Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Strange (unique) gun repairs you've seen

Speaking strange repairs and fix-its......This is the tale of "Ducky".

Have buddy in our deer camp that dropped his Ruger 77 rifle one day and the floorplate broke in half just in front of the hinge. We were camping for a week and this happened on the first day....with no back-up rifle available.

He "fixed it" by wrapping duct tape around the rifle and scope to hold the floorplate in place (cut out an opening in the tape for loading and shell ejection). It actually worked pretty well, even if pretty ugly......and he killed two deer that week with the "repaired" rifle.

The next year he arrived at camp with....you guessed it....the same tape from the previous year still in place. When asked why he didn't get it properly repaired once home he told us that it was working just fine and actually seemed to be a bit more accurate with the tape in place.

For four years he hunted with the duct tape in place and killed 7 deer. Then he called before the season and told me over the phone that the original duct tape had finally worn out, so he was going to have to fix the florrplate before he came to camp that year. When he arrived we were shocked to see a fresh duct tape repair in place.

When we laughed and gave him a hard time, his defense was, "At least I went first class with brown duct tape instead of grey....it matches the stock better".

The odd thing was that he wasn't an ignorant redneck who didn't know better....he had a safe full of other rifles and took very good care of them all (including "Ducky"). He was a n experience hunter and semi-gun nut, but he continued to use that rifle for the next 5 years with occational new applications of fresh duct tape (First-class BROWN tape). He may still be using it that way as I haven't seen him for several years after he let the hunting club.

One night at the campfire we were talking and he told me, "I know I should fix that rifle right and it would beeasy and cheap to do, but ever since I put that tape on it....it seems like magic. I've killed one to three deer ever year since then and three of the biggest buck I've ever seen. I guess I'm just afraid to change anything and risk jinxing the streak. Might not make a difference, but why take a chance".

Sort of made sense to me....and I did even weirder things when playing baseball and on a hitting streak!

Tell me about your experiences with odd and strange gun repairs.....

My late father-in-law was an inveterate tinkerer and inventor for most of his life. Unfortunately, as he got into his late 80s, his enthusiasm never waned, but his abilities did. My daughter helped his widow clean out his shop a few years ago and talked her grandmother out of Jay's old 721 Remington .270 that he bought in the early 1950s. I had not seen the rifle in 15 or so years after my wife and I divorced. My daughter brought the rifle to me in pieces and asked that I restore it for her son to use when he becomes big enough (he is my youngest grandson, 10 years old and weighs about 85 lbs).

The stock is a Fajen that Jay inletted and finished. The rifle, magazine and floorplate were bedded with Bondo from the rear tang to the fore end. He must have used a pretty damned good release agent, but even so, I can't quite figure out how he got it out of the stock again. It has a 1-inch thick waffle white line recoil pad that is glued to the stock. The toe of the pad has been ground to match the countour of the wood, but at a right angle to the butt. The whole thing is finished off with varnish that I am sure was just something he had in his shop.

The trigger that is on the action is not the original 721 trigger. That one was intact and hanging from the trigger guard with a nylon cable tie. The trigger is some kind of open design and it has been filed to fit in several places. The trigger guard has also been filed a bit to accommodate the trigger. It looks like he brazed a "thumb pad" to the end of the safety to make it easier to move.

The rifle still has the original Redfield one-piece base and rings that he used to mount his first scope (a 4X El Paso Weaver K-4) which it turns out is the scope in the Leupold box that was stored with the rifle. What happened to the Leupold is anybody's guess. Since the base and rings have been beat up a bit and are showing a bit of rust, I thought that I would replace them. Turns out that the base is not only screwed to the receiver, but apparently is epoxied to it as well. Likewise, the ring lower halves are epoxied into the base.

I have found an original stock in good condition, and managed to get the original trigger reinstalled properly on the action and working. However, by the time I manage to get the base and rings off, the barreled action will need to be re-blued. But, the bore is bright and shiny, and the rifling and throat look almost new and I am looking forward to finally getting it in shooting shape again. Perhaps later this summer...

One I have seen is a customer brought in a .22 RF semi-auto that he tried to make into a full auto.

He got it to where it would fire when the trigger was pulled, then fire again when the trigger was released. You've heard of rifles that would fire as fast as you can pull the trigger?

Well, this one would fire twice as fast as you could pull the trigger. It was sort of fun to play with and I ran a couple of boxes of .22s thorugh it before I repaired it.

I once saw a Savage M110 that the owner had lost the front
action screw to and had replaced the screw with a a bolt
probably that he found in the garage or tool box etc. The
bolt stuck out from the bottom of the stock about half an inch,
the action was a little loose in the stock but it shot fine.

Screw tightened radiator hose clamps as scope mounts.

When we laughed and gave him a hard time, his defense was, "At least I went first class with brown duct tape instead of grey....it matches the stock better".

seen a lot of old cresant or stevens/savage shot guns with nails cut and used for fireinf pins and wire and tape or nails and screws holding the stock togethrt usally brought in by some guy wanting it fixed up justlike it was new when grandpa bought it in 1920something but..... doesnt want to pay any thing over $50 bucks or so for the job!

