Gunsmithing Questions

[Icelander]

As part of the backstory of some characters, I have a family of Italian-Americans who went West, after emigrating to New Orleans in 1909 from Brescia, Lombardy. Discovering that a mountain range in New Mexico bore they same name as their family, they settled in what was then the town of Albuquerque.

After the passing of state-wide legislation for the prohibition of alcohol in 1917, Tommasso Manzano, with his wife and two sons, moved house to near where Tommasso had made friends in the reservation of Isleta Pueblo, another family who grew wine, which Tommasso was pleased to distill into grappa. Liquor-making was merely a hobby for Tommasso Manzano, however, as by trade he was a master smith, tracing a direct line back to armorers and swordsmiths of Renaissance Italy. With reduced demand for all-white or Gothic harness, swords and poniards, the Manzano men had turned their craft toward fowling pieces, muskets and rifles.

Both of old Tommasso's sons, Giancarlo and Mose Bruno Manzano married Isleta girls, though Giancarlo's wife, Juana Abeyta, would not be enrolled into the tribe with the controversial passage of Blood Quanta Laws in 1934, requiring half Isleta Pueblo blood to be registered a member of the tribe. She was born on the reservation, bore twelve children there, died there and never knew another home, but her children, both those who made their living on and off the reservation, were not tribal members for voting and benefit purposes. All of them grew up speaking Italian, Tiwa, Spanish and English, frequently in ungrammatical and inventive mixtures of those languages.

Tommasso started fixing tools and shoeing horses for his neighbours as soon as he arrived out West. He arrived with his most prized and portable tools, added more when he could, and in 1921, founded Manzano Foundry, Ironworks & Gunsmithing. A grand name for a shed upwind from the privy, where Tommasso mostly fixed farming tools, shoed horses (he never learned to ride one, however) and kept surplus Civil War relic firearms used for subsidence hunting functioning. Much of his fees were in vegetables, eggs, chickens, pigs, fowl and venison, but especially during the Depression years, the Manzanos were grateful they all ate.

I'm just about up to the 1980s in the family saga in my mind, but I'm looking for some technical input. Giancarlo Manzano was born in Italy, arrived in America as a child and takes over more and more of the day-to-day running of Manzano Gunsmithing (as the name eventually gets shortened) during the WWII years. Tommasso never officially retired, he just slowed down around age seventy and stopped doing much useful work shortly after that, but kept right on drinking his coffee, wine or grappa, depending on the time of day, while sons or grandsons worked in the workshop, telling them everything they were doing wrong, until he died in 1963, in his eighty-third year.

Tommasso learned TL5 smithing from his father and grandfather, in the Old Country, during TL6, but he managed to master the 'new' ways of TL6 well enough, smokeless powder and all. He did not care much for TL7 machining and factories instead of craftsmen in the field of gunsmithing, but his elder son Giancarlo subscribed to professional journals, had a library card and took classes at vocational school. Giancarlo could fix any gun from a TL5 percussion fowling piece to a TL7 Sten Gun, but he vastly preferred a good horse to a truck or sedan, a lever-action saddle-ring carbine to an Armalite AR-10, and leather tack, gunbelt and revolver loaded with snakeshot to a concealed automatic pistol.

Antonio 'Tony' Manzano was old Tommasso's grandson, Giancarlo's oldest boy who survived to adulthood. When he was young, he worked for a few years as a sheriff's deputy in Valencia County, next county over, and he joined the Army during Korea. After Korea, he came home ready to settle down in Isleta Pueblo, not that Giancarlo was looking to retire in his early fifties. So, Tony learned to be a machinist, tool and die maker in Albuquerque. He also wanted to prove to his grandfather that he could be a craftsman as great as any Manzano of old, even if he used power tools and modern methods.

1) As a sort of impromptu 'masterpiece' (Meisterwerke), how impractical and expensive would be to make a TL7 replica of a Walker Colt in the late 1950s, with the tools likely to be available at Manzano Gunsmithing? It's totally fine that it would take a lot of time and even a little capital outlay (as long as it's tools that will eventually be useful in the workshop), but they're not rich.

2) If a replica Colt Walker would be totally impractical without the kind of factory that Pietta and Cimmaron set up in Italy to do this, what might be a cool project for young Tony instead? Some firearm with an Old West flair that would demonstrate his craftsmanship to his father and grandfather?

