Kinda' quiet here, not a full blown build but my latest challenge.
My nephew, who has never inletted anything, tried to put a patchbox in his Lyman GRP, not knowing how to approach the project he used a Dremel tool and no layout lines, disaster! In this picture I had already fixed the back end with proper inletting, the front is going to be a challenge.
My mouth always get me in a lot of trouble so I said" no problem I can fix it", big mistake, I had never inletted an ornate patch box but had built 5 guns so I thought "how difficult could this be".
I started patching the gaps with glued in walnut pieces, I orientated the patch wood grain with the stock wood, even drew in grain lines from the stock wood through the patches with walnut husk dye and a calligraphy pen to make the patches disappear. I had to completely remove the finish while filing the patchbox metal to fit the wood.
I built up layers of my walnut husk dye and dried it with a heat gun until I had the stock stain on the bare wood matched perfectly to the factory stock stain.
I left the stain darker around the inlet to further hide the patches. I worked what you see in the picture down a bit more with a scotch bright pad to further blend the color after I took this picture.
The patch box was flat the buttstock was curved, I initially thought there was enough room to to fit the flat patchbox into the buttstock but found out it had to be bent to conform. The patchbox is steel and didn't want to bend, I had inletted the outside edge of the inlet and it took dozens of poundings and several days to get all the edges properly in the inlet I cut. The biggest problem was getting the lid to bend and still match the hole it was supposed to fit into the metal opening.
Here is the patchbox just starting in, you can see all the patches.
In the process of bending the lid I broke the hinge pin, no problem I thought, jut use a punch and drive out out but it wasn't moving. I decided to drill it out, after ruining 3 drill bits i realized the pin was hardened and nothing short of a carbide tipped bit would touch it. The carbide tipped bits cost $13 for a 1/16" bit, not the kind of money I wanted to spend on someone else's bo-bo. I ended up heating and annealing the hinge several times to try to soften the pin, this worked and I could drill the pin right out. After all this fitting I realize the patchbox lid would never function as intended, I soldered the lid into place and told my nephew his patchbox was now just for looks and wouldn't work as intended, turns out that was what he was after in the first place, just some ornate bling on his rifle.
Now to brown the patchbox to match the pitted rust browning job my nephew did on the gun. It took a while but I finally got the pitting just right to match.
Finally in, the inlet is tight the patchbox will tap in flush with the wood but except for browning the screw heads it is done.
I had to buy hardware store zinc coated screws, I burned the zinc off but they still didn't want to brown properly. Still working on them and making progress. As soon as I get the screws in I will call this project done.
My nephew didn't clean his rifle properly, the barrel is a rusty sewer pipe but I have been able to clean it up with a number of red scotch bright patches to be serviceable.
Here are the first patches I ran down the bore to see just how bad it was.
It looks much better after the scrubbing, I think it will shoot just fine.
Before;
After a good scrubbing;
