By all means hijack it. That was what I was asking.
OK I'll hijack your thread.
First of all I want to state that I have no intention of reproducing this project. It was built simply to see if I could do it. I will be happy to answer any questions about the process, but I do not want to do it again.
I thought the simplest way was to build an action and thread it to a barrel.
The first thing I had to do was find out how to duplicate the breech thread. No one I talked to knew how and there was no real useful information on line.
On the Ferguson rifles I had examined, I saw that the breech thread was 1 thread per inch with 10- 12 threads.
It took me 8-9 months of trial and error and some lathe modifications ( including making 2 threading gears) to get an acceptable thread rate.
I was able to come up with a thread pitch rate of 1 turn in 8/10 inch which I figured would be acceptable as I would only have to turn the breech screw a little over 1 turn to open the action. I chose 10 threads as it would be easy to index the threads 36 degrees apart (360 divided by 10 = 36).
I had a large circular brass plate that I got at the salvage yard. I drill and taped 10 equally spaced holes in the plate and numbered the holes 1 through 10. I made a bushing in the center of the plate that fit the center hole in my lathe face plate so that the brass plate would rotate on my lathe face plate. I drilled 2 holes 180 degrees apart in the face plate corresponding with the 10 threaded holes in the brass plate.
I made a holder to hold the action to the brass plate and bored the hole for the breech screw.
Now I could bolt the brass plate to the face plate and using hole #1 and #5. I cut one thread then moved the plate to holes #2 and #6 and repeated the process ect. ect. until I had all 10 threads cut.
After I had the action threaded I mounted a round bar between centers and used a lathe dog bolted to the brass plate to cut the breech screw thread.
I bolted the lathe dog to bolt hole #1, cut one thread then moved the lathe dog to hole #2 cut that thread ect. ect. until I had all 10 threads cut.
The process of threading the action and breech screw only took about 4 hours.
SIMPLE RIGHT!
I started with a print from the Rifle Shoppe, a Colerain Jaeger 50 cal barrel, a 2 3/4 inch and a 7/8 inch 8620 round bar.
I figured with the 50 cal barrel with a .012-.016 depth rifling I should be fine with a .535 round ball.
I'll post pictures and explanations as I get a chance.
SC45-70