I got bored and started to think about what could be done to kill these cold winter weekends. I suddenly remembered that I have an old wooden stock that I made many years ago and right now it´s just collecting dust in the corner. Maybe I could use it for ammotesting. But I would need a barrel also.
Well i didn´t want to waste any money on buying some old gun that probably wouldn´t shoot anyway so I just had to tear apart my old Annie.
I´m not so keen on messing around with the bedding compounds so I decided to try to construct a barrelblock.
This is how my nightmare started
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Old Betsy had been good to me, maybe we could have fun together again??

To be continued........

Well I just lost the second part of this story because I seem to be as incompetent with this computer as I was with the milling machine.
All You get today is a picture of a double sized blockspace. Taking into consideration that I managed to get the stock burning, the machine didn´t stop on commmand and several other major mistakes maybe I shouldn´t give up YET even if I feel

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After a couple of days rest and a lot of thinking I was ready to continue with the project. Already knowing that I had taken away to much material from the stock and also knowing that my pieces of aluminium were too small I decided to give it a try and see what would be the next mistake I would be doing. I was not so anxious any more and I hade made up my mind that I would only be using rawmaterial and other stuff that could be found at home. I didn´t want to waste any more money on this project. As an example I was going to use scoperings that actually belonged to my PPC-gun and therefore I had to manufacture rails that would fit those Kelbly-rings. This was all of a sudden interesting challenges again. I decided to go for a V-block with extended tang for the scopemount.

Several hours later I had some new parts to start playing with
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Jens, this is an interesting project. I’m looking forward to see how it turns out and how the rifle shoots when the barrel is held in the block.

I have to admit though, that is the ugliest stock I have ever seen, maybe beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Brian

Yes I agree, she wouldn´t win any beautycontest but hopefully will have some other "hidden" qualities. Last night I had a dream where something bright yellow with new contours occured, could it have been old Betsy

The first rough bedding is now made and for some reason there were no problems. In the picture one can clearly see that the milled hole and the bottomplate of the block are of different sizes. The reason for this is that I didn´t spend any time thinking about where the trigger would end up when I started the project. After the "whole" was done I did understand that even if I am related to the monkeys my arms are to short to pull the trigger. Shortening the stock is not so easy because it´s full of led and iron. This stock has been on duty in the UL class before chambered for caliber .30 magnum stuff. So I just extended the milling backwards until I could reach the trigger.

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If anybody is wondering what those screws in the picture are I can release a secret, they are installed for aligning the whole blockassembly. I feel like Einstein

THIS IS EASY said the truckdriver when he flew the Boeing, no reverse in the gearbox.

COME ON GUYS I want critical feedback

or are You rimfireshooters just a bunch of old dull sleeping ......

You are excluded Brian K

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This is how old Betsy looks at this moment.
Some mistakes were done (as always) during the bedding process,as an example I can mention using to thick glue (epoxy) resulting in that the block didn´t sink down as deep as was planned. I used all the power available at that moment but the hardening had already started so the block stuck in a sligthly wrong position. Well I´m kind of getting used with these problems now so I didn´t pay to much attention on the matter. I had already decided that this gun would never shoot competitively any moore but due to my manners I was wrong again

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This are the very first shots with the blockgun.

During my lunchbreake today I couldn´t resist going home and have a look if the bedding had dryed properly. Everything seemed to bee OK considering the circumstances. It was lovely weather, -12 celsius, sunshine and very calm. It took me a couple of shots to center the scope. I was in a hurry so I did shoot on and old card that was partly torn away by earlier storms. In this picture the card is rotated 90 degrees to the right compared to how it did hang while shooting. In the upper right corner are the hittings when adjusting the scope and the rest are nice shots including several X. This distance was only 25 meter. There wasn´t enough ammo in the box to shoot all circles so I went back to work.
Later today after work I did shoot at 50 meters. I just wanted to see how she shot groups and there is 7 shots in the circle at upper left. Then the card fell to the ground and I was freezing so I gave up the shooting. All the shots are shot using my hand as a rear bag and the gun resting on those wooden pieces seen in the above picture. This really was much better than I could expect and I´m happy with the project.
The saddest thing is that this gun doesn´t fit into any ERABSF classes so I only have to use it for ammo testing and ratkilling.
But now when I know how to do it maybe I go for a second one

For gluing the block, JB Weld might have been a better epoxy to use. Depending on temperature it can take 1 – 2 hours to set so gives you plenty of time to move things around. After 24hrs it’s fully cured. You can use electrical tape or surgical cord to hold the block/action in place.

Never the less, the accuracy looks very good, assuming that target was shot at 50m.

Will be interested to see more test’s when the rifle is complete.

Brian

I´m also working on a tuner device but I have only shot it with the other stock and have not yet found the skill how to adjust it. Hittings go up or down depending on adjustment but the group size stays the same, about 12 - 15 mm /10shots at 50 meters. At the moment I´m using Lapuas Center X.

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