3) Also, Tommasso's deer rifle is something he made from cheaply available barrels and other recycleable parts, probably something avilable as surplus mail order. Even though he didn't pay much for the parts, it should look like a piece of functional art. He would have chosen the chambering according to what gave him the best chance at mule deer in the mountains for minimum ammo cost, so I think he used something where he could cast his own bullets and reload. Probably .45 caliber, based on either a Trapdoor Springfield or Remington Rolling Block, might be just chambered in .45-70, maybe a longer cartridge of the same caliber (but as he would have made it in the 1910s, the fact that most other black powder cartridges stopped being used might be a factor).

[Rupert]

I see no reason why he couldn't make a replica revolver. The only hard part would be the barrel, but a pistol barrel isn't very long, so with persistence and a deal of care even that could be hand-made with a good lathe. That's how they were originally made, after all.

[Varyon]

A replica of a TL 5 revolver seems like it should be doable fairly readily by a more modern gunsmith, but I'm totally ignorant on how much it would cost to tool up to being able to do so. If you're looking for other impressive black powder revolvers to make a replica of, I've personally been eyeballing a replica of the 1858 Remington Army for some time (in part from seeing this, a replica crafted from the Gibeon meteorite).

I'll also note that both the Colt Walker and the 1858 Remington Army have conversion kits (which really just replace the cylinder) to be able to use modern cased bullets (specifically "cowboy loads," which are underloaded to account for such weapons being designed for lower pressures than modern propellants produce). I'm not certain when those became available, or when your campaign actually takes place, but if one of the characters intends to use Tony's older Meisterwerke revolver, such a conversion kit may make it more capable of competing with modern weapons (I don't think either is compatible with a speedloader, however), unless the weapon is enchanted or something (while you might be able to get away with slow replacement of components that wear out, Ship of Theseus style, replacing such a large and integral part of the weapon with something that functions differently is likely too much of a change to maintain the enchantment, but that all depends on the particulars of your setting's metaphysics).

[ericthered]

My grandpa had just that sort of gunsmith shop out back where he did that kind of work. It was his hobby, but he went professional for a while before I was born and he sold almost all the replicas he made.

His shop was full but not huge. Maybe 10 by 15 feet. It had a bunch of classic woodworking tools. The power tools that stand out are the lathe, the band-saw, and an absolute monster of a drill press. The most unusual items where probably the huge variety of files and rasps*, and better clamps than I've seen in most shops. And let me emphasize how full the shop was: it was crowded for more than three people. There were lots and lots of tools and stock in there. For most TL5 replica work, the actual metal involved is fairly minimal, consisting of a small action and a barrel. Grandpa mostly had other people build the action, but was capable of custom metal work when he set his mind to it (I'm thinking of an old wheel lock he copied).

Barrels are easy to make with modern tools, if a bit tedious. The shop always had at least half a dozen pre-drilled barrels and a couple of blanks. The pre-drilled where for old replicas, and the blanks for "Modern Muzzleloaders" for getting the highest performance gun during the exclusively muzzle-loading hunting season.

* a file for wood.

I hope this helps.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Varyon

A replica of a TL 5 revolver seems like it should be doable fairly readily by a more modern gunsmith, but I'm totally ignorant on how much it would cost to tool up to being able to do so.

Doing some thought on Tony and figure he finishes the Colorado School of Trades Trinidad State Junior College* once he comes back home from Korea, marries Vicki Hanson, of Albuqurque, NM, whom he meets at a dance he attends with his sister, Gabby Manzano.

Well, Tony will eventually find his niche (as he can't be the Manzano running Manzano Gunsmithing, not while his Grandpa is still alive and sitting in the shed all day, bothering his father while his father does the actual work). His contribution is buying cheap firearms, through estate sales, rummage sales, trade-ins, as well as mail ordering and selling through mail order advertisements (from 1956-1968, while it's still legal) a variety of old and surplus firearms, which he restores, rechambers, sporterizes or otherwise enhances the value of through skilled work. After the mail order business becomes illegal, Tony and his wife redouble their estate sale work and sell their restored or remade firearms through gun shows and contacts in the gunsmithing/shooting world.**

This means that he'd need to add some TL7 tools to the workshop anyway, as his way of becoming a part of the Manzano legacy.

