TC stock makeover

[Eric Krewson]

SO, I am thinking how could I miss with something I had done before and hit a blind socket on an L&R RPL lock on the first try.

I was measuring the TC lock bolt to pick a closer tolerance clearance bit and noticed something odd, the dang bolt was bent, that is why it didn't hit the threaded hole, dang, I have already plugged the hole with another dowel to re-drill.

[Eric Krewson]

OK, round two on lock bolt drilling; first I straightened the bent lock bolt, picked a .1645 clearance bit instead of the suggested .1770 which was a sloppy fit, increased up my drill press speed to 2100rpm from the 550 it was set on which was way too slow for hardwoods, next I sharpened my drill bit on my drill doctor, marked the holes with a punch and proceeded.

One shot and I had a perfect hit into the threaded hole in the lock plate.

Another thing I did before I started marking the new hole location was re-inlet the lock plate, the plate fit in so tightly that I had to knock it out with a hammer from the back side. I blackened the edges with an oil lamp and sanded off the black spots with a a piece of 220 wrapped around a 5/16" dowel. I went slowly and probably spent an hour sanding. When I felt like I had it just right the lock plate would fall out when I tilted the stock upside down plus there were no visible gaps around the plate.

[Eric Krewson]

Next I have to address this damaged and splintered wood. I have a gunsmith friend who lives nearby who probably has some fresh accu-glass. I will give him a call to see if he can give me a teaspoon or so to glass bed the bad wood area.

[Eric Krewson]

When I drilled the hole for the hickory dowel some of the cracked wood broke out of the lock inlet, this was totally unnecessary wood but I didn't like the look so I glued in new wood and shaped like it came from the factory to improve the appearance.





The wood under the hooked breech was in bad shape and splintered out in hunks when I drilled for the dowel. I decided to fix the damage myself and not go see my gunsmith friend.



I dug out the cracked and splintered wood and cut a neat square mortise, I first filled the cracked area with superglue and let it soak in, next I sprinkled sawdust on the puddle of super glue and packed into the cutout tightly. I left enough room above the superglue and sawdust to inlet a nice piece of walnut to cover the mess the superglue and sawdust made. I put this piece of walnut in while the superglue and sawdust were still wet so it would bond with the sawdust and superglue.

I put in an oversized piece of wood and trimmed it down to match the existing barrel inlet.

Looks pretty good, I tried to dye the patch with leather dye to match the surrounding wood but my dye was too light.



I would imagine many of you are wondering why I am going to so much trouble on this project,  the answer is just to see if I can take a mess of a stock and make it strong and dependable, plus I am out of other gun projects until my bear pistol barrel gets here.

[Eric Krewson]

My next project is to replace the tang screws with tang bolts and threaded inserts. I went with 10-32, these will fit in the trigger plate inlet but just barely, I should have gone with 8-32. I can get some 8-32 threaded inserts in a couple of days and may change my plans.

[Eric Krewson]

Here is where I am headed on the stock makeover. The top stock is a TC kit I put together and shaped to be trimmer and more more pleasing to the eye, the bottom one is the factory stock I am working on (when the mood strikes me). I will use the kit gun stock as reference for what I want to make out of the old stock.

[Eric Krewson]

I started this yesterday, going slow. I popped a shallow 11/64 hole through the tang and stock wood using a centering bit. Using the drilling fixture on my drill press I drilled from the trigger plate inlet to the tang with the 23/64 bit supplied with the bushing kit.

I glued a piece of hickory ramrod in new hole from the tang down leaving enough room for the bushing to be installed from the trigger side

The 11/64 hole is a very tight fit for a 10-32 screw, today I am going to use my 11/64 centering bit to drill through the tang countersink and through the hickory plug.

To line things up all the way to the trigger inlet I am going to insert another piece of ramrod without glue between my plug and the trigger guard inlet (tight fit but I can get it out). I will rest my drilling spike centered on this piece of ramrod so I can aim the hole at the center of the drilled hole in the trigger inlet. I will pull the extra piece of ramrod out after I drill the hole

To get the bushing started and properly aligned I am going to insert a 11-32 tang bolt through the tang and tight clearance plug then screw it all the way into the bushing while the bushing is all the way out of the stock. I plan to pull the bushing up to the hole on the trigger inlet with excess tang bolt length centering it and start it in with a screwdriver. It should be perfectly aligned because there is no slop at all in the tang bolt hole through the plug.

