Gunsmithing horror...UPDATE

[El Chivo]

I received my crooked-shooting 336 back from Marlin today, they returned it without working on it, but found the source of the problem. With the 336, this was covered by a plate and I had no idea, it looked straight when assembled.

hole.jpg

I have gotten all my tang sights done at this same shop, they are supposedly as professional as it gets. Yet they did this, and didn't say anything to me about it, just hustled me out of the shop and on my way. It's quite a drive out there, yet I have to go back to see if they can refill and redrill (two more trips). AND IT'S NO LONGER PRETTY!!!!!!!

I think the main rear hole is ok, just the one that prevents it from rotating.

[O.S.O.K.]

Looks like Jack Daniels was in the shop that day....

Man, I would call the owner and tell him about this - they really should weld that up, refinish and re-tap and drill that for you.

Rediculous.

[J Miller]

If you weren't in CA I'd think the same gunsmiths (term used with bile in my mouth) got to your Marlin too.
Hope they'll make yours right. Mine is pretty much ruined.

Joe

[Sixgun]

El Chivo,
Truely a major botch job. A drunken Haitian could have done better.

Thats going to be quite a job welding that up and making it "right". It (color and texture) is never going to match up correctly unless a quality 'smith does the job and thats not going to be cheap.

I have found numerous times that on guns that I do not want to D&T the tang that the stock bolt alone will do a good job of holding it in place.

You can fill in the crooked hole will a filler screw. Then scratch up the base of the tang sight along with scratching up the part of the tang that is covered by the sight. Degrease it all real well and slap on the best two part epoxy you can buy. Install the sight along with the stock bolt and crank her down, all the time lining up the tang sight with the front sight. (Your eye will get it amazingly close)

Not only do I do this with regular shooting guns but also with a very nice 1895 Winchester that I use for elk hunting. I feel confident that it all stays tight.-------------Sixgun

[Pete44ru]

If by "plate" in "covered by a plate", you mean the Lyman tang sight sub-base for late Marlins, that provides for not drilling through the serial number atop the tangs - I wouldn't send the rifle back to that butcher, just ask for a full reimbursement, including the freight back/forth to Marlin.

THEN, I would relocate the hole in the sub-base, ILO further diddling with the rifle, to align the sight/base.

.

[El Chivo]

they also ground down that flat Marbles screw in an effort to hide it inside the base

[jnyork]

El Chivo,
I have found numerous times that on guns that I do not want to D&T the tang that the stock bolt alone will do a good job of holding it in place.

You can fill in the crooked hole will a filler screw. Then scratch up the base of the tang sight along with scratching up the part of the tang that is covered by the sight. Degrease it all real well and slap on the best two part epoxy you can buy. Install the sight along with the stock bolt and crank her down, all the time lining up the tang sight with the front sight. (Your eye will get it amazingly close)

I have done this with 3 guns, a Marlin 39a, a 336a in 30-30 and a 336a in 32 Special. Works fine. Several of my fellow silhouette shooters have done the same thing. We shoot hundreds if not thousands of round per gun per year and have never had any problem with it. Put a little blue LocTite in the threads of the stock bolt. I have one friend who didnt like the looks of the unfilled mount screw hole in the sight so he cut the head off the mount screw and epoxied it in the hole! Anyway, good luck with your project.

[jdad]

There are "gunsmith's" and there are "machinists" that attempt gunsmithing. My understanding is that there is a commercially available alignment jig, so this does not happen.

You have my sympathies. I would "ask" that they replace the firearm or take them to small claims court.

[awp101]

Wow...

[oldguy]

was the gunsmith ***?

[AJMD429]

It's a shame that some "gunsmiths" are so bad...! I'm NOT a good 'machinist', and anything but a 'gunsmith', but when I see them do stuff even I would be ashamed to have done, it makes me wonder how they can have mirrors in their homes.

It makes me feel sorry for the GOOD gunsmiths out there, because they undoubtedly lose business as gun owners decide not to take the risk of using a gunsmith for minor repairs and so on, and do it themselves. They also probably face a more 'hostile' customer base since half the people bringing guns in to be worked on have had bad experiences with other gunsmiths.

[86er]

The problem with the "gunsmith" is that he/she may be good at one thing but not another, or may not be good at anything. I can fix a shotgun just short of resorting to magic. I don't touch rifles or handguns. I apprenticed with a shotgun maker and was dubbed a "Gunmaker" by them. Their "Riflemaker" title is completely different for the obvious reasons. See if they'll fix it and then find a "rifle guy" to use from now on.

