I recently competed D & T a Rem. rolling block for a shooting friend.  After making the necessary measurements I used a milling machine.  As I have D & T several rifles the last few years, the process was straight-forward & went smoothly, no complications, which was not the case when adding vintage scope bases to a custom muzzleloader several years ago; my 1st attempt at D & T, & I used a hand drill.

At the time I remember thinking, why take it to a gunsmith as it should be fairly simple.  I’ll just make the necessary measurements & use tape on the drill as a depth indicator.  Everything was going smoothly until I drilled one hole a tad too deep, completely through into the bore.  So, I spent a long time figuring what to do next.  After a lot of thought, I shortened a setscrew & epoxied it in place to fill the bottom of the hole while leaving sufficient depth for the block screw.  Fortunately, I had a long borescope to see the bottom of the hole in the bore.  Using it I installed the filler setscrew until the bottom edge of the hole disappeared.  Once the epoxy hardened, I ran a bottoming tap into the hole to clean out any remaining epoxy.  The fix worked great as I have been shooting that rifle many years since.

I can’t believe I’m the 1st person to screw up this way.  Is there a gunsmithing fix available rather than rebarreling?

Wayne

"I recently competed D & T a Rem. High Wall"

I just want to know what a Rem. High Wall is, Wayne?

A friend bought a H&A Underhammer muzzle loader at a Gun Show for a very reasonable price and we repaired to the desert to test it out.  He fired several shots and seemed pleased with his purchase until I asked him what that spout of smoke was that came out of the top of the barrel a few inches down from the breech.  He hadn't noticed it, so he loaded it up again and I fired it.  Then he noticed it too, although from behind the gun it happened so quickly that I couldn't make it out.  It was a miniature, one-only version of that "Chuff!" of smoke that comes out of a wood-burning steam locomotive in the movies.

Closer examination showed that it had been drilled and tapped for scope blocks and one of the holes went into the bore.  Brownell's had slightly oversize plug screws in all the gunsmith sizes so we measured the depth of the hole, jacked the screw in (with plenty of resistance), peened down the top and filed it flush with the barrel.

The thing shot fine afterwards with no "Chuff!" and the screw stayed in for several sessions, so apparently it worked.

I wouldn't try it on a smokeless caliber barrel and would have reservations with a BPCR barrel, but the relatively light charges and round balls in muzzle loaders seem to tolerate such makeshifts.  Depending on the chambering of the Rolling Block, spot welding of the filler screw and hole and a strict adherence to "Black Powder Only" might work, but I  myself would always be leery of the thing.

Gunsmith bills are like the bill the bomb defuser presented to the city manager.  "You only took out one screw!" the manager squawked.  "I want this bill itemized!"

The bomb guy took the bill back and wrote on it:  "Removal of one screw, $1.00.  Knowing which screw to remove, $999.00."

My own barrel D&Ts are aways done very slowly, and heart-in-mouth all the way through it.

A friend brought me a 96 Mauser bolt gun a few years back that he bought at a gun show. It had been drilled and tapped for a scope but had filler screws in place. He shot it with some reloads and on the fourth shot one of the filler screws blew out. This one had been drilled through into the chamber. He looked at the cases and all of them had a little round bulge on them. Anyway I drilled it out and tapped it for a 8-48 screw. Screwed the fastener in till it protruded very slightly into the chamber. Put it in with epoxy then peened the head. Dressed it with a file and some cold blue. Ran a chamber reamer in to clean everything up. The other three holes were good. Drilled and tapped just ahead of the bad location. Made him a custom weaver style base and everything was good.



JMH

kinda makes me leary of buying any gun from one of you guys.

The quality of the gunsmith is not determined by how many mistakes they make.  Rather, the quality of the gunsmith is determined by how well they recover from mistakes.

I am not a gunsmith by any stretch of the imagination but working in aerospace industry doing prototype work and repair and overhaul you learn quickly how to recover from your mistakes...



JMH