[Eric Krewson]

My method worked perfectly except my installer tool twisted off and left the threaded part in the bushing. I was able to get some needle nose pliers on the part and unscrew it. I don't know if the bushing bottomed out on the dowel I plugged the tang hole with or was just over powered by the hard walnut. Anyway, couldn't go any deeper with the bushing but all the trigger parts clear it. My alignment was pretty good, no problem screwing the tang screw in and out with a screw driver but I did run a tap through the bushing so I could run the tang screw in with just finger pressure.

I didn't take pictures of everything, there was a lot more to the process.

Here I am aligning the bushing on the tang bolt to start it into the wood.



This is as far as I could go after the installer broke, should be deep enough. the alignment to the tang bolt is very good. I am going to have to rethread and shorten my replacement tang screws to have the right length for the TC tang.




I am going to make a wide blade screwdriver to install my other bushing, I don't have any that wide. I may just saw and grind down the body of the failed installer to make a wide screwdriver with a 1/4" drive. I decided a drill was too fast to to use in the initial installer so I used a 1/4' ratchet.

I have another TC to install bushings in, it will go much easier now that I worked the bugs out.

[Eric Krewson]

I got stared on tomorrows bushing installation, I drilled out the old screw hole and installed a hickory dowel to reinforce the tang area.

I drilled in from the trigger side;



The dowel glued in and glue curing, I use TB3.



I use what we call a drilling spike to drill a hole in one side of the stock and have it hit where I want on the other side. For drilling for the dowel I put the tang bolt hole countersink on the field point and drilled in from the trigger plate side. I don't go all the way through and finish up the hole with a cordless drill and the same brad point bit.

[Eric Krewson]

I got the bushings installed, it was a pain, screw alignment from the tang to the bushing was the big issue.



I rethreaded some long tang screws and finished the job, it came out OK but could have been better.



The main reason I put the bushings in was to have a more solid attachment for one of my homemade peep sights, I found out that wood screw attachment just didn't cut it, the screws would strip out in this old oil soaked wood.

[Eric Krewson]

This stock was pretty dinged up from use, I have found just about every ding will steam out with just a little effort and and an old steam iron. I believe I paid all of $2 for this old iron at a thrift shop, and have used it quite a bit both to steam out dings in stocks that I have refinished as well and tighten the wood around an inletted part that I got too sloppy inletting. Quite often when we inlet a part we compress the wood in the inlet some, a damp wash cloth and my old iron will decompress this wood for a tighter fit.

I was able to remove every dent on this stock but one with my steam iron and a wet washcloth.



I was able to raise this dent a good bit but on close examination I found that there was actually missing wood in the dent. I know how to fill this dent with wood where it will barely show.



I have a lot of random walnut pieces from making tillering gizmos, I will do a few tests first to see if I can get a close match, if not I will take a small piece out of the barrel channel to make the patch. This is a tiny ding, only about 3/16" long but even if the rest of the stock is flawless when I get done this place will stand out like a sore thumb if I don't fix it.

   

[Eric Krewson]

I patched the torn place in the stock, didn't come out as invisible as I would have hoped, but I can live with it.

I used a small gouge to remove the damaged wood from the stock and then used the same gouge to cut a patch out of a scrap of walnut and checked the fit before I superglued the patch in place.





My glue lines show too much but this is better than having a hole in the stock. I put a little Tru-oil on the wood to darken it.



 

[Pappy]

Looking very good Eric, love watching your work, I don't do much gun work but some of the tips i get from here also works well on self bow and other projects that I do work on. Thanks.
 Pappy

[Eric Krewson]

Worked a little more on my TC stock overhaul. I started inletting the wedge pin escutcheons down to the level of the forestock. I will do a final sanding later when I round off the slab sided forestock to match the wood to the brass.

[Eric Krewson]

Time to get rid of that oversized butt ugly cheekpiece.

Taking off the front end humps.



Extending the wrist into the buttstock



Removing the excess blocky wood at the rear of the cheekpiece, I used a big rat tail file mostly



Almost shaped to suit me, just a little more refining.