Building the Stevens Favorite

[Tom Griffin]

Thanks Matt, it's been a fun and interesting project.

Tom

 

[Tom Griffin]

It's a nice day outside but I still managed to sneak into the shop for a bit and wind the mainspring. The method I use is to set the lathe up for the number of coils per inch, put a slotted wooden insert in the tool block to pinch the wire and provide tension, and wrap it around a mandrel under power. Once it was wound, it was clipped to length and the ends ground square on the belt sander. The spring force on the hammers feels a tad light, but it is only a .22. If it misfires I'll just re-wind the spring with .055" or .063" wire instead of the .047" I grabbed at the hobby shop.



This is the wooden tensioning block sawed out of a leftover piece of walnut from the stock. The amount of tension required depends on the diameter of the wire and sometimes takes some trial and error to get right.



Safety glasses are a must when working with any kind of wire, especially when winding springs. The mandrel was a long aircraft drill about .015 under the desired finished diameter. Run the lathe at slow speed and stay well clear of the wire. The end of the mandrel is supported with a drill chuck snugged up and well oiled. The start of the spring has a 90º leg bent on it and pinched in the lathe chuck along with the mandrel.



The finished spring mounted on the mainspring plunger.



The hammer doesn't fall all the way yet because I still need to cut the notches and the extra stock is hitting something inside the receiver.

 

[Que]

this is one heck of a thread. looks like its coming right along. its good to see you able to sneak away for some shop time.

 

[Tom Griffin]

Thanks! I have been making some fairly good progress in spite of all the interruptions. Between the pesky little job and family commitments it's tough to get more than an hour or two at a time to make chips. Sometimes I just have to disappear and get as much done as possible before someone realizes I'm missing. But seriously, it is a balancing act because a project like this requires a lot of time as does the family.

Tom

 

[NevadaBlue]

The Stevens single shot rifles are some of my favorites. Thanks for showing us your work. I'm looking forward to seeing it make smoke.

 

[Tom Griffin]

The Stevens single shot rifles are some of my favorites. Thanks for showing us your work. I'm looking forward to seeing it make smoke.

Other than the Winchester 1885 single shot (my next firearms project), the Steven's is one my favorite single shots as well. It does feed on smokeless powder though so hopefully it won't smoke too much.

Tom

 

[Tom Griffin]

Cutting the notches in the hammer turned out to be a royal pain. Not because it was difficult work, but because I neglected to get the machining order straight before starting the part. With all of the different angles, it would have been much easier to machine the notches before milling the outline of the hammer. Then there would have been lots of straight and right angle surfaces to work off. The two angles of the full cock notch were cut and the half cock notch roughed out with and end mill, then the half cock notch was finished with a form ground fly cutter.



This was the setup used to cut all of the angles on the notches. Some of them were set with a sine bar and some with a protractor. This pic shows the form cutter ground to cut the deep half cock notch. The bluing (Magic Marker) serves as a witness to show when the cutter touches.



The finished hammer. Each of the eight different angles around the notches was a separate setup. :nuts:



This shows how the breech block, lever, connecting link and hammer all interact. In this pic, the lever is being cocked and the link is pushing the hammer to half cock. Once there, the link will pass the hammer allowing the lever to actuate the extractor, which is farther down on the task list. I think it only makes sense to make the trigger next.

 

[Tom Griffin]

So I had to use the shop for actual work today and between that and the Wings game, not much got done on the Steven's. I did manage to make the sub-plate for the trigger and get a piece of O1 mounted on it, but nothing photo worthy. As soon as I get the use of the mill back I'll get the rotary table back on and start cutting the trigger, probably tomorrow night. My significant other is up north through next week so I'll have a lot of Steven's time when I'm not holding down the fort.

Tom

 

[Tom Griffin]

Got most of the trigger finished tonight. It took longer than expected because I went back and made some changes on the model to make it easier to machine. The sear was the hardest part just because it was so darn small and hard to see. This part was a good application for carbide tooling just because the end mills required were so small and long and the material was tool steel. I don't use it much, but it was handy here.

Next is the backside of the trigger and possibly rounding off the front so it feels better on the finger (another thing I changed on the model).



Two cuts on the front of the trigger.



The back side of the sear (on the right) and the flat that the trigger return spring pushes on.



The sear tapers 10º to .030" which matches the half notch of the hammer.

 

[bvd1940]

Looking good, waiting to see the finished product.