[mescalero1]

Here we go again!
" use a little blue loc-tite "
once again,
there is a color coding scheme to loc-tite
but it is NOT universal
using loc-tite properly is NOT for the unitiated,
please go to the website and utilize PROPER thread terminology.

[Ysabel Kid]

[Gary]

El Chivo,

Please PM me the name of that gun shop so that I do not take my Mauser there for work.

[adirondakjack]

A) No matter what ya do short of sending the rifle out to a magician like Doug Turnball (big bucks) it is not gonna be right.

Sooo, B) I would go to said GS and get yer money back, even if that meant threatening small cclaims for their butchery.

C) then clean it up real good, apply car wax to the bottom of the base, mix up a dollop of JB weld to put on the tang, put the sight in place, align carefully, snug the back screw and let stand. You ought to have a little bit of a JB weld "plug" sticking up through the screw hole, enough to keep it from swivelling, yet still not stuck tight to the sight base. It will be fine to use, though yes, this jerk messed with the value of the gun going forward, should you ever want to sell it. THEN go to the barbershop, bait shop, local filling station, and show everybody pics of what this jerk did. He deserves the free advertizing.

UNLESS he wants to BUY yer gun for replacemnt value.... (fat chance, but worth shot if he thinks yer gonna make his life really miserable he might do it....)

[bdhold]

I think the problem is that most gunsmiths mostly work on ARs and don't THINK about the tang sight installation before they take it on. Sure, install that for you for $40, thinking drill and tap a hole.
When they get into the project, it's more than they bargained for, so they give you a short solution for them.
http://www.levergunscommunity.com/viewtopic.php?t=25038

[L_Kilkenny]

I'm trying to figure out how the heck they did such a horrid job. My 14 year old could do better.

Examples like this are one of three reasons I do stuff like that myself. The 3 reasons are: lack of qualified gunsmiths in my area, don't have money to pay em and I'm able to do stuff like that myself. Drillin a hole or 2 isn't brain science but those guys sure toasted that project.

LK

[KCSO]

Fill the hold with good wire weld and dress down. If you don't want to re blue the whole receiver you can match in with Brownell's Oxpho blue or by rust bluing. The gun isn't ruined just a botched job. If a GOOD smith does the work you will never notice the repair. This is no more difficult that filling pits on any restoration job. If your smith can't do a simple repair job like that you need to look elsewhere. I could see drilling a hole say .005 off center due to a chipped bit or a slip of the wheel on the milling machine but that doesn't even look like someone was awake! Here I repair misdrilled holes all the time, but usually it's Joe Blow working at home with a hand drill.

[JB]

That looks like something I do the garage with my Black and Decker. On second thought, I think I could do better than that with my Black and Decker!

[Modoc ED]

El Chivo,
Truely a major botch job. A drunken Haitian could have done better.

Thats going to be quite a job welding that up and making it "right". It (color and texture) is never going to match up correctly unless a quality 'smith does the job and thats not going to be cheap.

I have found numerous times that on guns that I do not want to D&T the tang that the stock bolt alone will do a good job of holding it in place.

You can fill in the crooked hole will a filler screw. Then scratch up the base of the tang sight along with scratching up the part of the tang that is covered by the sight. Degrease it all real well and slap on the best two part epoxy you can buy. Install the sight along with the stock bolt and crank her down, all the time lining up the tang sight with the front sight. (Your eye will get it amazingly close)

Not only do I do this with regular shooting guns but also with a very nice 1895 Winchester that I use for elk hunting. I feel confident that it all stays tight.-------------Sixgun

"Loctite 380 Instant Adhesive Black Max" works well for that purpose. I have done what Sixgun is talking about with tang sights on a couple of my Winchester Model 94s.

I even used it to re-fasten a front sight on a Ruger Vaquero. I don't have the gun anymore but the guy I sold it to is still using it today with no issues.

[Pathfinder09]

There are gumsmiths , and there are plumbers. This guy is a plumber.

[Chuck 100 yd]

He must have been drunk. I have drilled and tapped a couple of Uberti 73`s for the tang sight front hole using a Makita cordless and they are as accurate as the ones I or others can do in the mill. It does take care and a certain amount of skill but not a big deal at all.

Has anyone fiddled with installing a damper in a stove pipe and trying to get that hole dead center so it will work right?

I watched my 81year old grandpa do it once. A well placed shot from his Winchester .22 and the job was done and dead center to boot!

[El Chivo]

Ok, I did some thinking and decided to give Bain and Davis a chance to redeem themselves one way or another. I figured, as it was, with the hole drilled off center, it was a job for JB Weld anyway, it couldn't really get worse.

I also decided I wanted to keep that rifle since it's no longer made. This is the 336A with the end cap and cheaper stock, and I wanted that specifically. Plus I've already had a trigger job done.

