Building the Stevens Favorite

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Tom Griffin

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Building The Steven's Favorite I did some work on a rifle for my uncle a while back, a Stevens Favorite 1915 single shot .22 caliber, making a new firing pin for it and fitting a new extractor. After shooting it a few times to make sure the new parts were behaving, I took a liking to the little rifle. It is a great looking, good pointing little rifle and is a joy to shoot. I decided it would make a fun project to build one from scratch so I proceeded to completely disassemble the rifle and sketch up all of the parts, including the stock. After that I decided to make a 3D CAD model of it to check my work and make sure all of the parts fit and functioned properly. I'm just about finished with the model with just a few parts left to model and some timing issues to work out in the action.

I am not making an exact copy of the original gun, so some of the parts won't interchange with an original. Some of the parts will be redesigned for ease of machining, especially in the case of the receiver which was originally cast. Most of the parts on the original gun were quite crude and appear to be hand fitted so making them interchangeable would be quite a challenge.

My plans are to make the receiver out of case hardened low carbon steel for ease of machining, the breech block and other internal parts out of O1, and the barrel out of 4140 if I decide to make it. It's kind of hard to justify the work with all of the inexpensive barrel blanks that are available.

According to the following statement from the ATF website (kindly pointed out to me by another member) it is legal for me to build a non NFA firearm, which this most definitely is with its 30" barrel and single shot capability, as long as it is not built with the intent to sell and the maker is not prohibited from possessing firearms, which I am not. There are also zero imported parts used in this rifle as I intend to build them all myself.

Q: Does the GCA prohibit anyone from making a handgun, shotgun or rifle? With certain exceptions a firearm may be made by a non-licensee provided it is not for sale and the maker is not prohibited from possessing firearms. However, a person is prohibited from assembling a non-sporting semi-automatic rifle or non-sporting shotgun from imported parts. In addition, the making of an NFA firearm requires a tax payment and approval by ATF. An application to make a machine gun will not be approved unless documentation is submitted showing that the firearm is being made for a Federal or State agency.
[18 U.S.C. 922(o) and ®, 26 U.S.C. 5822, 27 CFR 478.39, 479.62 and 479.105]

I have since received a response form the BATF regarding the legality of building my own firearm and they referenced the very same statement, so it's official: I'm good to go.



There is a JPEG of the model below and a link to an eDrawing file here. An eDrawing viewer is required to view the file in 3D and can be downloaded here.
 
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Re: Stevens Favorite Build

Have you considered 8620 and Nitriding? I'm toying with building a vacuum furnace with gas nitride capability. I do a few small parts, and hate the minimums I pay at the heat treaters.
 
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Re: Stevens Favorite Build

Not for a 22. Eventually I hope to graduate to a center fire single shot and I'll need something more exotic than case hardened steel and O1 for that. Another reason for using case hardening is that you can do a color case which looks great on these old guns.

Tom
 
Re: Stevens Favorite Build

I love the old "boy's rifles" as they were called. I hope you will share the build as it progresses.
 
Re: Stevens Favorite Build

I saw one at a garage sale two summers ago, liked it a lot, but couldn't quite justify it and cash was pretty tight that summer. It's a new year now and summer is coming up quick, perhaps I'll stumble on another similar treasure. :D
 
Re: Stevens Favorite Build

I see them all the time at the local gun show for around $200-$300. How much was the one at the garage sale?

Tom
 
RE: Building The Steven's Favorite I think I have most of the issues worked out with the action so I got busy and cranked out some drawings, started on the receiver and actually made some chips today. I'll post pictures as I go and make this thread sort of a build blog. And here..we.....go...

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I started with a 1 x 4 piece of mild steel bar stock, milled it to the proper thickness with a fly cutter and squared up the sides.

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The next task was to do a rough layout to locate all of the arc centers and holes.

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I plan on cutting all of the smaller radii with end mills and the boring head. It will need to go on the rotary table later to cut rounded surfaces on the contours.

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Boring the hole for the barrel using the boring head.

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The two 45 degree flats were cut with a 90 degree end mill.

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The toughest part so far was milling this deep slot with a long 5/16 end mill.

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"Aviation is going to make such progress as cannot be imagined."


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RE: Building The Steven's Favorite I needed a cutter to mill the 1.5" radius on the contours of the receiver. Since nothing like that is available commercially that I know of, I had to make it myself. I first modeled it up in SolidWorks to work out all of the clearances so I would have a better shot at getting them right the first time. I used a piece of 1" diameter O1 and turned one end down to .875 to match the largest collet on my mill. All of the milling was done in a dividing head, with a tailstock for support, using end mills and a boring head. The faces of the four flutes were milled first, then the blank was rotated 5 degrees for the primary clearance and the 1.5" radius was cut using the boring head. Next the blank was rotated 32 degrees and the secondary clearance was cut in the same fashion.

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When the cutter was finished I tried it out on a piece of scrap aluminum and it seems to work pretty well. It hammers just a bit due to the lack of back rake but it should be fine for this one time use.

"Aviation is going to make such progress as cannot be imagined."

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Hey, that is pretty nice work. Looks like you enjoy a challenge just as much as I do. I think I still have part of one of those old rifles laying around here somewhere. breach and barrel and maybe stock. I will have to look tomorrow.
keep up the good work, Nick
 
Thanks Turbo, the cutter was an interesting challenge. I haven't tried it yet but I did slice it up in CAD and check the clearances at various points so it should be good...:bitingnails:

Thanks Nick, I do enjoy a challenge. Good job on that bevel gear you made as well. It's fun to be able to make something like that would otherwise be unavailable.

Tom
 
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