Greetings from a New Member - Beginning my journey to building my own Rifle

T

TX COWDOC

New member
Hello,
I’m a long-time lurker and decided to register so I can get some feedback. I am a shooter / hunter and have had varied experiences with custom rifle builds (by others) and have always wanted to learn to do this on my own. I am finally at a point where I have the space and desire to set up a lathe and take some courses this summer in basic machining and rem 700 barreling. Looking forward to the journey.

Doc
 
TX COWDOC said:
Hello,
I’m a long-time lurker and decided to register so I can get some feedback. I am a shooter / hunter and have had varied experiences with custom rifle builds (by others) and have always wanted to learn to do this on my own. I am finally at a point where I have the space and desire to set up a lathe and take some courses this summer in basic machining and rem 700 barreling. Looking forward to the journey.

Doc
Click to expand...

Bravo

Take the courses mainly to learn safety.....learn to Respect The Iron...... the iron simply don't know you're there!

It will hurt you.

So learn to think safe,

Buy a Grizzly G4003G and have at it.
 
alinwa said:
Bravo

Take the courses mainly to learn safety.....learn to Respect The Iron...... the iron simply don't know you're there!

It will hurt you.

So learn to think safe,

Buy a Grizzly G4003G and have at it.
Click to expand...

So far in my search / exploration this is the model that I am thinking about. For my beginner work, this seems to make the most sense. Does Grizzly have a big sale at a certain time of year on these?
 
TX COWDOC said:
So far in my search / exploration this is the model that I am thinking about. For my beginner work, this seems to make the most sense. Does Grizzly have a big sale at a certain time of year on these?
Click to expand...

I don't know. I bought mine from the owner, from him asking on this forum "would there be interest" and I'm one of the one's who said "me" ..... So I got one off the first boatload. I will say this, the pricing has remained AMAZINGLY low over the ensuing years.

These machines are literally a small fraction (less than 10%) of the cost of a similar machine in 1980 and are better.

I don't know how else to say it..... they're DIRT cheap, you can pay for the mo'chine by threading for suppressors and muzzle brakes on the side in a year.... They're "new antiques", useful only to hobbyists and prototypers (I'm an '07FFL)

The one "problem" is that unlike an old South Bend Heavy Ten, a machine to which this one is sometimes compared, the SB H10 is BELT driven and can be set up to be stopped by meat and bone. Handy for a learning machine.

The Grizzly cannot be stopped.

I nearly lost a thumb/hand/life in mine by doing something stupid. My genes saved me, I got my hand back and $4000.00 later I'm nearly whole.

Would I do it over? Knowing I'd get my appendage wrapped up in it???

unequivocally YES.

I put some DRO's on mine.

I also spent 2700.00 on an antique Bridgeport mill and DRO'd it

I use the machines a lot, the Grizz so much I've considered a 2nd as backup

And most-bestest.....between the two lumps I CAN BUILD ANYTHING!!!! Or at least I feel like it.

And more/most importantly it's FUN.... as I go floundering off into my dotage I'm having the most FUN ever.....
 
One thing I'd do differently is I'd also buy the mill as a Grizzly/Swamp Fox new item instead of the old BP
 
Good luck. Don’t feel like you need courses, etc. if you know how to run a lathe, it isn’t hard to build a nice rifle. Lots of techniques that are the “best”, but top rifles are built in many different ways (thru the headstock, between centers, etc). Don’t forget the ignore button on our website :)
 
" Don’t forget the ignore button on our website "

Mram10 should be at the top of your list, he refuses to take advice from some of the best. If he has to ask questions on how to do it himself he surely can't be of any help to yourself.
 
As many will attest to on this Site, I am a Machinist, and I feel like anyone with a fair amount of mechanical ability and common sense can learn to do barrel work.

The best piece of advice I can give you while not actually teaching you in person is to NOT just learn HOW to do things, but also learn WHY you do things a certain way.

