Argentino M1879 Rolling Block. Is it worth restoring?

[Patrick Chadwick]

You might need several applications to get the color close enough.

A tip from model railroading:
If the object is going to be looked at mostly in daylight, then make the color match in daylight.
If the object is going to be looked at mostly in artificial light, then make the color match in that light.

Your eyes fool you in such matters. You can see it in the way the surface of the rifle appears slightly different according to whether you place it on the highly reflective brown table top, or on matt white paper. You think it looks the same in both cases, but the camera shows up the difference.

Furthermore, a slightly darker streak on a medium color wood surface is less obtrusive than a lighter streak on the same surface. But it will be very fiddly to darken just those fillings. The oiled wood may take up an oil or spirit based stain much easier than the epoxy-sealed filling. If you let the stain flow onto the surrounding wood, you may therefore exaggerate the color difference, instead of blending it out. Go very, very carefully!

Good luck!

Information

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[killforfood]

Patrick,
I’ve been having a terrible time with the white balance on my daughter’s camera.
I tried to take assembled rifle pictures over a white background and using bright lights but the pictures came out terrible. I had to make major white balance changes using an editor and they still looked bad to my eye. I just couldn’t get them right.
The coffee table pictures were a last ditch, after midnight attempt to get some pictures up that night after the first try failed.
Taking good looking pictures is important to me and I will need to work on that.
I do have a good friend that is very camera savvy. He will be coming home from college over the Christmas holiday and will help me get some better pictures up. After many good years of service, my old camera that I was so used to finally died this year. I try to make due with my Daughters “cheapy” but my friend’s is far better than both of ours put together.

Your eyes fool you in such matters. You can see it in the way the surface of the rifle appears slightly different according to whether you place it on the highly reflective brown table top, or on matt white paper. You think it looks the same in both cases, but the camera shows up the difference.

The camera really does see more than the eye. I often go back through the pictures to pick up fine details that my tired eyes miss. One of the reasons that I take so many pictures is because I have such a lousy memory and it helps to have a well documented history of where I’ve been.

Go very, very carefully!

You can bet that I’ll be VERY careful with any dye near that stock. I will probably swipe one of my wife’s very fine art brushes and snip most of the hairs out of it. All of that will have to wait till though till I purchase the dye. The dye that Claven2 recommends is sold locally (about 25 miles north of me) but the store is in downtown Portland. I DON’T DRIVE DOWNTOWN!!! There is no intelligent life in downtown Portland. I would rather drive crooked blunt sticks into my eyes than drive downtown. I’m most certain that would be less painful. Sorry about the rant but I just won’t do traffic jams, parking meters or mass transit. Fortunately for me, for a few bucks more I can just mail order it ($10 US delivered from a few states over) and avoid all of the insanity.

The Leather Guy leather hides supplies - Product Info



Will my .45cal lead bullets work ok instead of round ball? Obviously the round ball would be easier to drive through but it comes down to being what I have on hand.



The brass rod will also need to be ordered. Everything on this side of the pond is cut to 1 yard (3 feet). 1 meter sure would be nice considering that the barrel is 34” long.

I found some Jamison .43 Spanish brass but will hold off until I have confirmed the chamber dimensions.

.43 Spanish

I’m too cheap to buy Cerro-safe and am working on a home brew solution using sulfur and graphite to cast the chamber with.

Mix 4 parts Sulfur with 1 part graphite




I couldn’t find a local cheap source for graphite so I crushed up a bunch of pencils and ground them into a fine powder using a coffee grinder.










My only obstacle now is coming up with a safe way to melt the sulfur in the house without putting my Wife into orbit. This stuff stinks BAAAD!!!, especially if it scorches or even worse yet if it spills on the burner and catches fire! I could set up a camp stove outside but that uses an open flame. Not safe with sulur in my opinion.

If I make any meaningful progress, pictures will follow.

Joel.

[Patrick Chadwick]

will my .45cal lead bullets work ok instead of round ball? Obviously the round ball would be easier to drive through but it comes down to being what i have on hand.

DON'T TRY IT

I have not yet succeeded in finding anything resembling standards for the .43 Spanish chambering. Any drawings that may exist could only be taken as guidelines.
The bore should be somewhere in the region 0.410" to 0.430" mm, and although the grooves are much deeper than for modern calibers, you have to recognize that this is nearer to a 44 than a 45. You would not try to drive a 45 bullet through a 44 barrel.

