Timing is everything!

By: guns4fun Mood: Excited Date: 06/18/2007 23:55:58 Music: None

Yesterday:

As the heat of the day began to fade and evening was coming on, I decided to make a go at getting something done on a project I’ve been thinking about but putting off getting started at. So I went out to the garage and pulled the cover off my lathe and there to my surprise, still chucked-up in the head was another project that I started months ago and hadn’t finished! I was sorta dumbstruck for a moment but decided to jump back into this one and get it done at least to the point of being done on the lathe.

I’d been dragging my feet on this for jeezzzzz about 3 years from the time I identified the problem and a bit later resolved myself to the fact that the only real fix was to make one myself.

What I had done was started a pair of grip panels for a S&W square butt K-Frame 38/357 that I promised to my son ohhhhh about 8 years ago. I made the left grip with finger grooves along the front edge and the right grip with a comfortable palm swell. Well, with the palm swell the grips where much thicker than any others and I could not locate a source for a longer than standard grip screw in that 5-44 size S&W uses. So I knew a long time ago I was just gonna have to make one myself.

After months & months & months & months of hemming & hawing about this screw making; what to make it out of? Regular steel or stainless? If not stainless where would I get it blued? (Having not seen any cold blues I think a tinker’s damn for.) Stainless & the brass ferrules don’t look right together but stainless is, well, stainless. Yea, but stainless is harder to work and such a small size screw was gonna be tricky enough to start with.

Anyway, I must have resolved all those issues sometime earlier this year ‘cause there it was about 80 to 90% done. All I had left to do was work out some final dimensions for overall length and head thickness and diameter, which I measured on a factory part, and figured out how much more shaft length I had to make and where to cut it off at. I shaped and polished the head some and called it a night except to contemplate how to put the screwdriver slot in the head.

Today:

Low and behold, the place I’m working at right now has a simple old horizontal mill, which was virtually made for the purpose of putting slots in screw heads! They also have a .032 mill saw blade that just fits in slot in a factory screw. It looks as if, by this weekend I’ll have my long 5-44 grip screw all finished.

Oh yea, that project I was gonna start...

Well that will be a tale for another day.