Part 4-Inletting the Gunstock A .404 Jeffery Stalking Rifle by Dennis Daigger
Scrutinizing the Gunstock The stock duplicated from my blank using my pattern arrived in early April. The blank had a flaw on the right side of the butt section that penetrated about 3/16" that was avoided, as expected, with good machine set up. When evaluating a gunstock blank the two most important considerations for me are grain and figure. Regardless the firearm being stocked, the grain is the most important of these two needs.
I think the grain integrity of the grip needs to extend rearward well into the butt and forward through the forearm to provide the strength needed to minimize breakage possibilities. You can imagine the basis of a good gunstock by visualizing a long 2" diameter straight-grained dowel that is centered through the grip, running the length fore and aft through the entire gunstock. The rest of the stock is just wood cast in supporting roles that contributes little to the overall strength of this core.
Regarding evaluation of the figure visible in the blank it is not unlike looking at a pretty overdressed woman and trying to visualize what lies below. The blank's figure merely teases and hints at the gunstock's possibilities.
The grain was relatively easy to evaluate with my blank and I had traced my desired location of the final gunstock on it with a wide marker. The figure that would emerge from this layout was left to chance. The pattern had the Henry fore end tip shaped and colored with marker for the duplicator operator's reference. The pattern butt stock had been left 1/2" long for wiggle room when I created the final dimensions.
What I got back is a gunstock that I am quite happy with. The entire forearm is straight-grained, the grain running parallel to the barrel channel. The grain through the wrist connects nicely with the action section and carries through the butt. The core is solid and continuous from stem to stern. It was apparent that I had more wood both inside and outside than I expected from the duplication but that is a solvable problem.
Getting Started My small austere 'shop' is marginal for the kinds of work I perform here. A top-mounted swivel bench vise with rubber jaws and a 10" side-mounted woodworking vise were used to hold the gunstock as I worked on it. The action screw holes in the gunstock were precisely 1/4" and my guide screws made to use on the pattern would again be employed. I was ready to get started but had to plan out one of the gunstock fixtures.
I had a piece of Asian buffalo horn for the fore end tip which at some point would have to get installed. The Ruger No. 1 that I completed last year also had a horn tip but I had attached that using two 1/4" dowels of 1018 steel that had been scored on the lathe. I wanted to use a larger diameter wood dowel and was looking for a better solution.
A 15mm Forstner bit used in a cabinet making project last summer was used to experiment with drilling holes in horn end grain. I was quite surprised to see paper thin white sheets of waste emerge when drilling like that. The resulting hole was clean and smooth. I put the horn tip in the mill vise and using an end mill squared the face in my bench mill. I then chucked up the bit and drilled a hole about 1" deep in my tip blank. I had no way to turn an integral dowel on the fore end of my gunstock so I squared it at the correct location with a miter saw intending to drill a hole later. The tip would be affixed as the inletting progressed.
Finishing the Job The final stages of the inletting process described in Part 3 were repeated to bring the bottom metal to full depth and then the stock was turned and inletting of the the barreled action proceeded. A small amount of gouge work was needed to widen and deepen the barrel and action channel but scraping accounted for most of the time spent on this chore.
When I was about 3/16" from my final depth for the barreled action, I located the center of the squared fore end for attaching the tip and using a hand drill and the Forstner bit drilled a hole about 1 1/2" deep into the gunstock. While the resulting hole was less precise than the hole drilled earlier in the horn tip with the mill, it was totally satisfactory. A 3" long dowel was turned from a dense piece of thin shelled walnut and I was now ready to glue it in place.
I had some Black Max cyanoacrylate in the refrigerator that I intended to use on the fore end tip. Unfortunately, past its shelf life, it had turned into a thick and unusable mass. After thoroughly cleaning the dowel, the horn tip and hole in the gunstock with acetone I used the cyano glue I had on the bench to glue the parts together. Moderate holding pressure was applied with a long woodworking clamp and this all was left to set up overnight.
Scrapers are an effective and efficiency way to remove horn waste and the barrel channel was extended through the horn tip from the stock barrel channel. Inletting was then finished with careful scrapping to full depth and the action screws were timed short about 1/8 revolution.
