Guys, please don't hesitate to clutter the thread on my account. I really enjoy reading this one, and the more added to it the better.
Brent
Very well chaps, you did ask for it.
Ref. My question to Michael regarding the cross pin in the Borchardt custom modified rifles.
Yesterday I found an answer in the Single Shot Rifle Journal Vol.59, No. 6 for November / December 2005. (Reprinted from the American Single Shot Rifle News Vol. 37 No.3. May/June 1983). There is an article there on breech seating bullets. In it, it was stated that these pins were mainly used to permit takedown of the rifle to ease the transport of rifles too and from the range.
Some gunsmiths such as George Schoyen used a slightly longer pin and used it as an anchor point for a breech seating tool. There is also a reference to a drawing and an article by John Dutcher in the 1971 Guns Digest which shows a drawing of this set up, for what appears to be a Ballard Rifle. A similar item could be used for the Borchardt, or indeed many other single shot rifle actions. Admittedly this breech seating of bullets was mainly used by Schuetzen aficionado's, and to a lesser degree by Long Range BPCR competitors.
It may come as surprise to many, but it appears that some of the best shots in the early decades of the last century assembled their rifles at the range, shot their competition, and then took their rifles apart to carry them home in a convenient fashion.
It certainly seems to demonstrate, that you don't need a massive vice and the muscles of a Gorilla to screw the barrel into a receiver in order to get fine accuracy. Essentially the barrel has only to be a hand pressure screw fit, which is then locked in a precise position by a tapered pin, to be very accurate indeed.
Amazing, isn't it, I don't know something, I ask, then the next day I read all about it in a magazine. One of life's strange anomolies.
Re the photo in the previous post, I thought my workshop was a bit rough and ready, until I saw that picture. lol.
Harry.
