Removing a Crosman 101 Forearm From the Pump Arm

I’m building a “Frankengun” from parts of two beater Crosman 101 rifles. I needed to remove the forearms from the pump arms so I could swap them.

The two forearms.

One of the pins that holds the thing together.

Cleverly hidden by a plug.

I drilled out the plug with a smaller bit and enlarged.

Transferring the location of the pin to the other side with pencil marks, one hopes.

A smaller drill until I hit the pin and then punch with the pin punch.

When you’re lucky the wood splinters minimally.

It still leaves a ragged hole. It seems as though Crosman slightly peened over the heads when pressing them in as they do tear their way out.

This is what happens when you’re unlucky. In either case I’ll drill the holes a larger diameter to the depth of the pin heads so I can plug them with a matching piece of wood.

Resealing a Crosman 101, valve body gasket

I had resealed the valve body against the receiver with a piece of gasket. I had been warned that it would probably leak if I didn't add an o-ring groove. Well it started leaking past the valve when I was pumping, reducing efficiency. I still didn't want to add an o-ring groove so I thought that a thin teflon gasket would do the trick.

A large piece of teflon, turned down to diameter and drilled to be a slip fit on the valve body.

Parted off, with a lot of flash around the end...

Deburred and mounted on the valve body.
I put it all back together and the annoying leak was gone. Not period authentic but better than making the groove.

Fabricating a Replacement Sight for a Crosman 101, Part 3

Some more fun...

A smaller piece of steel, knurled and turned.

Tapping #8-32. The drawing calls out #8-36 but I'm a rebel. This does have implications down the line...

Parted off.

Mounted on a mandrel for facing off.

Done!

Now the aperture. Turned to diameter.

Threaded #8-32

Drilling the major diameter. I reduced it a bit from the drawing to take into account the deeper thread depth of the #8-32 over the #8-36 (A difference of .003" thread depth)

Drilling the aperture hole. I also reduced this, but mainly because I like a smaller aperture.

Knurling.

Parted off.

Blurry picture of boring out the face.

Blued with Oxpho blue and mounted on the rifle. Works fine. It's a fun and accurate rifle to shoot.

Fabricating a Replacement Sight for a Crosman 101, Part 2

On I go.

Knurling some steel.

Turning down to one diameter.

Then to the screw diameter, and threaded with a die.

Undercutting the thread. I probably didn't need to do this but it's on the drawing...

Parted off.

Mounted on a mandrel and the end faced and chamfered.

Slotting a screw slot.

The drawing shows that it's a plunge in from center rather than a straight cut. Not that it matters.

The finished screw.

It mounts the sight bracket to the rifle.

Fabricating a Replacement Sight for a Crosman 101, Part 1

As I mentioned before, I have three Crosman 101s. One worked fine and had been resealed by the previous owner but was missing the rear sight. So armed with D.T. Fletcher's parts drawings CD I decided to fab up a replacement. Unfortunately the drawing for the later model bracket was not supplied so I had to extrapolate from the early drawing and some pictures. This led to a slight mistake...

A piece of steel covered in layout blue was propped against my Taft Pierce box parallel, on my surface plate.

Scribing some lines...

Lines all scribed to my drawing.

I marked the parts to be removed (little x's) and scribed some radii.

Cut out most of the waste on the bandsaw.

Milling to the lines.

Needed a tall endmill...

Milling the slots.

The radii were ground on my belt grinder.

I thought my Di-Acro bender would handle the job...

But I ran out of bend...

So I had to finish the 90 degree bend by hammering in a vise.

The bracket. This is where I made my mistake. The bend should have been 90 the other way. On the old bracket the bend (not really a bend as the whole thing is stamped to shape) is this way, but not on the newer one...shouldn't matter much functionally but it is wrong.

Mounted to the rifle.

Polished and deburred.