The 10/22 Target Rifle Project part 3: The Receiver

Part 3 of this build, we are now working on the receiver.

If you remember, I purchased a new Charger receiver on Gun Broker. It has the standard satin black powder coat finish.


We will strip the factory powder coating back down to bare aluminum and polish it to a high shine

We will also perform some machine work to install the KIDD rear tang. 

Before getting to the polishing and machine work we'll tackle an easy task:
One of my 10/22 cheap tricks I covered in March, was building your own bolt buffers using chain saw fuel line and stainless steel round stock. Since this is a DIY type build I decided to make my own bolt buffer. 
The materials are perfect for this application. The fuel line is made from Tygon which as you would expect is oil (and gas) resistant and designed to remain flexible for years. Stainless steel is......well there is no need to explain stainless steel.

I ordered up a foot of 1/4"OD x 1/8"ID synthetic Tygon fuel line and two 6" pieces of stainless 1/8" rod. Both pieces were acquired from ebay vendors.

The total outlay was $8 and I can make at least 9 of them, if I am careful with my cutting, which makes the cost of the bolt buffer about a dollar and 5 minutes of time.

I marked the 1/14" on the rod and inserted it into the tubing

 Then cut to length

A test fit showed it to be a tad long

A touch with the belt sander and the fit is flush

Here is my homemade buffer next to one I bought earlier.

To install the KIDD rear tang, we had to machine the back of the receiver and drill a hole for the screw

I did not take pictures of the process, but here is the end result....

The current 10/22 receivers are powder coated, so I needed to remove the powder coating before I could polish the metal.

Before polishing the receiver I wanted to fit the rear tang to the receiver. The rear tang was designed to match the flat rib on the top of the KIDD receiver. 
Also if you are wondering why the hole is low in the recess, it is to make room for a the cleaning hole that many people put in their receivers (hole is inline with the bore).

The different contours left a high spot on each side

 
A little filing cleaned it up and made the transition in-perceivable to the touch

Now it is time to remove the factory powder coating so we can start polishing


I am using Aircraft Paint stripper....weird coincidence that the newspaper used is an article on Boeing's 100th anniversary

After scrapping off the old coating with a plastic scraper we can see what the bare metal looks like

A close up, you can see the metal is just "brushed", not very smooth.

Before going too far, I clean out the lettering with a sharp pick, don't want to risk scratching the metal after I polish it.

I found the metal to be REALLY soft. I could not use anything coarser than 320 grit and I could not use hard pressure. Doing so resulted in the metal "balling" up like a snow ball in the sand paper and gouging the metal

Scratches from the metal in the sand paper

After sanding to a 600 grit finish, I installed the scope mount screws to prevent dishing out the holes, plus they are stainless and will polish up nicely.

almost done, I may have to go to the Mother's polish and finish by hand, my polishing compound isn't "gentle" enough to get a perfect shine on the buffer

I decided Ava needed some more color, so I "borrowed" some nail polish from my daughter as well as some non-acetone nail polish remover.

 After one application

 I let the polish dry under the lamp and a while later performed another application

One final finishing touch, I bought a some new stainless button head cap screws to replace the black one that came with the KIDD rear tang

The bolts head was too large to fit the KIDD rear tang, so I turned it down using my drill and a file