Well fellas, this day actually started out decent, but it went south in a hurry. I had a customer call wanting his revolver back (changed his mind on a rebarrel job), and he was at another customer's gun range. I grabbed his gun and was in the truck when I remembered I needed to put the grips back on. For some stupid reason, I got out of the truck with the gun in my hand, realized I had another gun to take back to the range, and set the gun on the bumper of my truck when I walked over to the other shop. I grabbed the other gun, walked past the one on the bumper, put that one into the back seat of my truck, and started backing up, then realized I left the door open on the other shop, so I stopped, jumped out, locked the door, and continued backing up, right over the Taurus 73 revolver that had fallen off of my bumper when I stopped. Of course it tweaked the frame, so I got to buy a wrecked revolver, thankfully the customer was fine with it. In my defense, I was on the phone the whole time.
Fast forward to this evening when I started milling a 1911 slide for Novak sights. I set the slide up on the mill, touched off on the rear of the slide to get my zero and made my initial cut to lower the existing shelf for the low-mount sight. Then I switched to a 5/16" end mill and went back to my zero, then went to my start point for the rear dovetail. I cut it to the correct depth, then re-zeroed (habit) and milled up to the front side of the dovetail slot. It was at this point that I realized that something wasn't right. Apparently, when I moved the table to cut the slot for the rear dovetail, the dial was dragging or came loose somehow and the table actually moved more than the dial indicated, making my first cut almost 3/32" too far to the rear of the slide, meaning that the rear of the sight would hang off of the back of the slide. The only option is to either replace the slide or TIG it up and start over, which will entail a lot of cleanup, recontouring, and reblueing or coating the slide.
Thank God I don't have these days often, but damn, this sucks! On the plus side, I finished up a Colt 1877 DA 38 including building a new cylinder stop/sear spring, installed a new buffer in a Marlin 60, installed fiber optic sights on a Ruger GP 100, and removed the A2 front sight and installed a railed gas block on a DPMS AR-15, and put a Remington 512 back together (I got it as a barreled action, stock, and a ziplock bag full of parts).
Fast forward to this evening when I started milling a 1911 slide for Novak sights. I set the slide up on the mill, touched off on the rear of the slide to get my zero and made my initial cut to lower the existing shelf for the low-mount sight. Then I switched to a 5/16" end mill and went back to my zero, then went to my start point for the rear dovetail. I cut it to the correct depth, then re-zeroed (habit) and milled up to the front side of the dovetail slot. It was at this point that I realized that something wasn't right. Apparently, when I moved the table to cut the slot for the rear dovetail, the dial was dragging or came loose somehow and the table actually moved more than the dial indicated, making my first cut almost 3/32" too far to the rear of the slide, meaning that the rear of the sight would hang off of the back of the slide. The only option is to either replace the slide or TIG it up and start over, which will entail a lot of cleanup, recontouring, and reblueing or coating the slide.
Thank God I don't have these days often, but damn, this sucks! On the plus side, I finished up a Colt 1877 DA 38 including building a new cylinder stop/sear spring, installed a new buffer in a Marlin 60, installed fiber optic sights on a Ruger GP 100, and removed the A2 front sight and installed a railed gas block on a DPMS AR-15, and put a Remington 512 back together (I got it as a barreled action, stock, and a ziplock bag full of parts).
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