Simple Garand barrel vise,

[RayP.]

This is a shop made version of the ones we used in the service,mainly used in service just to take barrels off,but if mounted properly you can install a barrel in near perfect alignment,mount vise on steel table,insert barrel,put a precision level on the flat of the receiver and shim between bottom of vise and the table until level on receiver flat shows level,as long as vise is not loosened up from table you can insert new barrel,screw receiver on til level by the receiver flat.You want sand areas that contact barrel so you have a fit of only slightly snug when barrel is inserted,if needed you can shim between vise halves to acheive fit. I igave actual barrel diameters in case you have acccess to a mill,gave nearest drill sizes in case you don't,have made a few for friends by using drill bits,works just fine,you drill one 7/8" hole in one block and a 1 1/8" hole in another block and then you saw them in half and you have enough for 2 vises.Drill 3/8" holes as shown for joining blocks together.(there's more pics coming).

Information

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[RayP.]

[RayP.]

Bear with me here,there's more to this,I made an adjustable receiver wrench to go with vise,was in middle of getting pic files and we got hit with nearly a tornado strength storm,lightning hit street in front of house,lost power for 1/2 hr. or so,now I can't access a bunch of my files and computer is making a grinding noise,took 8min. to boot back up,may be on verge of being fried,will take and post new pics when new computer comes in.

RayP.

[RayP.]

A spirit level works ok for doing the one barrel change every couple of years,but I did so many(and time is money for both the shop owner and the customer)so I wanted a faster way to align barrels so I made this up,used it for years til I gave up shop work,just tinker now,gave every thing to son who lives in Nevada,at one time he drew every up in cad,copyrighted drawing and was going to look into patent and manufacturing,never asked him how far he got with it,have to ask next he visits.Each mark =3 deg.

[Chuckindenver]

i made the same type of vise for Garands and M14,s, to set the index, i have an old worn out gas cyl, and have glued a leval bubble on the top, i slide the cyl, over the muzzle, and wrench the receiver up, and use another bubble at the rear accross the ears, the buubles should match up, then i pull and check the site picture so to speak, check headspace, and testfire.

[RayP.]

Keep in mind these type of vise/gage combos only work when you have an assembled receiver/barrel to calibrate the gage to,if you are installing a "fresh" receiver on to a "fresh" barrel,then you would need a diff. gage,one like Chuckindenver has or one like I made that also indexes on the splines as for headspace,absolutely has to be checked,I'm not a big fan of headspace gages,I prefer actual measurements,would take a long diff. post to explain that.In the process of trying to recover pics/notes from my pc,a couple items put together would make a very inexpensive alignment gage,also only good if you have the old assemled receiver/barrel to calibrate to,advantage to this one is that you don't have to level vise first,bolt vise down,put a center mark on top of the stop,slide it over til pointer lines up with index mark on top of stop and tighten stop down so it won't move,unscrew barrel,put new barrel in vise,screw on receiver by hand to check draw,if ok,tighten rec/brl til pointer lines up with mark.