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LRI

Lance Criminal
Full Member
Minuteman
  • Mar 14, 2010
    6,308
    7,386
    52
    Sturgis, S. Dakota
    www.longriflesinc.com
    This one is a present for someone close to me. As a teen, I spent my summers working on a big grain farm in North Dakota. The owner is more of a Dad to me than mine ever was. He has a birthday coming up and I felt the urge to try and say thank you.

    I chambered it in 6.5mm Creed. It works, ammo is easy to find, relatively affordable, and the accuracy/easy-to-shoot behavior of the cartridge fits well for something like this. He's now in his mid-70s but still sharp as a tack.

    Around ten years ago a WY Highway Patrolman stopped by to have some work done. He had a 5-digit SN M700. Some quick negotiations rewarded me with his action. It's been in my safe ever since so I decided to put it to work for this. Once I started, I noticed the cocking cam at the back of the bolt needed a lot of work. At some point in its life, somebody messed with it and it didn't go well. I rolled the dice a little for the fix and it worked far better than I had ever expected. I stitched it up with some air-hardening filler rod and a TIG torch. Turned it back down and noticed a couple of small pits where I'd missed a few spots. Silicon bronze filler rod is a pet favorite of mine for stuff like this. I call it "machinist's bondo" as it's great for patching up small inclusions. The best part is, that you don't have to melt the substrate to use it. Just get it hot and dab the rod at the flame kernel on the torch. It'll melt and adhere to the part without any drama. The photos show a few small traces of goldish-colored stuff. That's the S.B. filler.

    Cutting the cam feature again was pretty simple. A 4th axis on the mill makes quick work of it.



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    With that fixed, tuning up the receiver came next. The 5-axis process we've had for a few years now makes this pretty simple. In addition, I did the base holes, added a side release, and set it up for the M40 A1 style base we make.


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    With the lugs cleaned up, I put the bolt handle back on it. I do this last so that the PE can be restored because chewing on the lugs sets everything back some.

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    I've always liked how a skeletonized handle looks from us so I had Kalyb here do it for me. While he was at it, I had him run our jeweling program over the bolt cylinder as well.

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    After all that, setting up the extractor and dual ejectors was next.


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    Since the Remington BR, parts are a whole lot more work to source. Shrouds were tough to find at one point, so we ran a batch ourselves. This is one of our SS shrouds that we faceted for this build.

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    Clip Slotting...

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    With the receiver/bolt work done, onto hanging a stick on it. M24 contour from K/P.

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    Stockwork...

    I ordered a bunch of blank M40s from McMillan. I was not expecting "smear" finish flat tops, but that's what I got. Inlet the top half, bed it, then back in the machine for the cleanup followed by flipping it over to do the bottom side. I stuck the presentation pad on here and wrapped it up by sticking a couple optional pieces to it. Bipod rail and flush cup hardware. The current trend by some stock makers to gut the inlet like a fish doesn't appeal to me. I get why they do it, the web between the trigger and magwell does tend to crack pretty easily. I started pinning these a long time ago. It's been a good fix for us.


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    Last edited:
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    Bottom side work.
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    Finished piece:


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    I bought this optic not considering the base we make. The glass is so short/fat that it creates a problem. Trimming the base wasn't something I was enthusiastic about just because the corner radius features would be a bugger to try and redo and blend to the way they look normally. This was my fix instead. Toss it on the rotary and rotate to the taper of the bell on the glass.
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    Man, that is incredibly beautiful Chad! That'll be an awesome rifle for your adopted dad. Thanks for taking the time to put this thread together.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: Modoc
    Damn....Most dads get a macaroni necklace and the big peice of chicken.🤣🤣🤣 I would take odds on it getting "a little dusty" in the room when he sees that.
     
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    Dang nice rifle. Very thoughtful gift.
    Funny how much we remember folks who were pivotal as we get older.


    BUT, you painted a smear stock????

