Had a remedial lesson today in why I choose not to do general gunsmithing; I hate dealing with the unknown problems that come through the door that have been caused by bubba and then covered up.

A somewhat local guy got my name somehow, as working on rolling blocks.  He dropped by and caught me with the garage door open.  So, had him come in, and looked at what he had.  Nice 7mm action, great condition, reworked nicely with good blue, nearly colorless case, and good workmanship.  The barrel was octagon, new, and the workmanship wasn't quite as good.  The trigger was probably 20 pounds.  He wanted me to fix it.  Okay, usually pretty easy.  I opened it up and it didn't look like it had been hacked up; the workmanship looked good.  So, I told him I would do it.  I didn't bother to get either my glasses or optivisor.  I should have!

Make a spring, install it, and it goes to maybe 1 pound.  Oh-Oh.  Should be 2 to 2 1/2.  Tap it with a mallet, and the hammer falls.  Of course.  Get out some magnification and start looking.  Before they blued the trigger and hammer, someone has "worked" on them.  Hammer sear looks like it was recut with a file.  Uneven and rough.  So, get out diamond files and clean it up and return it to correct geometry.  Put it in, and it still falls.  Look at the trigger, and it is awful.  Sear surface is almost rounded.  Both the hammer AND the trigger have been cut to positive geometry, so that the mainspring of the rifle HELPS pull the trigger to overcome the 20 pound trigger spring.  So, recut the trigger also to correct geometry.  Got it to about 3 pounds and safe against bumping accidental discharge.  Way beyond what I want to get into to reharden the sear and hammer. I'll just let it be a bit mushy and creepy, and tell him what work is entailed if he wants to fix it right.   

I can't believe that people still stone rolling block sears/hammers to unsafe configuration instead of just fixing the spring.  Especially someone that did otherwise pretty acceptable work on the rifle finishing.

At least it gave me an interesting break from making cabinets today!

I'm in the same boat as the last guy; I didn't harden and re-blue the parts, just left them soft, so they'll continue to wear and won't ever be crisp.  But, I'll at least tell the owner what they need, and why, so he can choose to have them fixed if he wants to.  Was way beyond the scope of what he wanted me to do, other than "fix the awful trigger".

I have come across the same thing more than once. Most of the time it involves welding up the hammer and trigger. It's fun when someone brings in a roller that you have to hold the hammer back to open the breach.

Got my cabinets assembled and installed today.  Will help eliminate a lot of clutter in my basement shop.  I had a wide corridor at the edge of my basement, with an unfinished half wall to the crawlspace.  I framed in a wall, and then built 10 cabinets to go from floor to the top of wall, and then a deeper shelf area extending into the crawl space on top of the wall.  It finishes and insulates the basement off from the unfinished crawl space, and gives me a bunch of storage, outside of the shop area.

ssdave wrote on Mar 29^th, 2021 at 4:49pm:


The idea it to be able to do the same work I did before but in a smaller shop minus one lathe. I noticed that I am slowing down a bit. The VA has been catching me up on a few medical issues. Got a little cancer removed from my cheek, I have the scar that looks like I didn't do so well in the dulling match. I'm finding that old age is not for wimps.

Wow Moodyholler ! Prayers for some healing time for you.

I feel like I'm doing fairly good at 72. The mortgage co. thinks I will be working for another 30 years, I'm going to do my best.

With all the storage space I hope that you will be able to remember where you stored that box of parts. Two years after remodeling my shop storage I am still looking for spare parts that I put away. At 77 still having fun. 
You did a very nice job shop rehab. 

ron