Do-It-Yourself Takedown Tools

We’ve all seen firearms that have been manhandled during disassembly by someone who didn’t have a clue howa particular part should come out of the firearm. To avoid this problem, whenever I need some sort of gizmo that will help me remove or reinstall apart back in a firearm without damage, I try to make it myself if I can’t purchase it at a reasonable cost.

To me, nothing could be more unprofessional than to hand over a firearm that I’ve been working on that has an added scar that wasn’t there when the customer brought it in. In this feature, I’ll go over some of the tools and fixtures that have helped me out over the years, and tell you how they work and how you can obtain them. Punches You probably already have an array of punches in your disassembly/assembly tool repertoire.

Those most often used are the common, flat-tipped punches, the cupped-end punches for pins with radiused ends, and a set of spring roll-pin punches for those hollow pins we see more of these days. Now and again you’ll see some firearms that employ pins of a different nature. The early Remington slideaction rifles, both rimfire and centerfire, use a tubular-style setup that the hammer pivots on. When I come across things such as this, it’s time to put the thinking cap on before proceeding with disassembly.

For these Remington hollow pins, I made up a special punch with a pilot end .200 inch long and .233 inch in diameter. The actual flat-bottomed pushing diameter used to move this sleeve out of position measures .275 inch and is .750 inch long to ensure that the sleeve can be driven completely out of the triggerguard. I devised another style of specialty punch to remove the takedown-screw bushings seen on older Winchester and Remington .22-caliber pump guns.

The disassembly instructions for these rifles recommend that the takedown screw be used to push the threaded bushing out the off-side of the receiver. I suppose, back in those days, if a threaded takedown bushing was ever ruined, another could be ordered from the manufacturer for a dollar or less. Not so these days.

I use a turned, hardened button that has been sized to fit inside the threaded bushings with a shoulder sized to one or two thousandths of an inch below The punch on the right is a shouldered punch used for hollowtube-style pins. the outside diameter of these bushings. This button punch has a 1/8-inch blind hole drilled into the driving end of this mini-punch, so a 1/8-inch punch can be employed.

I made this button-punch from 0-1 steel, and then hardened it with my torch and quenched it in Tough Quench, a quenching oil available from Brownells. Inertia Puller Sometimes I wonder if the folks designing firearms aren’t in cahoots with those who design automobiles. They never seem to take those of us who work on their designs into consideration. One magnificent example is the magazine throat for the Winchester Model 1300 shotgun.

To replace this relatively low-cost plastic part, the magazine tube needs to come out of the receiver. This is where a fabricated puller will come to the rescue. In this situation, we’ll rely on inertia

to separate the magazine tube from the receiver. I made up an inertia puller from a 6-inch long, 2-1/8-inch diameter bar of cold-rolled steel. A 1-1/16-inch hole was bored through the center of this round stock to achieve a weight of around 5 pounds. Two 1-inch insidediameter fender washers will be needed, along with a 1/8-inch-thick rubber washer the same size as the fender washers. The washers will act as stops when placed between the sliding pusher and the magazine tube endcap.

The rubber washer goes against the magazine end-cap to prevent damage to it. Place a small piece of masking tape on the front face of the receiver, and another in the same general area along the magazine tube. We need to make alignment marks on the tape so that, upon reassembly, we can get the striations on the magazine tube lined up again. The barrel will need to be removed, so make sure that the action is to the rear of the receiver and the magazine is empty.

Remove the magazine-spring end cap and pull the magazine spring and follower out of the magazine tube. Slide the 5-pound sleeve over the magazine tube, and install both fender washers over the magazine tube and then the rubber washer. Reinstall the magazine tube The striations that need to be lined up during reassembly are indicated by #2. end cap so that it’s tight in place. Slide the sleeve forward toward the endcap with enough force to begin moving the magazine tube out of the receiver.

It may take a few attempts to begin to get the feel for how much force is needed. You’ll begin to see that the length of the striations on the magazine tube are beginning to be more noticeable as you slam the sleeve into the magazine tube end cap. Be careful not to get the web of your hand (between your thumb and forefinger) between the slider and the washers. This hurts like hell, believe me. Continue this action until the magazine tube is free of the receiver. The plastic magazine throat can then be replaced.

To reinsert the magazine tube, first line up the witness marks as previously defined on the masking tape. Make sure the magazine tube is going in straight, and then begin to gently tap the magazine tube end cap with a lead or babbitt hammer until the magazine tube bottoms out in the receiver. On a gentler note, not all of the pullers required for disassembly are this massive. The Remington Model 121 pump-action, .22 rifle has the ejector button inserted into the front face of the buttstock.

As the action on this rifle is pumped backward, the rear face of the bolt engages this ejector button, which then forces the firing pin forward against the rear face of the spent cartridge case, and then the extractor plucks the spent case out of the receiver. This ejector button is pressed quite tightly into the front face of the stock. I suppose there are those who would remove this part with a Visegrip, but I believe a more subtle approach works better, and there’s less evidence that it had been removed later.