I figured that with this wake-up call the owner would check the gunsmith's work carefully, what with their reputation on the line and all. I figured if they could do it right with the exception of a cosmetic blemish, I would be ok with that. If not, I could always do the JB Weld thing later.

Pete, the owner, was very officious and accomodating, and offered to refund me the original charge and my shipping back to Marlin, and fill and re-drill. I said ok. I decided not to get into things like cosmetics and lost resale value. This is not a collector's gun. But, I said, there was the issue of the original screw. The gunsmith had ground down the head of the screw in order to twist the tang sight back so it looked reasonably straight to the naked eye. Pete said he would order a new one, and he wrote it on the ticket.

Here's a picture of the screw in question compared to a new one. You can see how he ground the head down. The reason I wanted a new one was, with a centered hole, the smaller head wouldn't touch the sides of the hole in the base, leaving wiggle room.

screws3.jpg

So two weeks later I drove down again (60 mile round trip!) to pick it up. I was a little suspicious that they could order a new screw and do the job that quickly, so I brought my screwdriver set with me.

tang1.jpg

In the shop, the tang sight looked straight and felt solid. Still I decided to remove the sight and look at the screws. Sure enough, upon removal, I could see the old screw was still there, no new screw had been ordered.

tang2.jpg

We began a little discussion as to why I wanted the original screw, with the larger head, so it would be in there tightly with no possibility of side to side movement. But, I said, I could order one myself and screw it in there. I really didn't want to drive back down.

tang4.jpg

Then I removed the main screw, to remove the base and look at the cosmetics. The hole looked good, and looked precisely centered.

However, when I replaced the base with just the main screw, and tightened that down, I could see that the second hole was drilled about 1.5mm south of center. Better than 3 mm east, but still not good.

tang3.jpg

That explains why they used the cut-down screw. A full sized headed screw would not fit in there at all.

Well, I my voice started getting a little strident as I explained how to drill a hole. Start with a dimple, and check it with the base to make sure it's in the right place. If it is, drill a pilot hole. If the pilot hole is off, move it slightly as you enlarge it. Drill a larger hole each time while checking it with the base to make sure it's centered.

Pete was pretty embarassed, and offered to re-fill and re-drill AGAIN, and also suggested enlarging the hole in the base. I decided that I could do that kind of monkeying around myself. If the gunsmith can't bother to be careful in a situation like this, then I'm better off with JB Weld. Pete did take care of me in the $$ department, he refunded all my money plus $20.00. He also offered two boxes of ammo which I declined, since I need to sight in with my own stuff. But he tried. I am disappointed, but I think he stepped up with the refund as well as could be expected. Too bad about the gunsmithing, but it's tough to get good help these days.

I may try using the cut-down screw, and cut it down more so it's nearly a shaft. There will be lots of space, which I'll fill with JB Weld. If I do it right, I'll have a semi-permanent installation, a metal shaft with a JB Weld washer (that is off-center, but won't allow movement). However it couldn't be tightened if it ever works loose, unless I drill out the JB Weld and start over.

I could try to retap the whole thing larger. I have a tapping set, and this might work if I have the proper size. It will have to be much larger to move the hole. As you can see the current hole butts against the edge of the hole in the base. I'd have to enlarge the hole to almost that full size. And the screw that would go in there would have to have it's head cut down to fit the countersinking.

I could also install the screw, grind off the head, and start over with a smaller hole and washer that will fit the base. Looks like I'm in for a little Dremel time.

Well just thinking out loud right now. At least from now on it will be somebody who cares about doing the job right. But sometimes it seems like I do nothing but fix other people's messes.

[kimwcook]

I just don't get how you can screw up the hole to begin with and then to have it returned and they still didn't center the hole. That's inexcusable in my book. I give the owner credit for admitting the screw up, but dang, fire the gun bubba that screwed it up TWICE! Or if it wasn't the same guy they need to clear the bench and start over. That's a job any decent apprentice should be able to do without guidance.

[Old Savage]

OK, who did this and the picture doesn't appear to be there.

[TedH]

And Bubba continues to make a living boogering up nice guns........

[GonnePhishin]

OUCH, the guy who did that kind of work is a real son of a pelosi.

[John in MS]

Hmmmm.... He permanently defaced and devalued your rifle.

I have just one quick question:

If you keyed the heck out of his nice new car, not once, but twice, would a "repair" with wrong-color Krylon spray-paint and offering a whining, so-called "apology" + $20 constitute making fair restitution?

Sorry for your trouble, and I sure hope you can find an honest, competent gunsmith!