I had proud surfaces that now needed to be brought to near metal surface level. A few paper thicknesses would be adequate to allow the final finish application to bring them even.
Next-Part 5 Final Shaping of the StockPart 3-The Stock Work A .404 Jeffery Stalking Rifle by Dennis Daigger
Design Ideas-The 60,000 Foot View With the wheels turning during the metal work I had visualized some of the design features that I wanted to incorporate into the stock. I have always admired the stock design of the Daniel Fraser bolt rifles and with the internet it was possible to study a number of high quality images of a number of this maker's rifles for details.
A short and trim forearm, a Henry fore end tip and a trim overall profile were the predominate features I wanted to incorporate from a Fraser. Additionally, I like semi-pistol grips which were a fairly common feature of some original commercial Mauser rifles.
To Pattern, Or Not My experience with stocking bolt guns is limited. I have stocked a prewar Winchester Model 70, two 98 Mausers and a Springfield 1898 Krag using semi inletted blanks and two rimfires from rough blanks. The rimfires were a Mauser DSM 34 and a Remington 37, neither of which had magazine boxes making these inletting tasks straightforward and relatively easy.
The Satterlee action has some unique dimensions so a semi inletted Mauser stock of any kind was out of the question. Although Stuart Satterlee could CNC my blank I wanted to do as much of the work myself as possible and also I was anxious to get on with the project without delay.
I didn't have the confidence to inlet the project blank to the final standards I hoped to achieve and purchased a thin shell walnut pattern blank. This would allow me to use bedding compound on the pattern stock to get high metal-to-wood congruency with the final blank through a precision pantograph process.
Getting Started After laying out the general outline of the desired profile I marked the location of the action screws on the bottom of the blank. I had used a jointer to produce an absolutely flat top surface on the blank that was perpendicular to the left side of the blank. I could now use my benchtop mill to drill out the action screw holes quite precisely. Guide screws were made from 1/4" 1018 rod and I was ready to get started.
The guide screws fitted snugly in the action screw holes in the blank and when protruding they acted as guides to lower the bottom metal into the blank as wood was removed. The 1/4" holes in the Satterlee bottom metal are precise and if the bottom metal wasn't descending straight down it would bind. Later this snug fit would help keep a relatively close metal to wood fit for the box walls because the bottom metal was not wobbling on the guides creating an oversize hole.
Once the entire top surface of the bottom metal was started into the blank I went back to the mill and roughed out the magazine box with a 1/2" Forstner bit. This kind of inletting is tedious work and some level of speed can be applied to the early roughing out but a heightened caution and attention to details is necessary in the later stages of the work.
When I had the bottom metal to the desired depth I screwed the guide rods into the action and started inletting the barreled action on the topside of the blank. Again, speed could be applied in the early stage but as the metal to wood contacting surface increased the job slowed down.
I don't track hours for specific tasks but for me this kind of inletting is not an afternoon's job. The inletting did go well and as it turned out I believe I could have avoided using a pattern blank altogether. More time and caution would have been needed for scraping in both the bottom metal and the barreled action.
Shaping the Stock Watching the stock emerge from the blank is the part that I like the most. I no longer have a band saw so the initial outline shape was created using a carpenter hand saw. Many closely spaced cross cuts were made nearly to the desired profile outline drawn on the blank. After the wood was removed from between these cuts I used pattern cabinet maker's rasps on the outside. I did this work freehand bringing the entire profile forward of the grip to just over final dimensions.
I wanted a length of pull of 14", cast off of 1/4" and a bit of toe out, these dimensions nearly duplicating a prewar Merkel shotgun that I shoot well. I had used these dimensions on a recent Ruger Number 1 .400 Jeffery project and it mounts and fits like this shotgun. To ensure I could get the butt dimensions right in the project blank I left about 1/4" extra wood on all surfaces of the pattern blank from the grip rearward. This excess wood would be removed from the pantographed project blank as needed later.
I don't like cross bolts and ideas garnered from conversations with Stuart Satterlee convinced me I could do without them. The Recknagel rear sight band has a smallish lug on the bottom. It is threaded for a screw but I didn't want to use this feature for addition fastening but rather as another recoil absorbing surface. The distance between this lug and the action recoil lug allows the recoil impulse to be applied over a long longitudinal wood grain area. Stuart additionally had suggested relieving the back of the action tang by .005" and this would be done during scrape in of the project stock when returned from pantographing.