In general terms I call this “basic machine shop practice”.

When you learn WHY things are done a certain way, that opens the door to all possibilities.
 
Last edited:
jackie schmidt said:
As many will attest to on this Site, I am a Machinist, and I feel like anyone with a fair amount of mechanical ability and common sense can learn to do barrel work.

The best piece of advice I can give you while not actually teaching you in person is to NOT just learn HOW to do things, but also learn WHY you do things a certain way.

In general terms I call this “basic machine shop practice”.

When you learn WHY things are done a certain way, that opens the door to all possibilities.
Click to expand...

Some of the best advice I've seen. Too many people do things the way the internet told them to do it, without ever taking the time to see if it actually made sense.
 
jackie schmidt said:
As many will attest to on this Site, I am a Machinist, and I feel like anyone with a fair amount of mechanical ability and common sense can learn to do barrel work.

The best piece of advice I can give you while not actually teaching you in person is to NOT just learn HOW to do things, but also learn WHY you do things a certain way.

In general terms I call this “basic machine shop practice”.

When you learn WHY things are done a certain way, that opens the door to all possibilities.
Click to expand...

No truer words have been spoken. Peel the layers of the onion away and understand the subtleties of the craft.
 
There's a bunch of videos on Youtube done by an old guy that goes by Viper, those can be real helpful, his cutting oil is very good also. You can also buy Gordy Gritters video, it's good to have too. I had about a 35 year gap in my lathe use history and after buying one to use discovered I'd forgot pretty much everything I knew from back in the day. After chambering a few barrels and doing some odd jobs I realized I didn't know jack about tools, feeds, speeds and all those details that experienced machinists know, guys like Jackie. So I looked around and found a Community College near my home and took a basic machining class that was mostly lathe work and very little on mills. It was taught by a retired Aerospace machinist that started his career as a general machinist on manual machines. That guy taught me all kinds of stuff that isn't in any book I've ever seen that has helped me progress really fast. Best $900 I ever spent!
 
I have a grizzly G4003G and while it’s a good lathe and produces outstanding shooting rifles. If I had to do it all over again I would buy a precision Mathews lathe. The grizzly needed to have rubber motor mounts fabricated to stop the single phase motor from transmitting vibration into my lathe. Also I built mounts on the legs/stand for level feet and widen the foot print of the lathe. Adding DRO was a big help for me and is well worth the money. I never took any classes and am 100% self taught. Read machining books and trying different setups is how I found what works me.
 
jackie schmidt said:
As many will attest to on this Site, I am a Machinist, and I feel like anyone with a fair amount of mechanical ability and common sense can learn to do barrel work.

The best piece of advice I can give you while not actually teaching you in person is to NOT just learn HOW to do things, but also learn WHY you do things a certain way.

In general terms I call this “basic machine shop practice”.

When you learn WHY things are done a certain way, that opens the door to all possibilities.
Click to expand...

That's the best statement that I've seen. I've been building some powder measures for the past few years that use an insert similar to what Jerry Hensler used to make. Those things have sure taught me a lot of the why's and why it's better to do some operations first and others later.
 
I made a similar post a year or two ago. I'm not a competitor and just like shooting rifles and hunting. The only lathe experience I had was on an Atlas 618 I was using to make bamboo fly rods. I've never taken a class either. A class would probably save you money not having to throw away material as you teach yourself what doesn't work.

As Jackie said, learn why you're doing what you're doing. Everything I've read online is made to look like you have to do it a particular way or it's wrong. It's not so. It's like dog training (which I do a lot). There are a multitude of ways to get good results. Try one. If you don't like it try another. Trying all the different ways will eventually lead you to a process that works for you and yields good results.

I did my first few on a South Bend 10K between centers. I then decided I wanted to try the "best" method, in the headstock, and ended up with a Precision Matthews 1340GT with VFD. It's very nice machine but hasn't produced a better shooting rifle than the ones I did between centers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top