A lot of people ask me how can they learn gunsmithing? What can they do
maybe don't have the opportunity to go to gunsmithing school. So they won't know
how they can learn gunsmithing at home and it's a pretty simple answer. This is
a Winchester Model 67 22 single-shot rifle. They made it from 1933 or 1934 up
to 1963. One of the single-shot rifles at John Browning designed back in about 1900.
Let's call it a hundred dollar rifle if you would, maybe more maybe less, but it's
just a single-shot rifle. If you want to learn gunsmithing you can learn it all
right here because there's about 40 things you can do to this old 22 and
each one is going to teach you something about gunsmithing.
Now this particular gun has got a steel buttplate on it but steel or plastic is
what you would normally find. You can see that it's not checkered. The grip
and the forend aren't checkered. There's no grip cap down here. This is
not very well defined. No flutes in the in the comb of the stock. You can see
it's got a chrome-plated trigger, chrome-plated bolt.
There's no forend tip on it. The barrel is 27 inches long, a little bit ungainly
for a stock this small. It's got some swivel studs in it. Little chip out
here, lots of dings and scratches and marks in
it but, you know what all that stuff we can change. Let me show you how.
So here's what a finished if you would Winchester Model 67 looks like after
we've done about 40 things to it. I'm just going to kind of describe them one
at a time and we'll show you a little bit of footage of what it looked like.
We installed literally a recoil pad. Now
this is a very thin recoil pad, so it's a hard rubber pad, but the
process for installing this is the same as the process for installing recoil pad.
So in order to do this, you have to learn how to install a recoil pad. How to
flatten everything out, put it on, grind away everything it doesn't look like
belongs there. Polish up the sides, but installing a recoil pad is one of the
things you can learn how to do on an old 22. Moving on up the stock, you can see
that we have defined this area from the toe line into the pistol grip. So if you
recall on the original, it comes just right straight up to the bottom of here.
So we do just a little bit of cutting, straighten the toe line out. So what
you're learning is you're learning to work with it with woodworking
equipment with files and rasp and you're learning shape that pleases the eye.
So you can see this little flute back here, we have reshaped the point of the comb
and we have cut in these flutes all by hand and so this looks just completely
different when you do that work than what the original looked like, more of a
deluxe version if you would. You can see that we have put a pistol grip cap on
this stock. So in order to do that you have to learn to flatten out this the
original surface, shape it round, put the cap on it get it all fit up nice. You can
see that we have checkered the stock and of course that's done after it's
finished. So we got a beautiful finish on the stock, a lesson in and of itself.
Checkered both the forend and the pistol grip and we've put an ebony forend
tip on it. We have put in swivel studs so that you can sling it. What you can't
see down on inside of the stock is we have also glass bedded the stock. So you
think gee how do I learn the glass bed something. Well glass bedding a
Winchester 67 is not much different than then glass bedding the
Mauser Model 98. One more thing that we've done in the stock, we actually
shortened it as part of installing the forend tip and we reshaped the
forend to make it nice and round and cut down all the extra wood on it. So a
lot of shaping on the wood before we ever sanded it, and sealed ,it and filled,
and finished. A huge huge learning project, if you would, to go from the
original Winchester Model 67 stock to what you see here.
We won't actually talk about the lock on this gun
because the receiver is integral with the barrel on an inexpensive 22
like this Winchester 67, but one of the first things that we did is we shortened
the barrel. So the barrel on this gun was 27 inches long and 23 inches makes a
much better sporting rifle. So we cut four inches off the barrel and when you
do that obviously you have to cut a new front sight dovetail and refit that
front sight to it and then you have to recrown the barrel. So interesting things
to learn when you do that. Some years back we used to actually teach
gunsmithing to some of our employees here at Midway and when we gave them the
gun, gave them the project gun, we would have pulled this rear sight up and
bent it so that was way off the barrel and taken out the rear sight elevator
and part of the project then was to straighten up the rear sight. That's not
very hard to do, but also then to build a new rear sight elevator. Well it's just a
little bitty piece of flat mild steel, but you got to cut away everything, got a
cut in your sight notches, got to cut in your serrations here. So that's quite a
challenge for somebody that's never done it hanging on by hand is to build that
rear sight elevator and straighten out the rear sight. Back here a little bit
farther you can see that we have engine turned the bolt on this gun. Now remember
this bolt was nickel-plated or chrome-plated one the other and so what
we had to do was to strip all of that off and then do a standard engine
turning job on the bolt. You can see that the triggers gold-plated. Well what an
interesting thing. You strip the chrome off of the bolt off the trigger at which
time you can replate it in gold. So you get a
beautiful beautiful trigger here that just just a little touch of class and
you can see all the work then that's been done. All the learning that there is
to do on just an old 22. About 40 different things you can do and truly
refinishing the stock reshaping the stock on this is is no different than
reshaping the stock on a Mauser 98 Sporter. It's just handwork it's paying
attention to detail it's doing everything right keeping your surfaces
square and flat, but an awful lot that you can learn from an old 22 and
if you want to learn gunsmithing go find you $100 22 and spend some time on it.