The project blank and the pattern stock were packed up and sent for duplication. The advertised tolerances for this work using the customers pattern were "--.003 to .007 undersized on the inletting and .030 to .040 oversized on the outside". Turn around time was quoted at no more than ten days. It turned out to be about 2 1/2 months before I would see my wood again.
Next-Part 4 Inletting the Stock
Part 2-The Metal Work A .404 Jeffery Stalking Rifle by Dennis Daigger
I now had all the parts in hand to build a rifle and I got regular updates from Stuart Satterlee about progress on my action. Slowly it evolved into a complete action. The correct barrel had arrived in his shop from Lothar Walther while the action was being made and it was threaded and chambered as soon as the action was ready. I received the barreled action in December 2012.
First Reactions The early .404 Jeffery rifles were built on standard length actions that required careful modifications to accommodate the large .404 Jeffery cartridge. It appears, however, that all the Continental and British makers moved to the larger action as soon as Mauser started production of the magnum length offering. Having never owned nor handled a large Mauser action it took a while to get comfortable with the size of the Satterlee Arms action. I had just completed a 9.3x62 on a Persian Mauser which is a standard size action and the size difference is not a subtlety.
Fit and Finish The metal work on the action is first class. Flat surfaces are dead flat, round surfaces are smooth parts of circles and the concave cuts are appropriate parts of arcs. No machine tool marks are evident anywhere on the action or action component parts. It appears that the final hand polishing was done with a 400 grit abrasive and very well done. A quick matting with a scour pad or a carding brush and the action would be ready to rust blue just as it was. Stuart had delivered on his representation that the action would not require a lot of hand work to prepare for bluing.
The finish on the barrel was excellent as well. I don't know anything of the final finish process that these Lothar Walther barrels receive on the exterior but it is as good as I've seen.
Action Component Modifications The trigger had a flat tip profile and the interior arc consisted of two bevel cuts. I thought the trigger could have a more pleasing profile and I rounded the tip and smoothed the bevels at their intersection into a rounded surface. The trigger was very hard and abrasive stones were required to do this task. I also checkered the bolt release tab. The bridges were the only other part of the action that would be modified and that will be described later.
Installing The Iron Sights The Recknagel rear sight band was a tight fit on the part of the barrel that had been turned for it. It could be gently tapped into place but could not be slid on. I have a small lathe, barely adequate for what I was contemplating, and limited experience with turning metal work. The rear shoulder of the barrel shank for fitting this band needed just a touch of truing and this was done with trepidation creating a slight undercut so that a modest seating crush from the band would give a minimally visible joint. A 1018 steel cylinder was also turned so that the rear sight band could be affixed on it by using archer's ferrule cement. This then was centered in the lathe and the rear of the band was trued.
I used the low temperature version of the Force 44 solder to attach the band on the barrel. The barreled action was leveled in a bench vise using the flat bottom of the action for reference. The shank of the barrel and the interior of the band were tinned and then the band was tapped into place as heat was applied. I used a hammer against a 1/2" piece of hardwood held against the lug on the bottom of the band to drive it into place. Then the band had to be tap-rotated into the correct alignment on the barrel. This process was tedious and frustrating as I over rotated several times and had to reheat and try again. Keeping the temperature of the metal as close to the melting point of the solder as possible left a very short working time to make adjustments. Additionally, the limited flat surface of the band top for setting a level contributed to the difficulty.
Eventually I got it done but there was one other problem that needed solved. The sight band was 2.2" long. The shank on the barrel for some unknown reason was 2.7" long. Stuart had warned me about this so I knew it would have to be fixed as the extending portion of the shank beyond the extent of the band did not look good. Using the barrel taper rate, I calculated the diameter at three distances along the 1/2" section of the shank that had to be tapered and then using a cutoff tool on the lathe did plunge cuts at these three locations. This established the correct diameter to extend the taper properly to the front of the ring. I then used these plunge cuts as a reference to hand file to full depth along the section.
