How I spent my Christmas
I was pretty busy at work lately, and naturally, several different projects were piling up in my garage shop, so on my first day off I was up at 6am and ready to make some chips! First was this bad boy. I’ve been working on it for the past couple of months and finally had […]
Per Qualche Dollaro In Più
For a fistful of dollars I purchased this 1876 receiver. The serial number on it indicates the second year of production, 1878, so it’s an early second model. For a few dollars more I’m going to get the factory letter from Winchester and the rest of the parts and rebuild it completely. Once it’s done, […]
Will This Cutter Fly?
A customer recently reached out to me and asked if I can machine slides for the RMR plate mount. I said, of course, I can, but then I paused for a second. The RMR footprint is really simple, except it has the 3″ radius at the front. That’s right, 3″ radius, not diameter! So how […]
A Dance With Dragons Part II
Here’s the part II of my dance with the Dragon. I built a second prototype and continued my testing. As you can see, there’s one important change in the design, it now has two gas ports instead of four – more on that later. My first test was with my standard 200gr Brazos bullet over […]
A Dance With Dragons Part I
Ever since I learned about the Ed Masaki Dragon gun, I was sort of obsessed with it. I was lucky enough to buy one, but some questions still remained unanswered – why is it not available anymore? Why no one else tries to make one? And can I be the one? After a years of […]
Turning Tugnsten Tuesday
It is Tuesday and I’m back in my shop, turning tungsten….wait, what? I recently upgraded my .22 pistol to the famous Pardini SP22. The gun is absolutely fantastic, the trigger, balance, feel and accuracy is superb, no wonder pretty much all Olympic shooters choose it. However, there’s still room for improvement and this time it […]
Z-Axis Power Lift
I think in every machinist’s life there is a moment when hand-cranking that z-axis table or head becomes almost unbearable pain in the rear. In my case it was when I had to make a part with a lot of holes of different sizes. It went something like this: Indicated the part. Cranked the head […]
Black and Gold
I wish all jobs always went according to the original planning, but, as we all know, it’s never happening. This one was a classic example. It came to my shop in a pretty rough shape, the parts were unfinished, the dust cover had multiple holes drilled and tapped for previous scope mount installations and the […]
Low Voltage Rock’n’Roll
A customer needed a scope mount for his Bullseye gun. It’s not a particularly difficult part to make, I’ve done it before many times but I always just spray painted the parts with Cerakote or even a regular Rust-Oleum matte black paint. This time, however, I decided to go big or go home and instead […]
What’s In The Box?
Bullseye shooters know how hard is to find a range box in a decent shape. There were several companies and people making those boxes back in a day, such as Pachmayr, Gun-Ho, Greg Walloch, etc. Unfortunately, the new boxes are not made anymore, and the used ones fetch a hefty premium on eBay and other […]