Building the Stevens Favorite

Tonight's task was to cut the relief in the stock for the mainspring assembly and get it mounted. That involved making something I've never made before, wood screws. Their purpose is to attach the stock to the receiver through the upper and lower tangs. They are 3/16" diameter (#10) and about an inch long, with oval heads and the typical tapered sharp V thread used on wood screws.

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The shank of the screw was turned to .188 and the taper attachment used to turn a 10º included angle taper.


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The threading tool is 30º instead of the normal 60º and has a .058 flat on the point. I broke two of them off before getting wise and using a center in a super small center hole. I withdrew the tool at the end of the thread for a cleaner look, easy to do on the Hardinge with its quick acting lever on the compound. The same can be done on any lathe by stopping the spindle at the end of the thread and rotating it by hand as the tool is backed out with the compound crank.

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Cutting a 90º angle under the head of the screw to match the countersunk holes in the receiver.

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Parting off the partially finished screw.

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The diameter of the head finish turned and parted to length, leaving stock for the oval shape on the head.

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Machining the oval head on the screws with a form tool.

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Cutting the screw slots using a collet block in the mill with a .045" slitting saw.

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The finished wood screws.

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Cutting the relief pocket for the mainspring assembly on the mill.

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The firing pins is simply a 3/16" diameter piece of drill rod, turned down on one end, flatted for a retaining pin and tapered to the traditional wedge shape used on rimfire cartridges.

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After turning down one end, it was mounted in a collet block on the mill, centered with an edge finder and the flat to index and retain the pin was cut with a 1/8" 4-flute end mill.

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Then the block was turned on end and the wedge shape cut with a 45º end mill. I had to break out the old eye loupe to measure the .020" flat with a rule. The opposite end gets a radius to match the rear contour of the breech block. Rather than go to all the trouble of setting it up on the rotary table, I'm going to take the easy way out and just mount it in the breech block using the block as a pattern to cut the radius with the belt sander.

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Here's the finished firing pin installed in the breech block. Another member pointed out that the newer model Favorites have a modified firing pin to prevent possibility of gases from escaping around it (inches form your eye), so I'll probably do a re-design on this one. I'm thinking to keep it looking original, I'll add an internal O-Ring to the pin to serve as a gas stop.


No pictures this time because the part has already been made once. Last night I re-made the link that connects the lever to the breech block. The link does double duty by also moving the hammer to the half cock position and I wasn't happy with the way it worked. A redesign moved the part of the link that pushes on the hammer farther away form the hammer pivot point. Now it does what it's supposed to to do without binding. That's the thing about prototype parts; sometimes they need to be tweaked and remade but it's all part of the process. Once the action is working to my liking I'll probably harden it to prevent damage to the sear and notches from playing with it too much. smile.gif

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The following installment brings the Steven's build thread up to date. The next task will be to make and fit the extractor and that will complete the internal components.

Tom



A little update on the Steven's: I haven't been making many chips lately but the project has been far from idle. After two re-designs, the link/cam is finally moving the hammer to half cock properly, without binding. That turned out to be a bigger problem than expected because many of the parts in the linkage do double duty and changing one of them can have a significant effect on how the others behave.

I've also been designing a tang sight. It won't be an authentic Steven's design because I don't have access to one for reverse engineering. Instead it will be a blend of different features on various tang sights that I've found across the internet. Elevation adjustment will be made by loosening the threaded eye cup and sliding it to the proper graduation on a vernier scale on the side of the frame. There will also be a windage adjustment via a small dovetail slide in the block that the eye cup mounts to. So far I have the base designed along with the frame, the sliding nut and a first crack at the eye cup/windage adjustment. There are still a few details to work out before the design is complete.

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There has also been some progress in figuring out how to drill and rifle the barrel. I've found an inexpensive hydraulic pump to pump the oil through the gun drill, so that problem is solved, but am still waiting for a drill the correct size to show up on eBay. Once it does, and I make a cat head for my lathe, it'll be time to drill the barrel, using the spindle on my mill to drive the oil pump. I've come to the conclusion that it's just not practical to rifle the barrel on my lathe. There is a nice video on Youtube of a guy who built a gear train on his lathe to twist the rifling tool as it passes through the barrel. It looks like it would work very well but I would need to modify my lathe to mount a gear on the saddle hand wheel and I'm not willing to do that. I'll probably end up building some sort of dedicated fixture to do the rifling, so I'll definitely need to make more than one barrel to justify the work.

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Hi Tom
Thanks for posting this wonderful project. Its so good that I hesitate to offer any advice on a subject that I know so little about.

However regarding the fitting of a O ring to the fireing pin. I think that if you cut 2 grooves and only put a ring in the rearmost one the first groove will drop the pulse pressure so the ring wiil have less to stop.

Now you can have a laugh and tell me what I have got wrong.

Brian.
 
Hi Tom
Thanks for posting this wonderful project. Its so good that I hesitate to offer any advice on a subject that I know so little about.

However regarding the fitting of a O ring to the fireing pin. I think that if you cut 2 grooves and only put a ring in the rearmost one the first groove will drop the pulse pressure so the ring wiil have less to stop.

Now you can have a laugh and tell me what I have got wrong.

Brian.

Hey Brian,

I haven't calculated the pressures around the pin yet but I doubt they will be very high with a .22 caliber rimfire cartidge, but I will keep your suggestion in mind when I get to that point. Just so you know, my build thread has been re-created at MetalworkingFun.com and if future updates don't occur here, they will take place there.

What kind of clocks are you building these days?

Thanks, it's good to hear from you.

Tom
 
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Back to business. I got a long skinny package in the mail today containing a .203 diameter x 36" long gun drill, so it's time to get serious about this barrel drilling business. Unfortunately, my lathe only has 20" of travel, so it's going to be a two step process. I have an adapter to mount the drill on my tool post left over from an earlier project, but it's probably going to need to be lengthened an inch or two for this drill. There are a few other tasks to accomplish before the drilling starts, such as a guide bushing/chip box to start the drill on center and catch the chips and oil that shoot out of the hole. There also needs to be at least one intermediate support for this flimsy drill and a high pressure pump (800 psi or so) to pump cutting oil through the drill. I found a hydraulic pump for $50 that should work and figure I'd drive it with my mill. Hopefully 2 HP is enough power. Oh yeah, and I also need to make a couple of cat heads for the spindle to hold the barrel.

For a long term solution to this sort of thing I've roughed out a design for a vertical dedicated machine to drill, ream and rifle barrels, but that's another project in itself. Right now I need to finish the Stevens.

Tom

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It's not the most exciting project, but I got started on the cat heads tonight. Got 'em rough turned and parted off. The steel I grabbed turned out to be medium carbon so it took a bit longer than expected to whittle them out. Next they get counter-bored to fit the nose and the outboard end of the spindle. The one for the nose also gets a taper and key to mate to the Hardinge spindle nose. Each head then gets four 5/16" set screws to hold the barrel and the outboard one gets three more to mount it to the spindle.

The rest will have to wait because small game season just opened and I'm heading up north with my wife and the dogs to hunt grouse. :smiley-applaud:

Tom

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I had an hour to kill in the shop tonight so I bored the taper in the spindle cat head. The compound was set to the correct taper by indicating the spindle nose for a perfect match to the 8º included angle. It still needs a locking pin and a hole for the spanner to remove it from the spindle.

Tom

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