Nope, it's a new gun. Every detail was done deliberately. As far as I know the cosmetic color case hardening doesn't affect accuracy but don't know with 1911s in particular. I posted it just because I've never seen one like it before. I think Turnbull makes some great guns and especially the color case stuff he's known for, but the nitre bluing on the parts is on the tacky side. That bright blue color is produced just by heating the part and will wear down to the white relatively easily. Thankfully I'd bet you could order it all rust blued if you wanted. I spent some time target shooting with a couple of young cousins yesterday on my uncles' dairy farm with my pellet gun and then we roamed around shooting starlings and sparrows. Teaching some rifle skills and plinking vermin is always fun and the adjustable stock on the gun was perfect so it could fit a frame half the size of mine just as well.
Some pics from shooting my .22lr benchrest rifle at a testing range in the middle of Nebraska this past weekend... Shooting with a Pappas one-piece rest: The whole rig is steered by the two black knobs under the butt of the gun- with my ultra low-profile stock the rifle feels like it's on rails in that thing. There isn't a significant advantage in accuracy with a one piece vs. a two piece rest system, but speed between shots is the advantage- you can fly through a 25-bull target in five minutes with shocking precision. Fire, reload, push the rifle forward, and it's dead on target. This is not showing my shooting abilities, rather the goal is to wring out every bit of mechanical precision possible to test the rifle and not myself. Not enough tuner. Looking at a target 50 yards away through my 40x scope. Hitting the center of the target doesn't matter in this testing because each target is scanned and a computer program locates and centers the individual bullet holes. The velocity of each shot was also measured with high-tech chronographs so we can analyze the influence of the rifle tuner. Here's a close-up look at the inside of the barrel through a borescope, looking at the transition between the chamber and rifled bore here: Using a borescope, before and after shooting, is the only way to be 100% positive about how your barrel fouls and the effectiveness of your cleaning routine. Is all of the carbon out? Is there lead building up? Scratches in the barrel? Cleaning patches can tell you some of the story but the borescope shows you exactly what is going on. That particular barrel was made in an East Germany factory in 1988 on old machines and I am shocked by the how well the quality compares to our modern custom barrel makers. It's not a Shilen, but it is very good regardless.
This is a test target I shot and the resulting analysis that can be done with OnTarget TDS software. It's a pretty nice target, but it would be spectacular had shot #11 not dropped a bit. This rifle will be competitive with others at a national-level match, so we'll see if I can do my job shooting with the wind outdoors. When the target is scanned, the software recognizes each bullet hole and where I aimed for each shot so you can do lots of stuff with the data. I was also shooting over a chronograph so the velocity of every shot was recorded and compared to the results downrange, so we can see exactly how that big ass tuner hanging off the end of the barrel is influencing the rifle. The tuner helps minimize the effect of variances in velocity from shot to shot (which can be extreme and unpredictable even with high-end rimfire ammo) by controlling the harmonic waves in the barrel. They don't make crappy ammo or rifles shoot any better but will help reduce groups from a good-shooting rig by maybe .05-.1"... which is huge in this game of hitting little dots 50 yards downrange.
Some short videos here on bullet-making processes at Barnes. This is the transfer press that makes Varminator bullets, starting with stamping a ribbon of copper into jackets and ending with a bullet: Turning .50 caliber bullets from brass bar stock with a CNC lathe: The grooves on TSX bullets? This lathe:
I just shot in my first outdoor match for the year this past weekend (been way too busy this summer) and posted three consecutive 249/250 scores, which means I just missed one point per target. In other words, I was so so close to finally shooting a 250 in competition but a couple of slight mistakes cost me. My previous best was a 247-248-249. This was my first time outside with the target rifle since last fall so I had a little bit of rust to shake off and did well despite that, but damn it is still frustrating. For example... At least I know the issues reside within me and not the rifle or shooting rig itself. I made a simple, adjustable rear rest base recently and just gave it a try on match day (risky) and the thing works really well. I tried shooting some videos through the scope and made a little .gif of smoking an X on one bull:
I just uploaded these photos from my camera- the last shots I took at my recently former workbench. This was before I broke my hand last month and I haven't been able to resume work on this stock project yet.
three years ago i sent a maple and carbon fiber blank to a guy in finland and just received these photos. as you can see, he did a spectacular job turning it into a stock for his 6mmbr heavy varmint class benchrest rifle and placed 6th at the 2014 euro championship (2-gun) with it, so congrats to him.
that is my favorite stock you have ever made, the grain on the wood is badass with the vertical stripes and i like the contrast of light and dark wood, also nice touch with the butt plate. i would be afraid to hunt with it though, i would have that scratched to shit in less than a day. can you make me on like that for my ak?
thanks- i didn't carve and finish the stock, but i did source the wood and then chop and glue it up with carbon fiber to construct the blank. the wood is all curly hard maple and was originally very light colored- the darker colors and high contrast is the result of fuming the stock with ammonia, which reacts with acids in the wood. with several layers of carbon fiber added, it was (is) an insanely strong stock. i won't be able to take on more one-off stock jobs like an ak for awhile (a year?), but i can make a nearly-identical blank which could be sent to any other stockmakers at any time. found a pic of the wood before i glued it up... it's the one on top. middle is bastogne walnut (now residing in texas), bottom is claro walnut (now in new zealand).
question- when you're cutting blanks, do you take the figure of the wood into consideration when determining where the wrist is going to go? as i understand it, that is one of the more difficult aspects of wood selection and shaping. have you ever progressed in stock building only to find that the grain in the wrist is too compromised to move on? in unrelated news, i took delivery of a wide body gun safe. i should have done this sooner. the door storage on browning safes is badass.