John

[J Miller]

Skip the JB Weld, that's as much of a bubba job as you already have. Find someone who can weld, have it welded up and properly drilled and tapped.

I can sense your frustration level, as I've not only been there with my Marlin MR-7, I'm still there. I've got a gunsmith lined up who said he'd use a wire welder what ever that is and properly fix the holes. Then refinish it. That is what needs to be done to your rifle. Not JB Weld.

Joe

[KSRtrd]

This is why there is a couple of worn levers in my safe, there is noone in my area to give them a tune up that I know of.

[W.E.G.]

Ya gotta think, everything that "gunsmith" knows about his trade, he learned from watching cartoons.

[El Chivo]

JM, I'm trying to be philosophical about it. Right about now I have a lot of things going on, and I wanted to get this behind me and settled. If I go the JB Weld route, I could have it finished tonight, and it should stay solid for a long time. As long as the tang sight is properly mounted and solid, I'm not too worried about the resale value and such. This will just have to be the rifle that they remove from my cold, dead fingers.

I already mentioned I've been driving 30 miles each way, and I know of only one other gunsmith in the LA area, and he might do good work but the attitude there is the epitome of the musty, snooty gun shop. I also know of a gunsmith who does good work in his home, and I think I'll show this to him and see what he thinks. He's good with trigger jobs and unjamming ing things but I don't know if he does drilling and tapping. But basically I'm overwhelmed with things that need to get over and done with. For one, I have an infected jawbone that needs an oral surgeon, because the clown that did the root canal (twice) left something behind. This will be the third time going in for that root canal. The last thing I need right now is to be shipping this gun back and forth or driving even farther.

The happenings with the rifle are par for the course in California. If you screw up, hide the result and BS your way out of it. No one respects the work, the clients, or even themselves, not really. This is true where I work, we make eyeglasses, and our managers try to slide lots of things out past me and to the clients. They don't mind sneaking things through, as long as they don't get caught. No one has integrity or character, it's just all about strutting your stuff, getting over and not getting caught.

My reason for taking it back was 1) if the saga is over, great, but also 2) to see if that shop was a good professional shop that just made an honest mistake or if they were like so many other places. Well I guess I learned.

I guess I'm my own gunsmith now, so that's not altogther a bad thing. I took stuff there because I didn't feel as competent as a good professional shop. Well, I don't feel that way anymore.

Oh, by the way, I took the stock off and looked at it more closely. The hole is located wrong as you can see, but it's also crooked, canted about 10-15 degrees forward. It's not drilled perpendicular to the tang. If it was done with a drill press, then the rifle was laid down with the barrel flat and the tang sloping down, then drilled straight down. I could do better with the rifle held between my legs and my eggbeater handrill, sitting in a van doing 65 on the freeway.

One thing he did in the shop was loosen the main screw, then ease both screws in until the thing was tight. Problem with that is the tang sight is not really seated on the tang. Because the two holes are too close together, tightening both screws down little by little may feel solid but the base is going to not be flush on the tang, might be canted slightly, etc. This kind of fudging, and counting on that I'm not going to know the difference, is what I mean about respect for the clients. He didn't expect me to show up with my own set of screwdrivers and inspect his work on the spot.

And I believe they just took this in like any other job, blew off the instructions, and if it's the same gunsmith, probably didn't even talk to him or ask him to be careful. If he spent 10 minutes either time I'd be surprised. I might just scope the gun, but I don't really want to, and when they did the original job they didn't save the original tang screws. When I asked for them, it took 20 minutes and they gave me the wrong ones. So to return it to the old tang screw I'd have to order one from Marlin.

I should also say that in previous years I've had other tang sights done with no issues. This is the first time I've seen Bain & Davis looking like just any other California business.

[J Miller]

El Chivo,

It seems you have the twin brothers to the gun butchers here in IL. Same exact thing you described just 2500 miles west. A crying shame. People have no respect for themselves or others.
I have 8 botched holes in my Marlin MR7 from two different gun butchers here in Springfield. I'm heart broken but I haven't given up yet. And I'm not gonna bubba it any further. I've lined up a gunsmith that is sure he can make this right and the prices quoted are good. I'll wait till he can get to it in a couple months then go from there.
That is why I said don't use the JB Weld. But I understand if you do.

Joe

[dbateman]

El Chivo
that is a horror storie right there any good smith shuld be able to do the job you
ask them to do you have shown grate amount of patience wile deling with theas people

I no you dont want to do anthing with the rifle right now and I wouldnt eather
but the best fix that I now fow holes is to got a good tig welder to repair the hole
them drill holes your self
there are some good smith around that can still weld drill tap and refinsh your rifle
thay are dam hard to find.....if you find one let us no
wish you luck Dave