Thread: That Oh shit moment

Had a beauty yesterday....................I have had a rifle build on the go for the past 18 months, ordered a McGowen barrel in a group buy with a bunch of other blokes over here, pretty good price at 400.00 or so landed and delivered to my door. That took over 10 months, mainly due to one of the others changing their order after they had started making the barrels, so the whole lot got put back to the end of the line, or that's what we were told. It turned up finally and was forwarded to the smith doing the job.
Finally got hold of a second hand Zastava M85 in 7.62x39 with a stuffed barrel after shooting shit loads of cheap chinese ex-military ammo and not cleaning properly, for rebarrelling to 22PPC Had it sent straight to the gunsmith doing the job, he checked it over and the action was good, barrel buggered and plastic black stock useless.
The waiting game continued for another 8 months before he got around to doing the job, but it was done and as he does excellent work, the wait was almost worth it. I had a call from him on Thursday last week, its ready, luckily I was going down that way for a weekend shoot/get together with some mate at the range down there, so I got to pick the barrelled action up. First little surprise was the front action screw, a lovely shiny brass piece of shit put there in place of the one lost by the previous owner, wouldn't matter too much as its not hard to make one, just would have been nice to know about it.

Now for that horrible moment when the world tilts, you feel sick in the guts and spend a few moments in quiet contemplation, mentally bashing yourself over the head with a blunt object.

After I got home on sunday night, put my gear away, then bright and early Monday morning, down to the shed to start putting the action and barrel together with the stock, I took the bolt out of the action and put it one the bench top, reached over the back of the bench to grab a cloth to wipe down the barrel and action, when my shirt sleeve got hooked onto the bolt handle and dragged it off the bench top onto the concrete floor, bang, ting, clunk, the bolt knob broke off and flew across the floor and hit the wall.








Today I rang a mate and asked some advice about putting it back together again, we came up with a plan so it was off to the hardware to grab a 1/4x2 1/2 inch high tensile bolt, a quick trip and bit of measuring and some judicious cuts with a 4 inch grinder saw us putting the pieces in place. A couple of quick hits with the welder and we ended up with this.



Back at home, I ran a 1/4 x 20tpi die over the thread to clean it up, drilled out a spare aluminium bolt knob that I had in the desk, tapped the correct thread into it and measured and cut the threaded end of the shaft to the correct size, and screwed the new knob on.



Its now sitting on the bench in my gun room waiting for the bedding compound to set over night.



Hopefully in the morning I will crack it out of the bedding and all will be well, but with my luck on this jinx rifle build, I will have glued it to the stock.

Wish me luck.

I would have said a lot more that "oh shit"

I sincerely wish you luck.

Bet you are wearing short sleeves now

I can assure you there were a few choice words thrown around in the shed when it happened, for a few moments the air was blue. I am going to drill a hole in the broken off knob and put it on my keyring for the gunroom as a permanent reminder.
Short or rolled up sleaves are now compulsory clothing, or at least do the bloody button up.
Mauser308, I can wear the flash bolt knob, it similar to my other ones, but I have to draw the line at the black stock and other accessories you mention, a Ziess HD5 in 3-15x50 will be sitting on top when it turns up.

I hauled the cylinder head from a 350 cummings engine off my workbench one day when it caught a manifold stud in my overalls sleeve

Cost me smoko for the lads

Nice repair job Kamel.......really hoping the rest of the build goes smoothly....you deserve it fellar......

Originally Posted by Scouser

Nice repair job Kamel.......really hoping the rest of the build goes smoothly....you deserve it fellar......

Thanks mate, got the bedding and finished the stock, necked down some cases and loaded them up for some testing hopefully after the scope arrives I will get some decent weather to test them out.

What epoxy for the bedding?

I use Liquid Steel made by Locktite, I think. 24 hour curing time.

Ah, ok. I would prefer not to. It will actually rust when it gets wet as it contains metal particles - and water does run around the action of a rifle and settle in the hard to reach places like that.

Hmm. Devcon etc will have something.

Originally Posted by scottrods

Ah, ok. I would prefer not to. It will actually rust when it gets wet as it contains metal particles - and water does run around the action of a rifle and settle in the hard to reach places like that.

Hmm. Devcon etc will have something.

Pretty sure you can get one that is aluminum powder or ti powder in devcon

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Rust isn't an issue out here, in fact I would love to get enough rain to have to worry about it. Only an 11 inch per year average. I can understand it over your way. As this rifle is a varmint gun I wont be using it in situations where I will be caught in the rain.

Love those little Zastavas, I`ve worked with a couple guys who used them for culling goats with...they just kept going and going and going.....even with massive ours in the barrels they still shot one inch groups!

The only thing I hated was the fiddly little bolt handle, and it looks like you've just solved that issue inadvertently.

Keep up the good work

Kj

Nice repair job there. I had no sooner finished reading your thread and thinking how much that would gut me when went out to finish cleaning the mauser.

I somehow managed to bump the bolt off the bench with part of the cleaning kit and watched in horror as it fell.

Semi fortunately, out of some stupid instinct I tried to catch it/ cushion the fall with my foot. The good news is the bolt didn't get damaged but I think the big ass 6.5 swede bolt just about broke my foot