How not to take something for granted, re accuracy

[smellie]

Acra-Glas is a Brownell's product and is sold for gunsmithing uses. It is also very useful for a LOT of strange things.

I have seen it used for reattaching the spikes to fibreglass surveyors' stakes when the expensive stakes are broken off from rough handling.

It is commonly used successfully for gluing barrel liners into shot-out .22s. They do NOT come out.

It has been used for reattaching shotgun ribs which have "come abroad".

As a stock-repair material it has few peers. You can spread the break, degrease it with Brake-drum Cleaner and blow it dry, then make up a small batch of Acra-Glas and squirt it into the crack, then clamp it. (The Liquid form often is easier to work with in this case.) Wipe off any excess which squirts out and, in 24 hours, you have a solid repair which will NOT break again at that point. If you want to break your stock again, you have to do it somewhere else.

For bedding, it works wonderfully. I GREASE my metal parts for a tighter fit into the woodwork. Once set up, you have a bedding job which will NOT shrink or warp.... and you can put it on so very thinly that it barely disturbs measurements and yet still is rock-solid: NO need to go hogging-out half of your stock if all you want is to RESTORE the ORIGINAL bedding to what it once was, 'way back when the rifle was new. HOWEVER, the factory recommends that you use a full kit for ONE rifle. But I am a cheap Scotsman by ancestry and I respect my old rifles and the men who made them; I get FIVE bedding jobs from one kit and still have a bit to play with.

I have even used it for repairing BAKELITE, which is no longer used for anything that I can find. It was sawdust mixed with Phenolic Resin and, in this country, was used commonly on mantel-radio cabinets until more modern plastics were developed in the late 1950s. Phenolic remains liquid until it is subjected to HEAT and PRESSURE at the same time, when it becomes solid instantly. The Germans used Phenolics in grips for Handguns, SMGs and for the outer frames of the MP-38/40 series. The PROBLEM in repairing these is that the interior often is OILY, so a modern adhesive fibreglass resin will not adhere. My Father once rebuilt a 1930s mantel radio for a friend, got it working just like new..... and then dropped the thing, knocking a dirty great chunk out of the irreplaceable Bakelite cabinet. I degreased the surfaces with a rag with some Acetone on it, then blew it dry, smeared on the Acra-Glas Gel, dusted the surface with a tiny bit of super-fine Sawdust, clamped it and let it set up. Next day I smoothed the surface with 320-grit, then 600, then coloured to match with Boot Polish. When I was finished, the break could not be seen unless you knew exactly where to look.

But I am very serious about REMOVING the stuff with Acetone. You have do do it in stages, using a rag soaked with Acetone and wiping the surface off regularly as one layer after another turns to a light-tan powder which looks rather much like Bauxite.

It is for this reason that I also keep Acetone well away from Kar 98s: those laminated Tego stocks were made with Phenolics and I really would not want to de-laminate one of them. They are getting more than a bit expensive to go around wrecking originals.

I do hope that this is of some help.
.

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

Nice looking work on that boat!