I was now ready to move on to the front band. The barrel muzzle diameter was .725". The closest band interior undersize diameter available was .710" diameter. This is not an insignificant difference. I would have to turn the muzzle end of the barrel or expand the diameter of the band. My lathe skills are simply not adequate for this so I turned a piece of 1018 steel with four steps. It started at .710" and went to .720". I polished the face of a ball peen hammer to mirror finish so as not to transfer marks to the band and then peened the band up to the .720" diameter. These bands are soft steel and by very precise application of light hammer strikes over the entire band surface the end result was a band with a snug fit on the .720" section that looked very good on the outside.
I wanted the band set back farther than is typical for American banded ramps but not as far back as some of the British gunmakers. I tinned the barrel muzzle and the interior of the band and then using the method described earlier for the rear band, drove the ramp on leaving 3/8" of the muzzle end of the barrel protruding beyond the front of the ramp.
Cutting The Scope Ring Bases The last of the metal work on the barreled action was cutting the bridges to the CZ profile. Between the time that I first talked to Morris Melani, owner of Alaska Arms LLC, and the time that I had the sights on the rifle, a friendship had developed and Morris did this part of the project for me. He is an extraordinary machinist and with my barreled action mounted on a jig that I fashioned from a piece of square stock steel he completed the metalwork on the action. As an aside, the precision of Stuart Satterlee's machining was evident as the action was set up for making the cuts. The tolerances over the entire action were very good, consistently holding under a few thousandths in all dimensions.
Profiling The Scope Rings The final metal work was applying some profile changes to the Alaska Arms LLC quick detachable scope rings. I started by removing all the finish with toilet bowl cleaner. The rings have a three-facet profile and I smoothed these to a continuous rounded profile. The ends of the levers are square and these were rounded and the lever ends shaped to a tear drop, thinned a bit and then checkered on the top. All parts were then polished with 320 grit paper and brushed to a matte finish preparatory to rust bluing and nitre bluing.
Next-Part 3, Stockmaking The Hard Way
A .404 Jeffery Stalking Rifle by Dennis Daigger
FROM THE BEGINNING Having had a longstanding interest in owning a .404 Jeffery, I finally got serious about finding one two years ago.
Most of the rifles available are used British made and by well know makers. The prices were exorbitant. I did find one Walter Locke that appeared to be original (I don't like cobbled guns) and before initiating negotiations with the seller on price I considered what I would have if I purchased the rifle.
It is a rifle that is somewhere around 100 years old. The drop at heel is excessive. The barrel interior dimensions are unknown and sellers are seldom willing to slug a bore. Chamber dimensions at that point in history were hardly standardized and some jerry rigging might be necessary for handloading. An alternative was to build the rifle I wanted.
The Bottom Line-$6,500 The price of the Locke was posted at $6,500 so that was the dollar amount I used to total component prices against.
GATHERING THE PARTS I would need: action, estimated $3,500 barrel, estimated $300 scope rings, estimated $150 scope, estimated $500 front sight ramp, estimated $150 rear sight base, estimated $75 rear sight, estimated $75
I had: Turkish walnut blank, purchased from Hunterbid some years ago at $540 Pachmayr pad, $28 leather for pad, $15 3/4" sling hardware, $30
labor: threading and chambering a barrel, estimated $350 engraving, estimated $750
Since the stockmaking and metal finishing would be done my me these costs were not included in the total estimate. From this exercise of pricing components it seemed feasible to build a rifle to my exact specifications for the cost of the lowest priced .404 Jeffery available that I might be happy with and that is the direction I took.
The Action-Final cost $3,450 The action seemed to be the hardest component to find. Although I'm not a commercial gunmaker I don't build guns for myself anymore without an eye to a sale down the road. I wanted an iron sighted stalking rifle but a rifle built for iron sights has a wider appeal if it accommodates a scope even if the scope is a secondary sighting method. I wanted to price a modern production action and narrowed the search to a double square bridge of some type to allow scope mounting. As an aside, worldwide there are few makers of such actions.
