1874/80 Gras

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

I picked up this Gras action for a song several years ago. It was missing the extractor. Unfortunately, Gras extractors are unobtanium in the US, but are quite plentiful in France. Who would have thought? :lol2:

Anyway, I have a friend in Germany who has a girlfriend that speaks French and was able to order me an extractor off the internet. The extractors are quite fragile. I hope it doesn’t break because I have more money in the extractor than the rest of the action.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

First step was figuring out a barrel. I decided to go with .45-70 instead of putting it back in the original 11mm Gras. Easier to find brass and bullets.

Whenever I have to machine a new barrel, I cut a test barrel stub (usually out of aluminum) so I have all the critical measurements down before I screw up and expensive barrel blank. So, off to the lathe I went, and.... after careful measurements.... it doesn’t fit. :mad54:

Check, double check, triple check.... cut another test piece, and it doesn’t fit. :mad54:

Then I noticed that some brilliant engineer in France decided to use left hand threads. :sad20:

So, I cut a test piece with left hand threads, and it goes in about 1/3 of the way. Even with sloppy loose threads, it binds up about 1/3 of the way in. Apparently, my measurements of 14 TPI and the reference chart I have that says 14 TPI are wrong. It’s a 2mm pitch metric. :sad20:

******* French didn’t get the memo that civilized countries don’t use the metric system. Since I can’t cut metric threads, I made a “tap” to chase the threads.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

In retrospect, it would have been easier to chase the threads if I put wrench flats on the “tap”.... but, it cut. It took a lot of pressure, and it made really fine swarf, but it cut, and eventually bottomed out.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

I wanted a tapered 1/2 octagon, and I had plenty of time from the COVID quarantine, so I set the barrel up on the mill and started cutting. 0.050” deep per pass using a 3/4” end mill. I had the power feed running about 2” per minute. :crazy:

So I sat, and watched the mill table move 14” (that’s about 7 minutes per pass), rotated the spindexer, and cut again... and again... and again... :crazy:

until I went crazy... :crazy:

Anyway, here’s the setup.

Barrel tenon in a 5c collet in the spindexer.

Muzzle end in a center held on an angle plate.

Center of the barrel held with a hold down clamp to help dampen vibrations and eliminate chattering.

And some paper towels to collect chips and make cleanup easier. :innocent0

Bertfish · Nov 6, 2020

Here we go again with me being impressed as hell with machinists

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

The chamber end has a “tulip” transition from octagon to round.

After cutting the octagon, I set the barrel up in the lathe with the taper attachment matching the taper of the octagon. Then I cut the front half of the barrel. It is about 0.700” at the muzzle.

And some glamour shots of the barrel sitting loosely in the action.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

Next step was to draw file away the tool marks on the octagon. Not fun. :sad20:

I made a simple jig to hold everything while draw filing. It’s just a 2x4 with some mortises cut to hold some V-blocks. The V-blocks are just to keep everything still.

After getting it all pretty, I cut the extractor groove and dovetails for the sights. Then I installed the barrel. Somewhere in there, I also cut the chamber. Almost forgot that. :lol2:

Oldcarjunkie · Nov 6, 2020

I have two myself that will one day go in the classifieds when i get off my butt. :lol2:

Very cool your making the barrel for it

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

For anyone keeping score, that’s about a month of work here and there condensed into a few posts. I started doing the barrel work in the beginning of April, and finished up in the beginning of May.

Then, I started to hate COVID. I needed a piece of wood. The piece of Maple I originally planned on using was too short, and only marginally wide enough. With all the shut down crap, I couldn’t just run out to the various fancy lumber yards, and pick up a stock blank. So I waited. And things opened up, but no one had anything that I wanted. So I waited. Eventually I got wood (insert bad viagra joke here

)

While I was waiting, I made some custom cutters to make the octagon shape barrel channel. The 3 flute one was the first one I made. I tested it on a piece of 2x4 and it cut ok, but I thought I could improve it. The 6 flute cutter worked better. It was a bit more complex to make, but worth the effort in the end.

Both of these are just mild steel, and are not hardened. However, in wood, they cut just fine. It doesn’t take much to cut wood, and I’m only doing one stock with them.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

While I was waiting to find a suitable stock blank, I cut a test piece on some scrap Hickory. I wanted to make sure that my plans on how to do 90% of the inletting was going to work.

It worked.

I was able to sink the metal into the piece of hickory without any problems.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

Game time! Let’s sink this Gras into its final home.

I set up the stock blank in the mill and cut the barrel channel for the octagon. This wasn’t just a straight cut. The cutter is the same size as the front of the octagon, but the barrel is tapered. Rather than try to cut a smooth taper in 2 dimensions, I made a series of steps, and used a scraper to smooth it out.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

Then I cut the round bottom for the action, and the mortise for the tail of the action.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

And a lot of hand fitting.

And shaping to the stock template.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

Then it was just a matter of removing all the parts that didn’t look like a Gras stock. :lol2:

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

I wasn’t feeling like a traditional metal butt plate was right for this, and a piece of rubber was out of the question. I picked up a piece of Katalox from the exotic wood store in Frederick, and shaped it like a butt pad. A little sanding, and a few million hours with the checkering cutters to make it a little more non-slip, and voila. A butt pad made from some super dense, very hard to cut wood. And only a couple errors on the checkering job. It still needed some deepening and evening in the picture.

GunBum · Nov 6, 2020

Since the stock was ready for some finish, I took off the butt pad and set it aside.

I was hoping that the stock had some figure hiding in that blonde complexion. The traditional way to pull the figure out of a piece of maple is to use aqua fortis. After applying the aqua fortis and heating, I finally got to a decent color.

After a couple weeks of hand rubbing linseed oil into the wood, it is really starting to look nice. After I rust blue the metal, I’ll post pictures of the completed rifle.

Oldcarjunkie · Nov 6, 2020

Damn fine work

GunBum · Nov 7, 2020

Bertfish said:
Here we go again with me being impressed as hell with machinists

Machinist? I’m a chemist. :lol2:

Doco Overboard · Nov 7, 2020

Nice work very well done.

I have a nice engraved trigger bow of a BP double with a long tang on it that would look great on your rifle. Ill send it to you if yo want it or think you can use it.
+ other weird obsolete things that can be used/ retrofitted for actually putting together a home built rifle.
Funny how something as mundane as an old barrel stub can become a useful tool for fitting.
What would otherwise become junk can save the day.
Let me know if your trying to hunt something up.

Nice job!

GunBum · Nov 7, 2020

Thanks for the offer Doco !! However, I already made a trigger guard from some scrap flat steel. I have a collection of old parts, but couldn’t find anything that I liked. The trigger on this thing is LOOONG so it needs a deep trigger bow.

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