    No crayons for a month!!! 🤣🤣🤣
     
    Dang nice rifle. Very thoughtful gift.
    Funny how much we remember folks who were pivotal as we get older.


    BUT, you painted a smear stock????

    No crayons for a month!!! 🤣🤣🤣


    I'd call them "sorta Smears" to be more accurate. The blanks I buy always come with bondo patch fill. The little pin holes and whatnot are dabbed so they are speckled with blue dots.

    My guess is that these were smears that didnt quite make the grade. So, they filled the blems and shipped them to me. They have jitterbug sander marks all over the outside of them.
     
    I'd call them "sorta Smears" to be more accurate. The blanks I buy always come with bondo patch fill. The little pin holes and whatnot are dabbed so they are speckled with blue dots.

    My guess is that these were smears that didnt quite make the grade. So, they filled the blems and shipped them to me. They have jitterbug sander marks all over the outside of them.


    That makes more sense.

    OK, back on for crayons and some Marlboros come Monday from the fat guy….
     
    Gorgeous work @LRI , for being such a small detail, the compound radii placed on the front of the rail to match the taper on the object lens is an extremely nice touch.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: sgtsmmiii
    That's a really nice thing to do and the rifle looks awesome. It's cool that you took those pics and posted it so we could see the stages of it. Well done bud
     
    The stock work & paint scheme/stencil work is always on point. Very unique patterns!
     
    • Like
    Reactions: Modoc
    That's some mighty fine machining and craftsmanship there. Really impressive work.

    He must have really made an impression on you.
     
    I'd call them "sorta Smears" to be more accurate. The blanks I buy always come with bondo patch fill. The little pin holes and whatnot are dabbed so they are speckled with blue dots.

    My guess is that these were smears that didnt quite make the grade. So, they filled the blems and shipped them to me. They have jitterbug sander marks all over the outside of them.
    Is it possible on one of these stocks to reshape the palmswell to mimic a certain brand? Also, would you be able to CNC one of these flat-top blanks to fit a Browning A-Bolt II long action? Nobody makes any aftermarket stocks (no tactical ones at least) for the Brownings, and I have a custom that I would love to get one of these stocks inletted for it, and still keep the original A-Bolt II Composite Stalker (plastic stock) palmswell, if possible?

    Also, that rifle turned out amazing. Awesome work! I will definitely be getting yall to do a build (or rebuild) for me someday, especially since you do the side-release bolt stop, M16 extractor, and dual ejectors.
     
    Another pièce de résistance!!!
    I'm really looking forward to getting down to the nitty gritty details for my build with LRI.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: DIBBS
    People like you amaze me, I got this part and this part, I can do this get this part and a little machining and here comes a beautifull and accurate rifle. My daughter paints and draws and it amazes me that a canvas some paint and her talent and a beautiful painting appears. There are artists in many trades and the vision they have amazes me.
     
    Could have used that bolt repair technique to fix that messed up bolt body I sent you a few years ago.

    May send it back to you as having a spare .308 R700 bolt is better than having a piece of scrap steel.

    Why did peeps mess with the cam cut? What were they trying to achieve?
     
    Could have used that bolt repair technique to fix that messed up bolt body I sent you a few years ago.

    May send it back to you as having a spare .308 R700 bolt is better than having a piece of scrap steel.

    Why did peeps mess with the cam cut? What were they trying to achieve?


    I don't know the history of this action. When I kicked off our group buy in 2013 a WY Hi Po showed up one day with it. I have a soft spot for old/relic receivers like this so I started my pitch to talk him out of it. He agreed and that was that. The thing has been sitting in my safe ever since.

    It wasn't until I started on this project that I finally noticed the issue. With the SN being so low it's over half a century old. One can only guess. . .
     
    You built this one on a 5 digit.

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    When you contacted me to let me know the cam on the original bolt was trashed fortunately I had another .308 bolt with the early, svelte, handle ready to send you.

