27 April 2007, 21:21
RhysTalk about cutting it close
Leave in 5 days and I think everything is about ready to go. The rifle I'm taking is one I had originally built for myself about 4 years ago had just put it in a light fiberglass stock and sprayed the metal in moly lube to get rid of the shine so I could use it that year for hunting here locally. As things went my customers rifles took priority to get done. I just used my rifle in it's usable but not really finished state since. Well when Africa became a definite occurance I got on the ball on my own rifle to finish it off. The stock is my own design using features from a number of different makers, and the metal is all finished in Ceracote. When I switched the mount system to QD mounts I noticed the rings weren't wantingto sit quite right. I started taking some measurements and found that the reciever was out of spec. The rear mount holes were off in all 3 axis being about .022 low. This I found about a month ago. Well I machined the rear bridge to accept another block of steel which I permanently attached and blended in to the reciever and finished it off by machining a Talley base directly into the new rear bridge. Of course I couldn't take the rifle on this hunt in fiberglass, it just wouldn't be civilized. I had to finish it out in that piece of Turkish Walnut I had sitting there just for that reason I just didn't know when I was going to get it done. Well it's finally done as of last Sunday and I can't wait to go. If I hadn't gotten this hunt planed who knows when I would have finished this rifle. I'm just glad I had been using this rifle for the past couple of years and not going with a brand new rifle. You know it's always the smiths rifle that comes last.