*At the time (and now), the Colorado School of Trades and the Trinidad State Junior College had about an equal reputation in the field of gunsmithing education. However, Trinidad is within three-and-a-half hour drive from home, while CST is a seven-hour drive, and Trinidad is located next to awesome mountain hiking routes, hunting areas and general outdoorsy thrills, while CST is in Lakewood, pretty much a suburb of Denver. It's cheaper to stay around Trinidad and easier to visit home on a whim, or have family over for a hike, riding or hunting, than it would be in Lakewood. Trinidad just makes the most sense for Tony Manzano as his first stop after Korea.
**They're within a day's drive from the Colorado School of Trades (est. 1947), Trinidad State Junior College (founded 1925; gunsmithing program est. 1947) and Yavapai College (founded 1965; gunsmithing program est. 1980), the three most respected gunsmithing vocational schools in the US. They also live within a day's drive of Jeff Cooper's American Pistol Institute / Gunsite (est. 1976) and the NRA Whittingdon Center (est. 1973). New Mexico has their share of gun shows, as has Colorado, Prescott and Phoenix, AZ are the locations for a lot of gun shows, as are Las Vegas and Reno, NV.

Originally Posted by Varyon

If you're looking for other impressive black powder revolvers to make a replica of, I've personally been eyeballing a replica of the 1858 Remington Army for some time (in part from seeing this, a replica crafted from the Gibeon meteorite).

I'll also note that both the Colt Walker and the 1858 Remington Army have conversion kits (which really just replace the cylinder) to be able to use modern cased bullets (specifically "cowboy loads," which are underloaded to account for such weapons being designed for lower pressures than modern propellants produce).

While the look of the Colt Walkers is cool, I'm not sure whether Tony would want them to be percussion cap. He might build them as cartridge revolvers right from the start, chambered in .45-70 (not sure whether you could fit five or six rounds of those in a Walker cylinder).

His Grandpa Tommasso didn't mind adopting cartridges for his hunting guns, even converted his fowling piece for them, as they were so much easier to carry and load. He also had a hunting rifle, probably in .45-70, but possibly in .30-40 Krag, as both were available as cheap surplus which made for good donor guns to build beautiful sporters on. And Tony will be trying to buy surplus and forgotten-old-firearms from people all around, refurbish or rebuild them, and sell them to someone else. Not always as some kind of nostalgia piece. A good gunsmith make a modern hunting gun from decidedly old-fashioned components, especially if he lays in stock of beautiful wood to carve into new stocks when needed.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'm not certain when those became available, or when your campaign actually takes place, but if one of the characters intends to use Tony's older Meisterwerke revolver, such a conversion kit may make it more capable of competing with modern weapons (I don't think either is compatible with a speedloader, however), unless the weapon is enchanted or something (while you might be able to get away with slow replacement of components that wear out, Ship of Theseus style, replacing such a large and integral part of the weapon with something that functions differently is likely too much of a change to maintain the enchantment, but that all depends on the particulars of your setting's metaphysics).

Campaign is set in 2019. Tony died in 1978, still fairly young, just two years after his father. Long-distance trucker collided with the car of Tony and Vicki Manzano, she was driving, because he'd had some wine, beer and maybe some grappa, at a dinner with friends.

It's Tony's two sons, Travis and Arliss Manzano, which I'm a-thinking on now. And, obviously, what kind of gifts their father gave the boys once they started hunting, varmints year-round to keep them away from neighbouring farms, upland birds and deer in season.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by ericthered

My grandpa had just that sort of gunsmith shop out back where he did that kind of work. It was his hobby, but he went professional for a while before I was born and he sold almost all the replicas he made.

His shop was full but not huge. Maybe 10 by 15 feet. It had a bunch of classic woodworking tools. The power tools that stand out are the lathe, the band-saw, and an absolute monster of a drill press. The most unusual items where probably the huge variety of files and rasps*, and better clamps than I've seen in most shops. And let me emphasize how full the shop was: it was crowded for more than three people. There were lots and lots of tools and stock in there. For most TL5 replica work, the actual metal involved is fairly minimal, consisting of a small action and a barrel. Grandpa mostly had other people build the action, but was capable of custom metal work when he set his mind to it (I'm thinking of an old wheel lock he copied).

Barrels are easy to make with modern tools, if a bit tedious. The shop always had at least half a dozen pre-drilled barrels and a couple of blanks. The pre-drilled where for old replicas, and the blanks for "Modern Muzzleloaders" for getting the highest performance gun during the exclusively muzzle-loading hunting season.

* a file for wood.

I hope this helps.

As with many other character backgrounds, I'm basically just filling in detail for the same reason other hobbyists paint miniatures. It's fun for me. And, yes, here I even have excuses to detail lots of cool guns, all the way from restored, authentic Old West firearms, to Neo-Western ones.

