Chuck H, It's so nice to hear form someone who has experience and understands exactly the problems involved but at the same time lets not miss out on the good in pursuit of the perfect. How many smiths are going to have a jig borer? Or even a plain old miller? I always wanted to set up the barrels in a milling slide on my Myford lathe and mill the cut perfectly square across the lumps but what I've found is that cross pins are rarely perfectly square to the frame. Perhaps in newer guns made on modern machinery they are but certainly not on Brit guns from before WW2. I'm sometimes convinced they used jigs made of lead. Their screws are all over the place with no standard diameters except a love affair with 26 TPI. You can't even assume the threads will be Whitworth, perhaps something near Whitworth but a lot of 'em seem to have made their own taps. 26 TPI was the old British Bicycle standard. So you see the problem. The only thing to do is fit the new pin as polished as possible, then smoke in the hook as best you can. I use tiny smooth stones mounted in a Foredom handpiece and won't be satisfied until I'm getting full contact with every surface polished . A good bit of judgment is called for because you have to estimate the wear on the hook and how much metal will be removed before you know what size to make the pin. All of which makes me look askance at people who will do the job for a few hundred dollars. I mean, would you do it for a few hundred?
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