The groove diameter will be somewhere around 0.440" - 0.450". Modern handgun bullets are far too hard to be driven through a bore by hand, unless you use the kind of force that is going to be hazardous for your barrel. It will not be feasible to get the degree of upset/obturation/bump-up - call it what you will - that is required to fill those deep grooves.

YOU MUST USE A SOFT LEAD BALL OR BULLET if you want to get the groove depth.

A 429-430 lead bullet might go, but that would only give you the bore diameter, not the groove diameter. OK - that would be better than zero information, which is our present state of knowledge! But if a 429 bullet will not go down with the brass rod method, give it up and knock the bullet out again.

[jmoore]

DON'T TRY IT

I have not yet succeeded in finding anything resembling standards for the .43 Spanish chambering. Any drawings that may exist could only be taken as guidelines.
The bore should be somewhere in the region 0.410" to 0.430" mm, and although the grooves are much deeper than for modern calibers, you have to recognize that this is nearer to a 44 than a 45. You would not try to drive a 45 bullet through a 44 barrel.

The groove diameter will be somewhere around 0.440" - 0.450". Modern handgun bullets are far too hard to be driven through a bore by hand, unless you use the kind of force that is going to be hazardous for your barrel. It will not be feasible to get the degree of upset/obturation/bump-up - call it what you will - that is required to fill those deep grooves.

YOU MUST USE A SOFT LEAD BALL OR BULLET if you want to get the groove depth.

A 429-430 lead bullet might go, but that would only give you the bore diameter, not the groove diameter. OK - that would be better than zero information, which is our present state of knowledge! But if a 429 bullet will not go down with the brass rod method, give it up and knock the bullet out again.

I think the first step is just to roughly measure the groove dia. with a pair of calipers at the muzzle if it's not altogether bell mouthed.

Contrary to Patrick Chadwick, I'm thinking those above bullets may just work.

I believe those Speer bullets are swaged, not cast and are dead soft. So if your bore (grooves) runs 0.447"+ then I think it'll work fine. Just start it w/ a large hunk of nylon or delrin, IF they are the swaged type. I've done similar plenty of times w/ no ill results.

One COULD also reduce the diameter of the rear of a test bullet to reduce the bearing surface. Stupidly, if you have a lathe available w/ collets, just squeeze the back end a bit. Almost no force would be required!

[Patrick Chadwick]

the muzzle if it's not altogether bell mouthed.

I think we would all find it useful to have a pic of the muzzle end of the rifling now.
You previously posted pics of the throat end. They came out very well, because the chamber was in shade. so you could focus on the throat, which is lit up better than the surroundings.

However, at the muzzle end it is the other way around - the bright surroundings of the crown and background make it impossible to get a good photo of the vital last half-inch of the rifling.

Use a piece of plastic pipe, cardboard tube etc to make a hood for the muzzle, and then you can focus a camera on the rifling, which will then be brighter than its surroundings.

[killforfood]

I think the first step is just to roughly measure the groove dia. with a pair of calipers at the muzzle if it's not altogether bell mouthed.

Contrary to Patrick Chadwick, I'm thinking those above bullets may just work.

I believe those Speer bullets are swaged, not cast and are dead soft. So if your bore (grooves) runs 0.447"+ then I think it'll work fine. Just start it w/ a large hunk of nylon or delrin, IF they are the swaged type. I've done similar plenty of times w/ no ill results.

One COULD also reduce the diameter of the rear of a test bullet to reduce the bearing surface. Stupidly, if you have a lathe available w/ collets, just squeeze the back end a bit. Almost no force would be required!

I have some 44cal lead bullets that would work except that they are hard cast for my 44mag.

[Patrick Chadwick]

My only obstacle now is coming up with a safe way to melt the sulfur in the house

Sulphur melts at about 115 degrees C. Lead melts at 327 degrees C. So one way would be to use a suitable small crucible-like object (like the pourers used for casting lead bullets) floated on top of the melt in a lead melting pot. But hold it in there just long enough to be really fluid - do not overheat, or you will be generating some very unpleasant fumes.

As you can see Joel, you are going to wind up with all the stuff you need to do your own bullet casting and black-powder reloading.

Resign yourself to the fact that all this is going to cost more than the rifle. But...

... for the next rifle, it's already there