too. Just not available to me.
Its a huge undertaking to start carving an action out of bar stock. Several hundred hours of work. These guys that build these reproduction actions as a business -- I don't see how they can make much money at it -- even with CNC equipment (which I don't have).
Still a satisfying experience -- if you like lots of shop time.
Just hope I can get it finished sometime in this lifetime.

ALPHAWOLF45 wrote on Dec 11^th, 2015 at 2:37pm: