By Jim Not all repairs done in the shop requires machinery or special know how. Sometimes it can be a quick fix. This old Colt revolver...

By Jim It's not something that occurs very often, but it's not unheard of. Sometimes the ejector post breaks in a 1911 pistol. In this...

By Jim Sometimes you have an old gun that you want to shoot, but ammo hasn't been available for decades or more. That's not a problem if...

By Jim Cutting a longer shotgun barrel to make it handier in tight places is NOT simply using a hacksaw to chop it off. Rarely have I...

By Jim

By Jim The Hall rifle is a a rare gun indeed. It was the development of John Hall, a resident of Portland Maine. He was a Cooper by trade...

By Jim The Evans rifle is a late 19th century anomaly. It's a unique lever action rifle made right here in Maine from about 1872 - 1879,...

The custom rifle project is completed. Here are the specs: Hand carved curly maple stock. Finish is aqua fortis “stain” which is a nearly...

It’s been since October that I’ve had a chance to get back to working on the custom rifle project I had started on. There have been so...

Now we take a few moments to do a functions check and test fire a couple rounds into the snail can bullet trap. SUCCESS !

I can now begin assembly of the internal components. In order to comply with the rules of building one of these sporting rifles, all...

In the last blog post, I had installed the front gas block and was getting ready to cross drill and pin it in place. I mentioned that I’d...

Once the rear sight block has been pressed and pinned, I install the front handguard latch. It’s a bit too tight, so I carefully filed...

Now that the barrel has been cross drilled and pinned place, it’s time to turn my attention to installing the rest of the barrel...

Now I can turn my attention to installing the barrel and setting headspace. Just a quick reminder about headspace. This nothing more than...

Before I can begin installation of the barrel on this rifle, I had to go back and retrieve the bullet guide from the old stub portion of...

As I had outlined in part 1, I had left off with prepping the parts for installation on the barrel. But this is a “virgin” barrel, and...

This week, I’m going through the steps of building a rifle from Yugoslavian surplus parts on a milled receiver. Of course, there’s a lot...

By Andrew We've all heard the sayings: "modern 9mm is as good as 45", "45 is a proven caliber, it won us two world wars!", "I'd take 15...