From: purtilo@cs.umd.edu
Newsgroups: rec.guns
Subject: ruger rings, glass bed question, followup on WD-40 vs blue
Date: 7 Sep 92 02:37:57 GMT


Hi, catching up on a few loose ends here, so hodgepodge of topics follows....

1.  Anyone want to make me a great deal on some Ruger rings, for the ranch
rifle?  Some (fairly lazy) local poking around got me run around, so I wonder
if someone out in net.land has a pair in blue they'd like to part with cheap.

2.  Anyone experienced in glass bedding of a rifle out there, and also willing
to answer a few questions?  I am thinking of getting an old military junker to
practice on, if for no other reason than to get the education from trying to
glass bed.  My question concerns what sort of bed to rout out before putting
in the glass ... don't you want to route in some ridges or something so that
the whole bedding job doesn't pull out the first time you go to knock the 
receiver out of a tight-fit bed?  What's to stop you from having your spouse
come into the shop and find you red-faced with barrel/receiver stuck in glass
all in one hand, and a routed stock in the other sometime?  The books never
mention these little details.

3.  I'd promised an experiment with WD-40 on blue finish.  Failure crowns
enterprize.  The old bayonette I've been reconditioning (and which I used in
this test) was straight from the forge where my father first worked on this
over 40 years ago.  My intent of course is to complete it for some kind of
sentimental value.  Well, now, maybe you're thinking quicker than I did ...
why would a blank fresh from the forge have a blued surface?  This question
finally sunk in.... and, well, I am doing this for the education too.  The
blue/black surface is what you see when you have scale left over from the 
hammer, let sit for 40+ years.  Sigh. Need to start an experiment over some
time. Sorry.

The good news on that bayonette is I completed it, and it doesn't look half
bad.  I sandblasted the scale off, and found why it was not a production piece.
Lots of pits, very deep.  I followed the procedure outlined in Brownell's 
book `Gunsmithing Kinks' for polishing a rough piece, and *really* got the
education.  Got a pretty good surface, though chose not to go after the
deepest of the pits.  Went with a cold blue ... sigh, it looks like a cold
blue, but that's life.  Sharpened it up nicely, pinned in a hilt (scavanged
from another piece) with some drill rod (okay, so the peen leaves something
to be desired on this), and stocked it with the same plastic furniture you'd
have found from something in that era.  Given that it won't ever *exactly*
match the period pieces, I figure later I'll put on some walnut grips and 
use that for more practice in checkering.

Tips for those who want to go into polishing (file these away for the day
you might think about it):  
 - You *really* don't want to do this in the house.   *Really*
 - You *really* don't want to do this for long without a serious air filter
   (not just the little fiber kind with elastic band going around your head.)
 - Keep your grit in the fridge.   You can get away without it on coarse stuff,
   but it won't take long on the wheel to turn into soup and decorate your
   shop in some wierd pop art style.
 - Look me up for tips on how to buy a grinder for this.... if you want one
   specifically for polishing, then I can tell you what not to do.  A few
   simple changes in the configuration when you place your order will go a long
   way towards making your life easy down the line.

That's it for now ...

Jim