Another Breech for a Crosman. Part 5

The aluminum breech went together without any real problems--that alone left me filled with wonder and amazement.  Gonna shoot it for a while before deciding what to do with the shroud.  The blank aluminum tube seems to beckon for some kind of adornment.  Sprayed the grips with a couple coats of truck bed liner.  I actually made a pair of wood grips, but I didn't think they fit with the black and silver colors.  The Tasco ProPoint dot carries the color theme.  Shoots great, but I have a feeling that this will be one of those project guns that evolves every couple months and is never truly finished.  I already miss not having a bolt hold open.  Next time it's apart, the loading bolt is getting a rare earth magnet.
 

May throw together a short post showing those aforementioned grips if there is any interest.

Thanks for reading.  Check back in a few days for more.

HW50S Rebuild, Part 2

Ok, 2+ months between installments, but at least I’m posting! This is boring anyway as all I really did was sand, sand, sand, and sand some more, trying to remove the worst of the rust pitting while not digging in or ruining the lines of the gun.

Starting to sand, I kept the strokes in line and used a variety of sanding blocks so as to not put flats on the tube.

Better. I gave up on the idea of eliminating the pits entirely, chances are I would have ended up sanding through the tube!

Sanded this as well. Those deep gouges will remain.

This is some deep pitting too. Not much can be done about it.

I found it curious that the breech face has those deep milling/sanding marks that look as though they are from the factory.

Still sanding. The barrel had some bad spots and again I didn’t want to make it look non-cylindrical. All told it was a month or so of sanding, usually for 5-15 minutes a day as it’s boring and I’m too darn busy these days.

Put back together for testing.

I still need to make a replacement screw for the trigger guard.
I blued the gun with Oxpho Blue from Brownells as it seemed to react best. I had washed the gun before that with Ospho, which is a phosphoric acid paint prep, in theory this converted the rust to iron phosphate and stemmed the worst of the rusting. We’ll see.

Depending on the angle of the lighting it looks grey to blue. Notice the vestiges of the old blue in the bottom left corner.

From a distance it doesn’t look bad though. I was able to use the new spring Derrick sent me even though it had more coils. I sparingly lubricated the gun and did a basic cleaning of the trigger unit.
Shooting 7.9 gr. CPL pellets over the chrony I got between 575 and 599 fps (599 was the first shot, a bit of dieseling) with it settling between 575 and 585. Not bad, I bet it will get a bit slower over time.
Now to work on repairing the stock, see you in another month or so!

Another Breech for a Crosman. Part 4

Working on all the small breech items to get it up and running.  I'll gloss over most of this since we've covered it on past 22XX builds.














Spun the bolt on the Taig lathe from a piece of 0.250" diam stainless steel.

Flipped it around and trimmed it to length.

Moved it over to the milling machine and found the edge.

It's supported on a single parallel.

Spotted and through drilled with a #29 bit.

Tapped #8-32.

Used another piece of stainless for the bolt handle. 

Threaded #8-32.




















Stepped down to fit in the breech slot.

Rounded over the end of the handle. 

Simple and clean.

Cut an extended cocking pin from O-1 tool steel.

The factory part is on top.  There's a bit of a length difference.

Cut down a 24" Crosamn .22 caliber barrel to about 12" and cut a new crown.

Found a piece of 0.750" aluminum tube in the metal stock box.  It's got a 0.500" hole in the center.  Used the larger lathe and a cut-off tool to cut a piece to size for a barrel sleeve.

Cut a 0.625" step on one end of the tube.

This will recess into the front of the breech.  Not shown:  Cut the tube to correct length to fit over the barrel and finished the tube with an oiled scotchbrite pad.

Figuring out how to secure the muzzle end of the barrel in the sleeve.  Thought I'd try a simple o-ring.  Cut a groove.

 Found a suitable o-ring.

 It press fits into place.

Aside from a transfer port, it's functionally done.  Aesthetically, I think it still needs help.


More soon.

Another Breech for a Crosman. Part 3

Finishing the breech today. 















With the bolt handle slot cut, there were just a couple more procedures to attend.

Centered on the rear breech screw hole and counterbored for the head of a #8-32 socket head cap screw.  The counterbore was done when I could drop in the #8-32 fastener and the head was just below flush.

Dovetails!  Before cutting dovetails, I took a couple passes on each side to leave a center rib just shy of 12mm wide.

Followed by a small 60 degree cutter.  The work was only cut from one side, then turned around in the vise with the Y-axis locked.  This puts the dovetails in the center of the workpiece.  There's quite a bit of variance on what is known as a 3/8"--or 11mm--or .22 dovetail.  I cut until a Leapers medium scope ring would tighten with minimal gap on the clamping plate. 

At this point, the breech is done.  Boring, but done.  Those plain slab sides needed something to add some visual interest.  Set the milling table stops and used a Woodruff key seat cutter to add horizontal slots along the sides and break up the smooth surfaces.

Before clean up.  Click any pic to make it larger.

Wet sanded (WD40) to 500 grit on a surface plate.  Slots left in the raw.

Wanted a tad more sprucing up.  Used a maroon, then gray Scotchbrite pad to polish the breech.  Various riffler files were used in the slots to remove the cutter marks.  Did minimal clean up of the dovetails as I was concerned about the accuracy of the angles.

Breech is done and I'm satisfied with how it looks.  Still need to make all the incidentals--the loading bolt, bolt handle, cocking pin, transfer port, barrel sleeve...

Thanks for reading.  We'll have more in a few days.