Building The Steven's Favorite

[TomG]

Today was hammer time. In between spring cleanup, I managed to get most of it completed. I chose to mount it on a sub plate as with the breech block and the receiver only the hammer only had one hole in it so I had to add another in an area that would be cut out. I also decided to forego the screws and just use pins, relying on the clamps to hold everything down. I made a design change on the fly and added some extra material on the top for some cocking serrations and also some additional material on the half cock notch to make it more "safe" since the half cock position is the actual safety.



Here, the blank is mounted to the sub-plate that has all the center holes located just as with the receiver. Since there are a few radii that end on this part, I had to indicate the edge of the sub-plate and zero the degree scale as well as center it on the rotary table.



Since there was only one hole in the hammer, I had to be sure to clamp on the hammer while machining to keep it from moving.



The rough shape is finished. The half cock and full cock notches still need to be cut and the top of the hammer serrated.

Cutting the notches in the hammer turned out to be a royal pain. Not because it was difficult work, but because I neglected to get the machining order straight before starting the part. With all of the different angles, it would have been much easier to machine the notches before milling the outline of the hammer. Then there would have been lots of straight and right angle surfaces to work off. The two angles of the full cock notch were cut and the half cock notch roughed out with and end mill, then the half cock notch was finished with a form ground fly cutter.



This was the setup used to cut all of the angles on the notches. Some of them were set with a sine bar and some with a protractor. This pic shows the form cutter ground to cut the deep half cock notch. The bluing (Magic Marker) serves as a witness to show when the cutter touches.



The finished hammer. Each of the eight different angles around the notches was a separate setup.



This shows how the breech block, lever, connecting link and hammer all interact. In this pic, the lever is being cocked and the link is pushing the hammer to half cock. Once there, the link will pass the hammer allowing the lever to actuate the extractor, which is farther down on the task list. I think it only makes sense to make the trigger next.
I had to use the shop for actual work today and between that and the Wings game, not much got done on the Steven's. I did manage to make the sub-plate for the trigger and get a piece of O1 mounted on it, but nothing photo worthy. As soon as I get the use of the mill back I'll get the rotary table back on and start cutting the trigger, probably tomorrow night. My significant other is up north through next week so I'll have a lot of Steven's time when I'm not holding down the fort.