Reader Forum

Broomhandle Mauser Repair I am embarrassed to have to report an error in my article, "Broomhandle Mauser Repair" (July 2023). I stated that Gavrilo Princip used one to assassinate Arch Duke Ferdinand and his wife Sophia in 1914, something I know I read at one point in my past. However, I discovered that this was mistaken. He used an FN model of 1910 chambered in 380. Apologies to the Readership.

I am not a gunsmith but work on my own guns and a bit on customer’s guns at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Vancouver, Washington. [ I’d say that makes you a gunsmith! – Ed.] The knowledge gained by reading American Gunsmith as well as other things has helped greatly with my customer service. Often it is "Go talk to Dan" and I get great job satisfaction from being able to help customers with many things.

I still reprint "Microlon Gun Juice: Snake Oil For Guns or a Modern Miracle?" by Chick Blood (March 2000) and pass it along and have used it since first reading it, and not just for barrels. I have a stainless Kimber Compact that had and baked it at 275 degrees for an hour to dry. When dried, I put the polished dummy cartridges back into the cylinder and reassembled it.

As a final touch, I installed new white a little bit of rust appear in heavy rain conditions kept under a coat while prospecting years ago in southern Oregon. I cleaned it with alcohol, heated it with a hair dryer three times, and treated the exterior. It was smoother and with no rust ever. The same worked with a Benchmade AFO auto opener knife, the blade on which would start to rust in a few hours.

After treatment, I had lost it in the snow while shooting prone and a friend found it three months later after the snow had melted. Not a bit of rust on the blade. I wouldn’t have been aware of that product without your magazine. Kevin H. Baxter I really liked "Broomhandle Mauser Repair" by Kevin Baxter (July 2023). As always, the article is very informative—except for one small thing.

Consider this article from the WWI Museum and Memorial Collection (The World War. plastic grips on the revolver that the owner had requested and called my friend to pick it up. Working on this still-loaded, badly rusted revolver was harrowing enough that three other gunsmiths refused the work. This turned out to be in interesting project and nice wall hanger. AG org/learn/about-wwi/spotlight-belgian-automatic-pistol). The one they have is 32 ACP, not the 380 as Princip used.

He was goaded on by the Serbian Black Hand organization, a Nationalist group, something not mentioned in this article. That article also states that Gavrilo Princip shot Archduke Ferdinand with an FN Model 1910, S/N 19075, not a C- 96 Mauser. A friend of mine had five C-96 pistols and I did a lot of digging for him. Two are 30 Mauser, two 9mm Parabellum, and the last one a Shansei Arsenal in 45 ACP manufactured in the ‘80s or ‘90s.

It shoots well but I wouldn’t want to fire a centuryold Chinese-manufactured firearm. Mauser never made one in .45 caliber but the Warlords loved the C-96 and the 45 ACP and they had them made in China in the 1920s. Ian from Forgotten Weapons can tell you far more than I can. See

ForgottenWeapons.com/vintage-saturday-assassination and HistoryDefined.net/black-hand-of-serbia. Dan Newhouse Portland, Oregon Rimfire Ri le Aperture Sights I just finished the June issue of the magazine, and I wanted to commend Glen Calvert on "Rimfire Rifle Aperture Sights". That was a good article and I appreciated his take on using commercial rimfire aperture sights as well as the shopmade option.

AR-15 Barrel Extension Fitting I read with great interest Joe Carlos’s "AR-15 Barrel Extension Fitting" (March 2023). I noticed the "slop" in M16/AR-15 barrels when I competed with the Florida National Guard and later as a civilian in High Power matches. I appreciate the analysis done to confirm the effectiveness of the modifications Joe proposes. As an FFL manufacturer who builds AR-15 and AK-47 type rifles, I will incorporate his modification when building rifles in the future. I do have a question.

I have used thin shim stock (0.001) to take the slop out of the barrel. I have not found my shims migrating; therefore, I am wondering if Joe feels Loctite is a critical component of this improvement? Or is its purpose just to keep the shim from migrating? R. M. Layng Robert P. Harrison III Joe Carlos responds. The evolution of my attempts to fix the slop in the fit of the extension to the receiver began with the use of just Green Loctite #620.

When I later tried to improve the tightness of fit I just kept the Loctite and added the shim stock as Loctite was just ingrained in my psyche. Loctite is "slimy" and likely that contributes to the migration problem with the shims. If you are just using shims without Loctite it stands to reason that the migration problem might not be as severe. When you have done hundreds of these using shims as I have you notice that the tightness of fit varies some.

I like it when I can push the receiver 1/3 or 1/2 way on and it gets so tight that you have to hold the barrel in one hand while tapping the back of the receiver with a wooden mallet to force it forward. I will concede that when you get the fit that tight the Loctite may not add much improvement. On the ones where you don’t get the shim quite large enough to get a really tight fit I suspect the Loctite may help some, so I have just continued to use the Loctite all the time.

I will confess that I have never conducted a scientific study of building guns with just the shims and no Loctite. In order to do so I would have to assemble a gun without Loctite and shoot groups with it, then tear it down and reassemble using the same shim with Loctite, shoot groups, and compare them. As a statistician I would want to repeat this for at least a total of ten trials but have not seen fit to go to all that work. I don’t have a firm answer for you based on solid scientific methodology.

As stated above, I suspect that guns having a really tight fit with just a shim would probably be okay without the Loctite. Guns where the shims weren’t cut as fat allowing the receiver to be slid onto the extension might do better with the addition of Loctite. AG