Oops!

So it has come to my attention that I used the wrong form of "calluses" for the title of this blog. I'm ashamed. It's a good thing that I am attending school for gunsmithing! To correct this, I started a new blog with the proper spelling. I will leave this one up, for future reference, but all posts from now on will be found at www.callusesfromblisters.blogspot.com. There will be link there to this page as well!

Sorry for the confusion!

This week has been far better than last week. I managed to get caught up, so I didn't have to go in today. Only one of my projects was down-graded due to being on Fridays. Furthermore, I'm getting into things that are more than just tools... They're directly gun related. I'm currently making a front sight for a rifle. The sight ramp is hand formed from a 3/8" piece of square stock about 2.5" long. It's really proving to be quite a challenge. We do have the oportunity to use certain machines (grinders and drill presses) for some of the rough shaping, but the hardes part has to be the actual dovetail cut. It is quite tedious, as it starts with a vertical cut using the edge of a file. Later it is widened with other small files, until ulitmately, a dovetail file (a triangle file with two safe sides) is used to get the final fit of the piece of trapezoidal stock that replicates the actual front sight piece. Two of the requirements on that project are that the fit of the two pieces must be light-tight (no gaps allowing light), and the piece must be a press fit that requires tools to accomplish. It's tough going, but I've taken the time to do some practice cuts so that I don't screw up the rest of the work piece. I'll be sure to include pictures of that next week. The dovetail is actually the last project I need to finish before I start working on customer guns.

Another project that I worked on this week was installing a recoil pad. It was nice because it was the first project that I actually use one of the tools that I made. Additionally, it was nice to have a short project (there were 8 hours allotted for that one). As with everything else, there was a bit of a learning curve to get over before things started coming together on that project. Working at shaping rubber was a nice change of pace from shaping metal, but I'm not at the school just to learn how to shape rubber!

I'm definetely looking forward to getting into the gun side of things. I feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel now!

 A recoil pad as it came from the factory ready to be cut to size.

 

 

The installed recoil pad. The light band of wood next to the pad was there when I got the stock (so it's not my fault).