Rethreading and repairing a scrap muzzle loader.

A guy up the street brought me in this butchered up ml rifle. The breech plug had been cut off. Prob by him as the barrel threads were screwed up too. It was a 4 start 5/8 thread which i couldn't fix. The barrel would not fit thru my small lathes spindle so i dreamed up this other way to drill and tap it. Lined it up with a 1/2" rod in the bore and held the other end in a steady rest. Bolted it firm on my cross slide and let the far end slide in the steady rest with some oil on the barrel. Then i made a new breech plug and cut the flats in my small metal shaper. Drilled and tapped for the small flash screw and she was good to go...Bob

Last 5 pics..Bob

Nice work.

For a moment there when I saw the first breech plug I thought that was the one you made and I panicked a little at the small number of threads that would have been retaining that breech plug. I wouldn't have put my face behind that :o

Glad to see the manufactured plug you made with full thread thread etc. Came out great, well done. That is great creative thinking with the limitations of a small lathe. I'm working with the same restrictions but I will hopefully get into a bigger lathe soon enough. Even if I had the longer Hercus bed I could do a bucket load more but I like how you got around that.

And yes that is part of a brass powder measure pounded in the old plug in the first pic. Don't know the reason it was there when i took it apart..Bob

Why I couldn't see the pics