in·spi·ra·tion /?insp?'raSH(?)n/ noun - 1. the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative. 

     I've had the personal pleasure of being in the firearm community since I was young, being raised around them and taught from a very early age all of the safe handling rules and so on. Long afternoons spent at the range with my dad, going through boxes of .22 will always be some of my favorite summer memories. 

      I was also fortunate enough to be raised in a family of "fixers"; my grandfathers were machinists and millwrights, my father was a mechanic and handyman extraordinaire.  Growing up I had an incredible fascination with all things mechanical that was fostered by these role models. Much to my mother's dismay, I loved to take things around the house apart and figure out what made them do the things they did. When I was 10, I was gifted a book titled "The Way Things Work" by David Macaulay and I read it front to back countless times. As I got older I combined the two things that interested me most, firearms and mechanics, and started my journey into gunsmithing. Along this journey in the past and present, people have asked two questions the most :

• How do you get into gunsmithing?
• How do you come up with projects?

As far as "getting into" gunsmithing, becoming a "mechanist", in it's old definition, is the best way I can describe it.  Firearms are machines at their core; understanding their construction and operation is key to comprehending how to work on them. I always recommend learning the fundamentals of machining, welding, and general mechanics to start into gunsmithing.  The second question can be far more difficult for most people to answer.

A 0.050" Difference

      Last year I had purchased a Steyr M88/90 from everyone's favorite military surplus casino based in Florida out of curiosity and a little bit of market research. As a military surplus firearm retailer myself, it's incredibly hard to compete with another retailer offering rifles for $149 if they are as advertised and in working condition. Long story short - they're not. When this particular rifle arrived I personally believed that the price was not worth what was in the box. The bore had turned into a legitimate sewer pipe and was filled with enough rust to be considered a wallhanger; overall beater condition with a cut down barrel. With some stainless steel wire I hung it up over my bench and eventually forgot about it after seeing it almost everyday. 

      Last week I had come across some fireformed 8x50mmR brass and it crossed my mind to reload for the rifle, like I had reloaded 8x56mmR for my previous M95. I took it down from the wires and pulled the rifle apart to finally clean it completely and give it a good inspection out of the stock. There was no way I was going to be able to shoot anything out of that bore which was bent, especially not a full house rifle cartridge.  A few weeks prior to this, my father-in-law and I were talking about the upcoming whitetail season and what we were going to take; I had been looking for an excuse to get a .44 Magnum rifle for a while and was going to research them later this summer. That thought popped in my head as I noticed the Steyr had a completely flat bolt face; a flat bolt face means less work for a caliber conversion. I pulled up the case dimensions of 8x50mmR along with .44 Magnum to discover the rims are only 0.050" in difference from each other on paper, and then tried to load 5 rounds of .44 Magnum into a Steyr en bloc; they fit just fine. And the max chamber pressure of .44 Mag is similar to the M90 loading this wedge locking system used in original military service        

      That little bit of information was all it it took to inspire this gunsmithing project. That small difference in case rims was enough to lay down the framework to create a straight pull .44 Magnum deer rifle out of what most people would consider pure junk.

Weekend Warrior

      SAFETY IS AND SHOULD ALWAYS BE PRIORITY #1.  FIREARMS PRODUCE WORKING PRESSURES IN EXCESS OF 40K PSI WITHIN INCHES OF YOUR FACE AND NECK. IF THESE PRESSURES ARE GENERATED IN SYSTEMS INCAPABLE OF CONTAINING THEM YOU CAN BECOME PERMANENTLY DISFIGURED, MAIMED, AND/OR KILLED. NEVER ATTEMPT GUNSMITHING WORK OF THIS NATURE IF YOU ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH PRESSURE BEARING SYSTEMS AND THEIR LOAD CAPABILITIES.

      With the beginner gunsmith in mind I tried to do this as low tech as possible; there's not a whole lot of beginners with access to machine tools like lathes and mills. Luckily this could be done with hand tools, a Dremel, and a drill or drill press. To start, the old barrel was turned off of the receiver and cut off at the bend just in front of the rear sight. Using the original chamber as a guide, the stub was drilled out to .6406" (41/64) and the liner installed with Loctite 660. This particular rifle headspaces off of the rim and makes it very easy to headspace the new liner. Simply line the new chamber up with the previous breech face. The extractor groove can be cut with a file. 

     When taking an action and repurposing it for a shorter cartridge, its important to remember that the feedway is purposely designed to accommodate the original cartridge length. When a round is beginning to be stripped out of the magazine by the bolt, the bullet itself is already entering the chamber before it is completely out of the magazine. This means that once the cartridge is out of the magazine completely that it cannot jump out of the feedway since it is already partially in the chamber and being guided in. When a shorter cartridge is used in a longer action, it can jump out of the feedway before reaching the chamber mouth and being guided in. To solve this, a simple bent steel "hood" was silver soldered into place effectively preventing the shorter .44 Mag cartridge from being able to jump out of the feedway. 

       Since the .44 Mag cartridge is shorter than the original 8x50mmR chambering, the internal magazine needed just a little bit of work to accommodate the length disparity.  The top leg of the original follower was shortened to match the .44 case and a hickory block was cut to fill in the empty space of the permanent magazine. This block would now act as the new permanent feed ramp and was contoured with hand files and a Dremel to promote positive feeding of the shorter cartridges. After cycling some dummy rounds, the conversion was feeding properly. Since the liner was 18", a few inches of the stock had to be cut off and recontoured to fit the nose cap back on. After about a day and a half's worth of work, this project was ready to test fire.

Ringing Steel

      As with every test fire, I took out the Steyr and put it on a bench at my range and covered the entire action and bolt up with sandbags. After firing a round I checked the spent case, the bolt face, the wedge, and it's locking recess for any signs of trouble. Most importantly I checked the liner and verified that it hadn't moved by comparing reference marks I made earlier. It fired just fine, and there were no problems. To be absolutely sure, this process was repeated through a whole box of .44 magnum ammunition and then I felt comfortable enough to shoulder it and fire. It's an incredibly fun carbine to shoot and it still retains the period correct look for the late 1800's and early 1900's. After a whole afternoon of shooting it, there were still no signs of excessive wear or damage and I felt comfortable enough to call it a successful conversion. Once I finish up the front sight, I'll braze it on and then get everything calibrated correctly for the new chambering. A one piece "period correct" scope mount is also being drafted now so I can mount a scope for hunting season.

Conclusion

      I hope that this project and outline of the thought process behind it helps you find new ways to get inspired in your gunsmithing projects. There's a lot of time spent trying things out until you find something that works, as with any skill. But the finding the things to try out doesn't have to be complicated. It can come to you in some of the most unexpected and simplest ways.

   What are some of the ways you get inspired for your gunsmithing projects? Leave a comment down below!