Today was dig into the High Wall to see what secrets it might reveal. Having finished Vol 1 of Campbell's book, Winchester Single Shots, I'm now a bonafide expert on High Walls.
And the day was not without it's OH SCHITT!!! moments.
Pulled the wood off for the 2nd time since getting it and did a careful look around the exposed metal for any old markings, stampings, proof marks etc. on the barrel. Nothing there other than A.Hubalek stamped in plain view on top of the barrel. Pulled the breech block and extractor out of the receiver and then removed the lower tang and trigger assembly. Diassembled the breech block from the finger lever and removed the link from the block. Also removed the retaining screw to allow removal of the firing pin.
I had two questions I wanted to answer with the disassembly.
1. Being made in 1891, has the large firing pin been replaced with a small firing pin for high pressure smokeless rounds and was the breech block bushed to accept the small firing pin?
2. Are there any markings on the extractor that might hint to the original caliber?
With the action in pieces, first thing was the extractor. Since nobody was making aftermarket parts for these when this was built prior to WWII, the extractor should be original to this or another rifle or a Winchester repacement part. The extractor was stamped .32-40 and .38-55. So, that might be a clue to the original caliber. Both of thoses were amonst the most popular for the entire run of the Model 85.
But being a .218 Bee which is based upon the Win. .25-20 case, this extractor should not work, being too big. Closer inspection shows that it was welded up and recut for the Bee case. They did a great job. Only a tiny amount of excess metal from the weld is visible on the back of the extractor hook. Was the rifle a larger caliber. Only way to confirm is to request a letter from Cody Museum.
Next was the breech block. My answer was obvious as soon as the block came out of the receiver. It was a block from a later model, coil spring rifle. It has the two extra holes for the tails of the coil spring to engage. The later model High Walls had the smaller, high pressure firing pin. So, it would appear that Mr. Hubalek simply dropped in a later breech block to suit his needs. It means nothing to rifle functionality. But if someone were looking for an original High Wall, this would be a minor issue. Minor because correct breech block are available both new and used.
With the action apart, the original case colors on the hammer and breech block were very evident. They were still gorgeous. Nothing quite like bone charcoal case hardening. I see the Uberti High Walls for sale and the have case colored receivers. But they are either the fake case coloring like Ruger uses on the Vaquero or they are the cyanide case hardening process colors which are entirely different to bone charcoal colors.
The OH SCHITT!! moment.
I was putting the rifle back together. All the pins on High Walls are tapered and meant to go in from right to left and removed left to right. Most do not know this (remember, I'm an expert now) and drive them the wrong way and destroy the fit. Well, it would appear that all my pins have been driven the wrong way at least once in the last 131 years. They all fit well, but are all cylindrical fits now. The exception is the hammer pin. this is a split pin which looks like a screw from the end. But it is spring steel and you have to squeeze the split end together to get it to start and then it drives thru and springs back open when it reaches the other side. there is a slight heat on both ends of the pin and mating counterbores in the breech block. When it springs back open, the head on the spring end is now in the counterbore and the pin will not move laterally.
So, I'm squeezing the pin with a set of duckbill pliers when it slips and launches to my right. I hear it hit the metal cabinet next to me but never hear a second impact. Hmmmm... It landed somewhere soft. That's lots of places. To might right are 3 boxes of small pieces of scrap wood, a huge wooden box full of short pieces of wood. Behind that is length of various dimensional lumber and a block wall. The cabinet is open shelves which have collected the various stuff I use for gunsmithing and other projects. The shelves are organized chaos. I check the floor which has indoor/outdoor carpet by my workbench. So that's a quiet landing spot. Nothing. Use a flashlight like CSI and still nothing. I have several nooks and crannies to the right to boot. Service panel is there and there is a canyon of spiderwebs under the bench to the right. I search them all, hoping to avoid stripping the shelves. No luck. DAMN!!
I start with the bottom shelf and work my way up. I won't bore you with the details. The process was clear the shelf off into a box, make sure the pin is not stuck in a corner or where the shelf has pulled away from the cabinet. There are 4 shelves and I strip each one separately. While I'm doing this, I'm muttering to myself and my wife is in the basement doing laundry. She keeps asking if I did this or did that and I was considering stuffing her into the dryer and putting it on high heat. She's Sicilian so she would understand this. I simply said her name in a slow, menacing manner and she said, "Okay".
All that was left was the top of the cabinet. This was piled with piece of cardboard I use for templates and other things. Plus there are some old wanut plaques I use as donors for fixing chips in stocks. It's a mess up there and I'd already resigned myself that the pin was gone and I'd need to source a new one. I never thought the pin flew that high. But, I'm not a quitter so I started unstacking cardboard being careful not to have something roll off and slip behind the cabinet, which would be a mutha to empty again so I could move it. I got everything off and was discovering stuff I forgot I had. Then on a tiny little walnut desk plaque that held something at an angle, like an easel, was the pin resting in the bottom shelf of that tiny walnut easel. I could not believe that I found it. Wife said he had been praying to St. Jude. My guess is John Browning was having a beer with Jude when Jo phoned.
I put the rifle back together, coating the sear and spring surfaces with STP. Then I looked at the tang site screw hole plug screws and they just bothered me. The original had almost no slot and what was there had been butchered. There was an extra hole right behind it that someone drilled and tapped, probably because the sight base they wanted to use was for another rifle. That hole had the thread somewhat butchered. It looked like it was originally a 10-32, but someone had run a 10-24 screw or tap into it for a few threads. The plug screw was a 10-32. The hole was sloppy at the surface of the tang.
So, I first took the original screw, faced it off in the lathe and cut a new slot. Came out nice and looks good. One down. The other was too far gone. I ran a 10-32 tap into the existing thread to clean it up. The hole was a blind hole so used a bottoming tap. Then I took a 10-32 screw, threaded it into the hole, marked it and cut it off. Because the hole was sloppy, I peened the end of the screw to expand it a bit. Almost like a very small oval head screw. I then gave it a nice radius and cut a new slot. Boy, does that screw look better in the tang that the one that was in there.
Next project is to fix a tiny chimp in the nose of the wrist where it meets the receiver. I'll use the process I learned from Mr. Phillips to fix this. I'm hoping the fix will be invisible.
I know, I should have taken pictures. I'm pooped. Been a long day. I think the stress of the pin getting launched helped contribute. The half glass of Cab in me doesn't help, either. Well, it helps, but not in a renewed energy kinda way. Maybe I'll take a pic of the new plug screws tomorrow.