After researching what is available I called Satterlee Arms. Following a lengthy phone conversation with Stuart Satterlee I had a much better idea about what I wanted for an action. He explained that his actions are hand finished to high tolerances so that there was little to no final polishing I would have to do. The amount of time needed to finish custom actions seemed to be a consist complaint by professional gunmakers on forums and not being able to find critiques of Stuart's work, I would have to take him at his word.
At the time I talked to Stuart he had nothing available so I was still looking. About a week later he called to say that he was starting a production run of actions suited to the .404 and one was available if I wanted it. Be aware that these actions, no matter who makes them, are not cheap and they are not on-the-shelf, immediately available products either. My 50% deposit for a $3,450 action was sent in Nov 2011 with an estimated deliver time of eight months. This was to be his standard large ring magnum action. I specified a Winchester Model 70 style trigger and a standard magazine box as I do not like drop boxes on anything. The logic continues to elude me about needing five to six rounds in a magazine rifle when the reputed king of dangerous game rifles is a double rifle. I wanted the most svelte rifle possible and the standard box would allow for a nice profile for comfortable carry and reduced weight. I planned to load to the original cartridge specifications so didn't fuss about the rifle being too light.
The Barrel-Final cost $267.75 Although the .404 bore is no longer the rarity it once was for barrel makers, it is simply not available from everyone. Additionally, I wasn't sure what I wanted for a contour. A final barrel length of 26" was about the only specific I had when I started the search. I had ordered a contoured short-chambered 9.3x62 barrel from Lothar Walther earlier and its finish was extraordinary. Looking through their profiled barrel list I ran into the #5130 "Mauser Type E" 26" listing and I looked no farther. A check for the barrel and shipping was sent in Oct 2011 and it was to be drop shipped to Satterlee Arms for fitting when the action was ready.
However, that was not to be the end of the barrel story. I got a call from Stuart a month after the barrel was ordered, saying that he had received the barrel but that it was a .416 barrel. I had no interest in a .416 Rigby so the barrel was returned. It would be months before Lothar Walther resolved issues with ATF and got the correct barrel to Stuart.
The Scope Rings-Final cost $129.99 Does it get any better than the claw mounting system for a scope? Probably not, but there is a system that I found that is so close that the additional issues with getting the setup right with claw mounting is hardly worth it and it is an excellent cost effective solution compared to the claw mounting system. These rings feature a 1/4 turn on and and a 1/4 turn off setup, they are high precision and they are truly quick detachable.
I have a set of Len Brownell quick detachable rings I installed on a pre-war Model 70 in 1976. While they can be reliably removed and installed without moving the impact point, they are tedious to remove and install because of the rotations required of the levers and the need to engage the teeth properly and in the same place. All the other quick detachables currently available that I could find suffer the lever rotation handicap except Alaska Arms LLC rings. These are modeled after a Burgess design and simply require 1/4 of a rotation to install or remove and are made with the CZ base dimensions which is ideally suited to installation on action bridges. This setup is truly fast to install or remove. Additionally, they are nicely profiled and I could visualize my hand profiling that would adapt these to a highest quality custom firearm. A set of CZ low rings was ordered from the webstore www.alaskaarmsllc.com and arrived soon thereafter. The CZ base dimensions would be cut into the bridges when the action arrived.
The Scope-Final cost $374.98 The original plan was to use a 1.5-5 Leupold scope on the rifle but the trend to shorter and shorter scopes leaves long action applications like these on the edge. I like my rings solidly centered on the bases which stubby scopes make difficult. A friend told me that the Leupold custom shop was again making the 3x long tube scope. I ordered one with a German #1 reticle and the 3x20 Big Bore scope arrived a month after placing the order.
The Sight Bases-Final cost $285 Recknagel components are the mainstay of custom gunmakers needing accessories and the Lothar Walther barrel was profiled for the sweat-on Recknagel rear base band. NECG did not stock that specific item I needed nor the front ramp that I wanted. The front ramp is the one that is straight on the front and has a level ramp. These were ordered and it took about three months to get. The front ramp had to wait for the next scheduled production run. A one-standing and one-folding leaf rear sight, the front bead and the sling hardware was in NECG stock and arrived quickly.
I now had everything ordered and when the barreled action arrived I'd be ready to get started. Next--Part 2 THE METAL WORK© 2023 Alaska Arms LLC
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