I had thought about buying one of these for some time, but didn't cough up the change until last week. I have no machining ability, so my gunsmithing stays in the realm of polishing, tweeking triggers, etc.
My brother Slickrick has an awesone KMW built on a Surgeon action with the bolt hard chromed. It is silky smooth. I thought I might try this tool on an action I am going to have rebarreled in the near future.
This is the tool. It is a heavy piece of bar stock with a split head. The head has an allen screw you loosen to put in a piece of sandpaper. When you tighten the screw, it clamps down on the paper and holds it while you work the bar back and forth in the receiver.
This is a detail of the split head.
I took the head off my action wrench and put it in a vise. This made it easy to clamp the receiver down and have nice steady work piece.
This is the tool with a piece of paper in place inserted into the receiver. The instructions say to start with 220 or 320 grit. I made a few passes with the 220, but went on to the 320 and worked it pretty hard with that. After I was satisfied that I was getting somewhere with that grit, I moved on to some 400 and that really slicked things up.
I worked the action a few times and felt it was pretty smooth, but I wanted to see how it compared to an action with a factory action. There was no comparison. It really did the business and did not take all that long.
The instruction say it is best to have the barrel off, but I don't think you would have any trouble doing a barreled action. If I were going to do that, I would put a spent case in the chamber and go to it. The bar is not long enough to get to the lug engagements even on a short action.
So there you go. It is nothing overly technical, but it gives gratifying results. Since winter is coming on, it might be something to do if it is too cold to shoot.
david
My brother Slickrick has an awesone KMW built on a Surgeon action with the bolt hard chromed. It is silky smooth. I thought I might try this tool on an action I am going to have rebarreled in the near future.
This is the tool. It is a heavy piece of bar stock with a split head. The head has an allen screw you loosen to put in a piece of sandpaper. When you tighten the screw, it clamps down on the paper and holds it while you work the bar back and forth in the receiver.
This is a detail of the split head.
I took the head off my action wrench and put it in a vise. This made it easy to clamp the receiver down and have nice steady work piece.
This is the tool with a piece of paper in place inserted into the receiver. The instructions say to start with 220 or 320 grit. I made a few passes with the 220, but went on to the 320 and worked it pretty hard with that. After I was satisfied that I was getting somewhere with that grit, I moved on to some 400 and that really slicked things up.
I worked the action a few times and felt it was pretty smooth, but I wanted to see how it compared to an action with a factory action. There was no comparison. It really did the business and did not take all that long.
The instruction say it is best to have the barrel off, but I don't think you would have any trouble doing a barreled action. If I were going to do that, I would put a spent case in the chamber and go to it. The bar is not long enough to get to the lug engagements even on a short action.
So there you go. It is nothing overly technical, but it gives gratifying results. Since winter is coming on, it might be something to do if it is too cold to shoot.
david
