Building The Steven's Favorite

[TomG]

I did some work on a rifle for my uncle a while back, a Stevens Favorite 1915 single shot .22 caliber, making a new firing pin for it and fitting a new extractor. After shooting it a few times to make sure the new parts were behaving, I took a liking to the little rifle. It is a great looking, good pointing little rifle and is a joy to shoot. I decided it would make a fun project to build one from scratch so I proceeded to completely disassemble the rifle and sketch up all of the parts, including the stock. After that I decided to make a 3D CAD model of it to check my work and make sure all of the parts fit and functioned properly. I'm just about finished with the model with just a few parts left to model and some timing issues to work out in the action.

I am not making an exact copy of the original gun, so some of the parts won't interchange with an original. Some of the parts will be redesigned for ease of machining, especially in the case of the receiver which was originally cast. Most of the parts on the original gun were quite crude and appear to be hand fitted so making them interchangeable would be quite a challenge.

My plans are to make the receiver out of case hardened low carbon steel for ease of machining, the breech block and other internal parts out of O1, and the barrel out of 4140 if I decide to make it. It's kind of hard to justify the work with all of the inexpensive barrel blanks that are available.

According to the following statement from the ATF website (kindly pointed out to me by another member) it is legal for me to build a non NFA firearm, which this most definitely is with its 30" barrel and single shot capability, as long as it is not built with the intent to sell and the maker is not prohibited from possessing firearms, which I am not. There are also zero imported parts used in this rifle as I intend to build them all myself.

Q: Does the GCA prohibit anyone from making a handgun, shotgun or rifle? With certain exceptions a firearm may be made by a non-licensee provided it is not for sale and the maker is not prohibited from possessing firearms. However, a person is prohibited from assembling a non-sporting semi-automatic rifle or non-sporting shotgun from imported parts. In addition, the making of an NFA firearm requires a tax payment and approval by ATF. An application to make a machine gun will not be approved unless documentation is submitted showing that the firearm is being made for a Federal or State agency.
[18 U.S.C. 922(o) and ®, 26 U.S.C. 5822, 27 CFR 478.39, 479.62 and 479.105]

I have since received a response form the BATF regarding the legality of building my own firearm and they referenced the very same statement, so it's official: I'm good to go.



There is a JPEG of the model below and a link to an eDrawing file:
  Stevens Favorite.easm (Size: 345.35 KB / Downloads: 367) . An eDrawing viewer is required to view the file in 3D and can be downloaded here.

Tom