M1 Garand stock. Somebody wanted a crescent buttpad on it. Cut a curve on the butt, installed a normal recoil pad but broke it in half to fill the curve. Then filled the gaps with sheepskin.

Wrong on just sooo many levels.

Ithaca model 37, 12 gauge pump shotgun, martialy marked with flaming bomb (saw this gun well before gpc sold these stamps). the gun had the barrel unscrewed one turn to convert it into a "takedown". of course the action was ruined because it was fired a lot like this with a loose barrel. what a waste!

I had a MAS36 with a lead filled hole in the end of the stock where the buttpad trap was. I cut off the stock behind the grip, and grafted on a shotgun stock, then sprayed it. Turned out pretty decent.

I know a gunsmith who was reluctant to drill and tap his shotgun for a scope mount but his girlfriend wanted to hunt in a shotgun only state. He had a nice old Ithaca 20 gauge and he used MicroBed to epoxy the scope mount onto the receiver.
He said when he wants it off he would just heat it up.
My favorite is my BIL who bought a used Tikka in 300 WSM. It came with a recoil pad that was glued onto the existing buttplate. Beautiful!
whelennut

I once worked with a guy who had an 1100 Remington which had a Monte Carlo stock. He had cut the barrel down short and put on a mid rib bead. Then to top it off he flame colored the receiver to look like color case hardening. I wish I had a picture of it.

Saw some hardware store shotguns at a farm auction that, besides being almost as brown as blue, had extra thick grind-to-fit recoil pads - not ground down at all.

An old Savage 520 pump with the exposed op rod on the left side. The rod broke, was cut back on both ends and the handle portion of a combination wrench welded in between, a Blue Point Snap On. It worked just fine, I almost bought it just for the conversation factor.

about 14 years old, my friend had a cheap Revelation bolt action 12 guage. hunting doves. jump shooting along a soybean field. he was using some very bad reloads a guy that was dating his mom gave him. i had killed the limit and he had killed almost nothing. one sitting, I said for him to shoot it sitting still since he hadn't killed anything. the gun said "poof". that's all. pellets went about 30 feet into the air and made a soft arc. I gave him one of my shells and it got real exciting.
Evidently something didn't make it out of the barrel and the next shell exploded the barrel. It split the barrel about 4 inches at the the end. the stock split around the handle.

I bought it for $5.00 from him.
I took the stock and tacked/epoxied it back together and sawed the barrel off some. I rigged up a way to test it on lite loads by pulling the trigger with a string and worked my way up to rabbit/squirrel loads and it shot fine.
I put it in my closet and there it sat for 10 years.

I went rabbit hunting one day and as a joke, took it with me along with my other shotgun. They all laughed because it didn't even have a bead site on it. I took a bread wrapper and put it around the end of the barrel and twisted it into a bead and taped it in place. I shot it once to make sure it hit where I more or less was aiming.

one guy bet me I would not kill a rabbit with it and a rabbit comes running by after being missed by 2 people. It was so close I just pointed at it and pulled the trigger. Rabbit was dead. I got my money from the bet which actually reimbursed me for what I paid for the gun and homemade repair and put the gun back in the truck and got my other gun. Satisfied with myself. I haven't shot it since.

I've seen that on trap guns, even some expensive ones, to spread the recoil over a larger area.

That wasn't the deal here, more like "Good enough, lets go hunt."

A WWII friend named "Buster" loved TC Pistols. He had small calibers but wanted to go to a larger big bore. He bought a new heavy barrel in 30/30 and we went to the rifle range to shoot at the gong at 300 yards. Well, in Buster's frail state, he could not take the recoil. When we got home, he immediately got the pistol barrel out of the case, removed the barrel and went to the drill press. He tore a piece of card board off a box near by to use to protect the vise jaws, then clamped the barrel in the drill vise. He drilled four 1/4" holes in the barrel, then we headed to the range.

I asked him about the burrs in the barrel, he said not to worry, they would shoot out, and shore nuff....they did. Gun was much more managable and we hit the gong every shot at 300 yards....I'm still amazed....

Buster had been shot twice, bayonetted, and blown up with a grenade in the Pacific during WWII...I never saw anything he was scared of. He would pull up beside a bunch of gang bangers driving his big boat Cadiallic and scream at them, "You want to swap paint"!!!???? You would not believe the looks on their faces!

I have couple of old miltary mausers that likely had cleaning rod wear in the muzzle end of the barrels. Some bubba used what appears to me anyway, a hand drill and bored out about two inches of rifling at the muzzle end. From I can see with my bare eyes, the rifling appears to be even right up to the end. They shoot 3-4 moa with 50 year old surplus and 2-3 moa with Remington 170 gr load. I don't think it was counter bored, because they appear to be a little off centered.

I've seen quite a few of the counter bored Mausers, seemed pretty common with VZ-24s and 24/47s. It was an arsenal fix.