Gunsmithing: Shotguns. Patrick Sweeney
pain. A low bench will cause a stiff back, while a high bench will tire your arms and cramp your shoulders.
You want a solid, sturdy bench. This one has been stiffened by laminating plywood to its top surface. The vise on its overhang has been given additional support with a post. The bench is kept in place by storing ammo on its lower shelf.
A solid vise is a must. This medium-duty one is up to all tasks short of unscrewing a rifle barrel. As the bench isn't up to that either, the barrel vise has its own steel post elsewhere.
If you are going to do some work on your gun at the range, a small vise you can clamp to the bench is very useful.
This heavy-duty vise is everything you'd need.
A cleaning cradle lets you work on your shotgun without having to clamp it in a vise, or hold it in your hands or lap.
An additional holding tool you will find very useful is a cleaning cradle. Not so much for cleaning the barrel (unlike rifle barrels, on most shotguns the barrel comes off) as for scope mounting and working on the beads. Growing up, I learned cleaning and disassembly from my father. He learned from the Army, who taught him how to strip and clean a whole bunch of firearms, none of which were shotguns. And all this stripping and cleaning was done without a bench or cleaning cradle. My first day as a gunsmithing apprentice I looked at a cleaning cradle as if it had been beamed down from the starship Enterprise. By the end of the day I was converted, and would not be without one again.
With a bench and vise in your workshop, you next need disassembly and cleaning tools. A good set of screwdrivers is a must. The standard home screwdriver blade is too soft, too narrow, and too tapered to work on guns. The soft metal is cheaper and less likely to break, but deforms under a load. The narrow tip ensures it fits into any screw slot in the house, but defoms the edges of screw slots on guns. The tip's taper also ensures that it “fits” every screw slot, but acts as a lever to pry the screwdriver up out of the slot of a frozen screw. Unlike a home screwdriver set, which has four or five sizes, a gunsmithing set will have two dozen. A proper blade is hard. A hard blade will break before it bends, and not deform under a load. You should select a screwdriver blade that properly and tightly fits the screw on which you are working. And the tip must be hollow ground. The sides of the tip of a gunsmithing screwdriver are parallel. Unlike the home screwdriver which levers itself out of the slot, the gunsmithing screwdriver transmits all of its force to the screw.
Professional gunsmiths commonly grind their own screwdriver blades. With a drawer full of candidates, if the working screwdrivers on the bench do not fit the screw at hand, they will pluck one out of the drawer and grind it to fit. As one example, Browning shotguns in general, and the A-5 in particular, will have screws with very narrow slots. You will have to grind screwdriver blades to fit. Even a gunsmithing screwdriver set with two dozen tips will not have any narrow enough for the Browning.
The best investment is one of good screwdrivers. A full set like this B-Square will work for 90% of the things you'll need.
Likewise, take your cleaning cradle to the range to aid in cleaning while testing.
Household screwdrivers (the gray one on the right) are not meant for firearms. Either invest in the correct screwdrivers, or modify standard ones to fit.
To grind your screwdrivers, the best tool is a bench grinder. However, bench grinders are noisy, heavy, expensive and messy. You can use a hand-held grinder to modify screwdrivers. Use a sanding drum in the grinder. Clamp the screwdriver in your vise with the tip sticking up 3 or 4 inches. Brace your hands against the vise and use the drum to narrow the tip and keep the sides parallel. Do not overheat the tip or you will soften it. If the tip turns blue, you've overheated it. The two solutions to a softened tip are to either heat it in a propane torch and quench it in oil, or grind the shaft back to hard steel and then grind a new tip in it.
You can see the rounded tip of the household screwdriver on the right. The gunsmithing screwdriver has parallel surfaces, and the tip is square for an even “bite” in the slot.
In addition to screwdrivers, you'll need drift punches. While older shotgun designs have a plethora of screws holding them together, many newer shotguns are assembled with push pins. The Remington 870 and 1100 for example, have but one screw, and that holds the stock on. The only other part that is threaded is the magazine cap, and you don't need a screwdriver for it. The drift punches can be used with a hammer, or pushed by hand, to drift pins out.
Once you shotgun is apart, you'll need cleaning tools for it. The barrel will require a cleaning rod with brushes and patch holders. While on a rifle a one-piece rod of hard steel is needed, on shotguns you can use the jointed rod. There are three reasons to use a one-piece rod in rifles. One, the rod is a tight fit in the bore. On a shotgun, even if you used a half-inch bar as a cleaning rod for a 20-gauge barrel it wouldn't come close to rubbing. Two, the edges of the joints can scrape the rifling and wear it. On a shotgun, the rod won't come close to the bore, and for most barrels there is no rifling. Three, the soft rod in a rifle can hold grit in its surface, grinding the vital throat and leade of the rifling. Again, on a shotgun, the rod doesn't come close, and there usually isn't rifling to worry about.
This is a very nice set of screwdrivers and drift punches, in their own carrying case.
A jointed rod is easier to store. Along with the rod, store your brushes, patches and swabs. To clean the barrel you'll need at least a bore brush. The bore brush scrubs the plastic, lead and powder fouling in your bore. A chamber brush is slightly larger and does the same for your chamber. If you get a dedicated chamber brush, mount it on a short handle and leave it there, if the chamber brush makes a trip down the bore it will get squeezed down (the brass ones, anyway) and will not be useful as a chamber brush. With the short rod you can't forget which one is which. Many owners of Remington 1100s and 11-87s also invest in a gas ring or barrel hanger brush. This brush is used to scrub the inside of the gas system enclosure on the guns. Instead of the gas system brush, I use a degreaser to suck the oils out, and then wire wheel the crusted gunk off. The wire wheel is an extra fine wheel from Brownells that fits my hand-held grinder. With the gunk turned dry as dust, the wire wheel makes short work of any crusty gas system, and takes off any rust that might have formed underneath the gunk.
The Grace set, with properly-ground screwdrivers and brass drift punches. If you knarf your gun with these, you have no one to blame but yourself.
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