Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing Mickey Coleman/gunsmith

Mickey lived about an hour from here and I visited him a couple of times-- he was a gentleman. He did some bedding work for me back before I started building my own guns and, candidly, it wasn't his best work-- this was near the end of his life and I'll blame his macular disease. I'm sure his earlier rifles were great.

As for chambering, I use the method described by William Hambly-Clark in his excellent book, Centerfire Rifle Accuracy. It involves holding the breech end in the 4-jaw by a set of gimbals, allowing the bore to be indicated over the length of the chamber. Robert Gradous uses a similar method, but with a different gimbal design. I'm not going to argue with anyone on whether it is the "best" method but my results with it have been excellent in terms of accuracy.

I have a few buddies that hold their barrels in a similar way. They do excellent work. Mr. Hambly-Clark's book is excellent.

Woodhits,

Cool shims - are those steel ?

Unfortunately I don’t think a lot of people knew when Mickey was really sick, some guys were getting pissed off that he wasn’t responding.... when they just didn’t know.

Shims are 3/8" 0-1, milled in half. I also had the lathe jaws milled with a 3/8" ball end mill to provide a pocket for the gimbals.

That is a pretty cool Idea...

I did the brass tip screws on the spider thing which works well because it’s a soft / sticky (holds well) contact point with the barrel, and am using aluminum shims on the chuck side.
I’m been experimenting with pivotal surfaces but the softer metal is not condusive (it will pass metal plasticity and dis form) to maintaining a pivotal joint.

HOWEVER... if I took your approach and created a soft surface between your pivot and the barrel - say by putting in an permanent aluminum shim ..by creating a small dovetail like channel on the flat of your drill rod, and then insert the shim and stake the ends... I would have the best of both worlds.

A strong pivotal surface that is hard, and a nice soft sticky barrel contact... NICE...

Thanks for sharing that...

Glad you found it helpful. It takes some getting used to but it works.

I’d still want some way to handle it from outside of the chuck, I don’t think there is any perfect way, but each one has its own virtues.

A lot of us are always trying to improve methods to get the best stress free barrel dial in as possible.

I have 9 rifles done by Mickey. Every single one is a sub-moa rifle.

Same with me, BUT he built an entire rifle that was all out of wack when I got it. I named it ScarFace being FIVE gunsmiths had to work on it. This was my very first custom build, and at that time my sound knowledge of really good smiths wasn't known. Got one now and he's(GRADOUS) all I fool with EXCLUSIVELY.