    I like those early bolt handles with the more round bolt handle than the newer rectangle ones.

    They also must contain a ton of nickel because when you blue the bolt the body generally will come out black but the handle tends to “plum”.

    If you looked at a rack of mixed year seven hundreds the early ones pop out with their purple bolt handles.

    Some might consider that a defect in finish but I love it.
     
    The stock work & paint scheme/stencil work is always on point. Very unique patterns!


    The first stocks we ever painted here were painful to do. Resources (money) were very limited. The solution Kalli and I came up with back then was to make stencils using masking tape. We "looted" a Walmart one evening for all of their big plastic cutting boards.

    I copied images of various camo patterns off the web and figured out how to import them into my CAM software. Once I had that, throwing toolpaths onto them was pretty easy. Using a .06" dia ball endmill I machined the patterns into the cutting boards. From there, we'd lay 3" wide masking tape onto the board and run a ballpoint pen in the groove until it cut through the tape. Then, peel and stick.

    It sucked as it was the better part of a day to do one or two colors.

    Fast forward a few years. We bought a vinyl cutter and I found some open-source software. Having no idea what I was doing, I had it in my head to create a "digital tigerstripe". -John Wayne movie meets Call of Duty...

    To this day I don't know what I did. I had some basic layout that was dumber than shit in appearance. I touched the keyboard and (guessing) turned on some sort of filter. The screen changed, I thought it looked cool, so I smashed the save button a hundred times and backed it up to a few different drives knowing I'd never be able to recreate it.

    Someone here on The Hide a short time later commented that it looked like a "digital misprint." We've been calling it "DMP" ever since.
     
    Makes me want to find another M700 action to send to you guys. I had to fondle & photograph the last one you did for me before finishing the bbl work & Cera Kote - did my best to show a couple of other guys who started doing rifle builds about the same as I did how nice your 5-axis action truing turns out, as well as the side bolt release. Can only imagine how good it must feel to build a nice rifle with all the fine little touches & features for an older guy who means that much to you. Merry Christmas Chad.
     
    • Like
    Reactions: LRI
    As I was scrolling through the pictures I thought those parts look a little rough but the end product is incredible. Awesome work.


    These guns always look rough as they migrate through the shop. If you spend any time around obnoxious/fast cars, they are almost always ugly creatures at the beginning.

    -My wife's 2009 Pontiac G8 GT shortly after we bought it. (for almost nothing as it'd been written off by insurance as a total loss due to a front-end bump) The interior of this thing is what made us buy it as it looked as good as the day it was made.

    20190730_165718.jpg


    The hardest part was sourcing new, OEM parts. It took me the better half of 2 years to find everything to put it back together. A whole lot of trolling the internet and calling former Pontiac dealerships all over the country.

    Pontiac died in 2009. Almost immediately afterward insurance companies looked at them as kryptonite. The parts quickly vanished as there weren't all that many brought here from Australia to begin with. There were only 1,500 of these cars in this color imported from Australia in 2009. The combined total of all the colors/models is only 26,000.

    They would total them if you spilled your coffee inside of it. The value of these things almost immediately tanked and kids started buying them left and right because they came stock with 400hp V8s. Kids are kids and the mortality rate went up accordingly. If you troll around forums and FB posts, they seem to die at a rate of around 5 per month.

    Today it has swung the other way as value has skyrocketed from just a couple of years ago. Some recent articles in car rags label them as a diamond in the rough and one of the most underrated performance vehicles made in the last 20 years.

    Prices now are in the low/mid 30s for one that is clean with reasonable mileage.

    After a little love and some paint:

    G8 LOW PROFILE.jpg


    Once the bodywork and paint were sorted out, I went after the powertrain. This went much quicker as stuff was still easy to get. (Pre Woohan Wheezer Virus America)

    -650 to the tires and 28mpg freeway with 8psi of boost after a summer of data logging and messing around in the stock ECU. It runs on pump 91.