absolutely- it is something of critical importance when you're evaluating stock wood. that big claro walnut blank on the bottom in that photo would be totally unusable for a stock blank unless i was laminating it with additional wood. thus, i laminated a 3/4" thick slice of pure straight-grain black walnut between the layers of pretty stuff with some carbon fiber- all good now, but i probably wouldn't buy that wood if i were to do it again. for the majority of guns, the reason we care about grain in the wrist is not for breaking due to recoil but accidents like tripping and falling on the gun, dropping the gun or something on it, etc. stuff like cracking and chipping around the tang is more indicative of poor bedding, i.e. poor metal-to-wood contact causing stress in spots. of course a .500 thunderfucker or the like necessitates a special stick of extra-strong wood, but if the grain in the wrist is weak it's just as bad for a puny .22 as anything else. these stocks here have perfect grain layout- grain lines flowing straight from the fore-end to the toe, and parallel with the wrist. also, quartersawn cut wood is preferred to flatsawn for strength and stability so that's what i pick to put on my own rifles. Spoiler it did not result in disaster, but determining how to cut up the blank was a big headache me as i turned it into a shotgun stock a few years ago Spoiler it's a gorgeous slab of quartersawn wood, truly exceptional, but ultimately was rather awful for a stock. there was barely enough grain moving in the same direction for me to locate the wrist and grip in the stock, and yet it is still on the weak side. i learned my lesson with that stock- i almost gave up on the blank and bought a different one but the client really wanted me to use that wood after seeing pics, knowing the risks. some of the newly made winchester 70s i've seen with crotch-figure wood have particularly piss-poor grain layout in the stock, like this one: http://www.rifleshootermag.com/rifles/r ... herweight/ custom rifle with the same grain pattern: http://www.hallowellco.com/custom_winch ... _feath.htm see the grain sweeping upwards and through the grip in both of those rifles? had they flipped the pattern upside down on the blank, it'd be perfect... but as-is, i personally wouldn't buy them. ps i wish i had a big ass safe.
thanks for the reply. i see horrible stock layout in some of the guns that we're getting from turkey. great wood. horrible execution. in old shotguns, the problem is exasperated with side plate guns, like smiths, where there is very little wood surrounding the plates. there are fixes, like glass bedding that can prevent cracking. it can also "fix" a hunter-one trigger by tightening tolerances. lefever just avoided lots of fancy wood from the get-go.
oh yes, some of the stock work i see on turkish and spanish imports just makes me cringe. poor layout and weak craftmanship like very obvious sanding marks and halfass checkering is a major turn-off to me. they skip on the basics and try to make up for it with flashy finishes and engraving, which would be a travesty on a cheap gun to me... much less a $3000 shotgun. from what i understand, many custom stockmakers will glass-bed the heads of sidelocks from the start. in general the fancier the wood, there's an (exponentially) greater headache to work with it. there's an lc smith 16 gauge out there that someone wants me to restock, and you bet i'm planning on using good ole straight grain black walnut just like they did back in the day for those reasons when i get to it.
now that lc smiths have been brought up, this just appeared in my facebook feed... lovely, just lovely. i get a major gun boner over classic american arms like that. they post some really great stuff on facebook.
marlin firearms .22 gun magazines my company produces all of the.22 mags for marlin firearms rifles. as you all know marlin is now owned by remington. for a variety of reasons we have an over abundance of excess inventory on all sizes and shapes of these magazines. we have been given authorization by remington to sell this inventory on the second/third tier market. i am actively looking for distribution channels for this product. if any of you have connections/contacts within these channels i would appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction. please message me if you have questions or can help out. thanks
you can buy an original field grade smith for less than what he has in that restoration. i sold that gun for $1200.
i get what you're saying. if it were me, i'd likely pick a higher-end shotgun to have restored like that myself too. a couple years ago i put a $1500+ stock on a >$100 shotgun. to some people, it just doesn't matter. there may be one hell of a backstory to that field grade too.
one of the last details i'm putting into this custom kidd classic .22 stock project are swivel studs. nice ordinary swivel stud there, right? not exactly... i got some brass stud inserts from brownell's with #10-32 internal threading, and matching swivel studs that have #10-32 shanks. then i searched around town for matching 10-32 slotted head screws. of course i couldn't find any in stock so i had to order a bag from mcmaster-carr just so i could use a couple. i very carefully drilled holes in the stock for the brass inserts and epoxied them into place. then, i measured the diameter of the swivel stud heads and ground the diameter of the screw heads to match the studs. i also ground down the tops of the screw heads to be even with the surface of the wood. now the swivel studs can be screwed securely into the brass studs, bedded in place for life. or... if the shooter doesn't want to have any sling studs on the stock for bench shooting, silhouette, etc., and doesn't want gaping holes where the brass studs were, they can easily swap them the custom-ground #10-32 screws and voila! the holes are filled and the screws don't stick out since they're sitting flush. shown here after sinking the screw head down into the wood, and before grinding down the top of it. with the swivel stud in place. the base of the stud sits a hair below the surface of the stock too. next step will be coating the screws and studs along with the rest of the stock hardware. swivel studs might be a small part in the grand scheme of the entire project, but to me all the little details and functionality matters, and its another step to makes this custom project stand out from the rest. this takes a shitton more work than just screwing in your average wood-threaded swivel studs, but it may very well become a standard practice from now on.
http://mashable.com/2014/08/27/9-year-old-kills-gun-instructor/ why in the world does the instructor take his hands off that weapon with her not knowing what full-auto was going to feel like? i own and enjoy firearms. but, if shot and killed somebody accidentally when i was 9, i'm not sure i'd want to shoot ever again.