I made up a puller from a 1-1/4- x 2- x 3/4-inch aluminum block that has a 1/4-20 thread tapped into the top-rear end of the block. I use threaded rod for a lot of my projects because it’s cheap and saves me a whole lot of time at the lathe. The aluminum block was milled to remove a 1/2- x 3/8inch notch on the front end. A separate piece of aluminum block the same size as that removed was then fashioned to fit into the milled-away notch.

This piece was then clamped in place and a .213inch (#3 drill) hole was drilled at the center of the front end of this block, with half the hole going into each separate piece. A #10-24 hole was drilled and tapped on each side of the .213-inch hole on the outside face of the block.

Each block then had .020 inch milled away from the inside face where the hole was drilled so that when the 3/8- x 1/2-inch block is drawn tight with the #10-24 screws, there is a strong purchase on the ejector button in the Remington Model 121 stock. A jam nut is then placed against the rear face of the aluminum

block to keep the 1/4-20 threaded rod securely in place. I then chucked a 1-inch-diameter by 2-inch-long piece of brass in my lathe and drilled a .257-inch-diameter hole through the length of the brass rod’s center. The brass rod acts as an inertia puller. A 3/8-inch drill was used to relieve a place at the top of the brass slider to a depth that will accept a 1/4-20 nut that holds two 1/ 4-inch by 1-inch-diameter fender washers in place, with another 1/4-20 nut on top of the washers to keep them tightly together.

These items will act as the stop for the inertia puller when sliding it up. The idea behind this is to clamp the aluminum block onto the ejector-button housing, slide the brass inertia rod up until it hits the two fender washers so that this action gently pulls the ejector button out of place without damage. A replacement head for this same inertia puller replaces the aluminum block and is used to remove forearmscrew escutcheons.

These are the little metal cups that have straight knurling on their outside diameter and are pressed into forearms on slide-action rimfire rifles. I used a 5/16-inch-diameter piece of cold-rolled steel 1/2inch long, and drilled and then tapped one end to 1/4-20 to fit on the threaded rod. The other end of this piece was drilled so that a #4-40 screw would slide through the hole. The #4- 40 screw is fed through the 1/4-20 threaded hole and out the clearance hole in the front end of this piece.

Once the 1/4-20 rod, which the brass slider rides on, is tightened into this small attachment, the #4-40 screw becomes tight in place. Two #4-40 nuts are then installed on the bolt protruding from the little adapter, one on each side of the forearm-screw escutcheon, and then tightened toward one another. Once that is done, the brass slider is used to create the inertial pulling effect on the escutcheon to safely remove it from the forearm without damage to either part.

To get the escutcheon back into the forearm, a nylon punch will put it back in place safely and neatly. For the Remington’s ejector button, a hollow brass punch that will accept the smaller diameter of the ejector button with a shoulder that rests against the larger shoulder of the ejector housing will drive it back in place so that no one will ever know you had that part out of the stock. Soft-Jaw Wrenches I use aluminum for most all of the disassembly tools that I make. That’s for several reasons.

It’s an easy material to machine, which extends the cutting life of my tools between sharpening. It’s also cheap to purchase, strong, and doesn’t make for a heavy tool when completed. But the main reason I like to use aluminum is that it doesn’t mar the bluing or damage the parts I’m working on. Some rifles, the Remington Model 12 in particular, use an outer magazine tube that is threaded into the (continued on page 21)

front face of the action-bar slide. I’ve seen some pretty brutal methods used to separate the outer magazine tube from the action bar. The wrench I made up to safely remove this part and then reinstall it consists of a 1foot length of aluminum bar stock, 3/ 8-inch thick by 1-inch wide. One end has a 1-inch-long by 1/2-inch-deep notch milled away. Apiece was then milled to fit into the void left behind from the milling.

To hold this replacement piece in place, I drilled and tapped holes for #8-32 hex-head cap screws on center, 1/8 inch from each end. The piece was then screwed down tight against the notch cutout in the bar stock, and a 7/16 inch (.4375) hole was drilled at the parting line, on center, through the bar stock. The smaller piece was then removed after drilling, and both of the half-hole faces were milled to remove .020 inch of stock.

This will create a gap between the faces and allow room to secure the outer magazine tube tightly with the wrench. Both of the half holes received a couple of 1/8-inchdiameter by 1/8-inch-deep blind-bottom holes that capture Acra-gel that has been mixed with aluminum powder. The idea is to coat the inside radii with the Agra-gel and fill any tool marks from the drilling, thus creating a smoother, non-marring, surface.

When dealing with any hollow tube that screws into place, consider some means of support for the inner walls of that tube in the area over which the wrench is clamped. This will prevent any collapsing of the outer walls of the tube when the wrench is tightened. It’s always a good idea to create witness marks before any attempts are made to remove mating parts. A small piece of masking tape with a pencil line showing match-up will aid when it comes time to reassemble these parts.

If masking tape can’t be used, as in the case of refinishing, two small scratches or dimples will help you "clock" the part back into place. Conclusions The first consideration before any firearm is disassembled is how it can be done without leaving behind visible evidence of the takedown. Think about how these tools described here are intended to work or how they could be adapted to your particular needs.

Sure, some of these tools only get an occasional use, but the time spent making a tool that will safely remove a component will save much grief in the long run. I