    20200301_064235.jpg
     
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    Looking forward to hearing about how it performs. Next month I'll be shooting a Mausingfield/Proof barreled action that you guys did for me a few years ago. Everything went to hell for a few years and I wasn't able to shoot it at all since I got it so it'll be my first look at it. In the meantime it's reassuring to see the attention to detail that goes into your work.
     
    What is the carbon fiber inlay in the barrel channel? Where does that material come from???
     
    Any reason you went with the hinged box mag over your flush mag detachable?

    Guessing if it’s just a case of “keeping things familiar” that’s reason enough.

    I run the flush AI mag single shot while at the range and use the five shot when in classes.

    Did you engrave the mag base with anything?

    I was amazed when your metal guy emailed to say he was starting the metal engraving and he wanted to confirm my design than I got an email a couple hours later with a picture of it done……

    E9C84130-60F8-401C-952A-54E2F875F23B.jpeg
     
    Any reason you went with the hinged box mag over your flush mag detachable?

    Guessing if it’s just a case of “keeping things familiar” that’s reason enough.

    I run the flush AI mag single shot while at the range and use the five shot when in classes.

    Did you engrave the mag base with anything?

    I was amazed when your metal guy emailed to say he was starting the metal engraving and he wanted to confirm my design than I got an email a couple hours later with a picture of it done……

    View attachment 8302727

    No fancy engraving on this one. One, I didnt know what to say and I just wanted to keep it relatively simple.

    His son and I joke that he'll need to pawn it someday to cover spousal support should his Mother ever come to her senses. (This ol man talks more shit than anyone I've ever known. When Kalli heard him on speaker for the first time her immediate question after I hung up was, "Is that where you get it from?)

    -He's a hoot!


    Talking with his son is what directed me to keep it as a BDL. That is what he's used to. -One less thing to keep track of.
     
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    Chad you are a craftsman and a gentleman. Thanks for sharing this story.

    Merry Christmas to all at LRI.
     
    These guns always look rough as they migrate through the shop. If you spend any time around obnoxious/fast cars, they are almost always ugly creatures at the beginning.

    -My wife's 2009 Pontiac G8 GT shortly after we bought it. (for almost nothing as it'd been written off by insurance as a total loss due to a front-end bump) The interior of this thing is what made us buy it as it looked as good as the day it was made.

    View attachment 8302244

    The hardest part was sourcing new, OEM parts. It took me the better half of 2 years to find everything to put it back together. A whole lot of trolling the internet and calling former Pontiac dealerships all over the country.

    Pontiac died in 2009. Almost immediately afterward insurance companies looked at them as kryptonite. The parts quickly vanished as there weren't all that many brought here from Australia to begin with. There were only 1,500 of these cars in this color imported from Australia in 2009. The combined total of all the colors/models is only 26,000.

    They would total them if you spilled your coffee inside of it. The value of these things almost immediately tanked and kids started buying them left and right because they came stock with 400hp V8s. Kids are kids and the mortality rate went up accordingly. If you troll around forums and FB posts, they seem to die at a rate of around 5 per month.

    Today it has swung the other way as value has skyrocketed from just a couple of years ago. Some recent articles in car rags label them as a diamond in the rough and one of the most underrated performance vehicles made in the last 20 years.

    Prices now are in the low/mid 30s for one that is clean with reasonable mileage.

    After a little love and some paint:

    View attachment 8302246

    Once the bodywork and paint were sorted out, I went after the powertrain. This went much quicker as stuff was still easy to get. (Pre Woohan Wheezer Virus America)

    -650 to the tires and 28mpg freeway with 8psi of boost after a summer of data logging and messing around in the stock ECU. It runs on pump 91.

    View attachment 8302264
    Manufacturer was Holden, model Commodore....... They no longer manufacture cars, however are still a company. If you need something (smallish) for it, let me know.
    Cheers
    Pete