The Manzanos, their friends and neighbours still hunt to supplement their diet, not just as a hobby, and while most of them do so with 4WD trucks or SUVs these days, old Tommasso Manzano would walk the mountains with a mule to carry the carcass if he got a buck. And Tony Manzano, plus his two sons, Travis and Arliss, would go hunting on horseback, with handy rifles in leather scabbards attached to their saddles. They might all have owned bolt-action rifles, at least at some point in time, and even a semi-automatic or two, but there are times when Travis and Arliss go riding in rough terrain equipped much as people were in these regions were in the 1890s.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Icelander

While the look of the Colt Walkers is cool, I'm not sure whether Tony would want them to be percussion cap. He might build them as cartridge revolvers right from the start, chambered in .45-70 (not sure whether you could fit five or six rounds of those in a Walker cylinder).

Ah, very well then. Now, take this with an appropriate quantity of salt, but looking at pictures of the .45 Long Colt conversion cylinders for the Colt Walker, I don't think there's enough room to expand it out to hold .45-70 Government - the former has a rim diameter of 13 mm while the latter has a rim diameter of 15.4 mm. I suspect more than 5 rounds won't fit in the space available. Of course, a bit of looking online also indicated that the space for the cylinder is insufficient (.45 Long Colt has a case length of 32.6 mm while .45-70 has a case length of 53.5 mm), so a partial redesign of the weapon (lengthening the space for the cylinder) may already be necessary. In that case, further redesign to accommodate a wider cylinder might be in the cards, potentially getting you back to a 6-shooter, but I'm not confident that would be as easy as it sounds. Probably easier to assume the capacity simply goes down to 5.

Another bit I'm not certain on is reload time, if that matters. It appears with the conversion kits this is a fairly-involved process - because the weapon doesn't have a firing pin (percussion caps were engaged differently from modern primers), the kit has two pieces - the cylinder itself, then a backplate that goes on and has a firing pin for each bullet (the hammer strikes the pin, the pin engages the primer, and the magic happens). Because of this, reloading the weapon requires taking it apart, putting in the rounds (the backplate prevents just slotting them in like for a more modern revolver), then putting it back together. Yet for a bespoke weapon, I feel that backplate wouldn't be necessary, as Tony might be able to modify it to have a single firing pin that allows the hammer to engage the primer.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Ah, very well then. Now, take this with an appropriate quantity of salt, but looking at pictures of the .45 Long Colt conversion cylinders for the Colt Walker, I don't think there's enough room to expand it out to hold .45-70 Government - the former has a rim diameter of 13 mm while the latter has a rim diameter of 15.4 mm. I suspect more than 5 rounds won't fit in the space available. Of course, a bit of looking online also indicated that the space for the cylinder is insufficient (.45 Long Colt has a case length of 32.6 mm while .45-70 has a case length of 53.5 mm), so a partial redesign of the weapon (lengthening the space for the cylinder) may already be necessary. In that case, further redesign to accommodate a wider cylinder might be in the cards, potentially getting you back to a 6-shooter, but I'm not confident that would be as easy as it sounds. Probably easier to assume the capacity simply goes down to 5.

Playing the gun world equivalent of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon:

Dick Casull created the .454 Casull wildcat cartridge in 1957, though an article about it was not published in any widespread gun magazine until 1959. However, Dick Casull was a close friend and collaborator of;
P.O. Ackley who established the Trinidad State Junior College gunsmithing curriculum and taught there the first four years (1947-1951).
The instructors who taught Tony Manzano from 1955-1957 would, most of them, be gunsmiths P.O. Ackley knew and some of them would be his friends. And Ackley famously loved to fly his Cessna 180 around, sometimes to visit friends.

The odds of Tony Manzano having met Dick Casull, or at least known someone who had tried his wildcat cartridge, seem pretty good to me. To base this backstory only on probabilities and logic, I rolled a skill roll for whether Tony Manzano knew how to load the .454 Casull, and it turned out he did (which means that one of his instructors probably was friends with Casull and kibbitzed with him about the cartridge and custom revolvers for it.

So, this will be more of a Colt Walker look-alike than replica, and actually feature an extremely strong, milled from tool-steel, cylinder, sized and chambered for .454 Casull. Fortunately, the fact that Tony is using Colt Walker-inspired form factor, he has enough weight of metal to seriously overbuild any potential point of stress in the gun.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Another bit I'm not certain on is reload time, if that matters. It appears with the conversion kits this is a fairly-involved process - because the weapon doesn't have a firing pin (percussion caps were engaged differently from modern primers), the kit has two pieces - the cylinder itself, then a backplate that goes on and has a firing pin for each bullet (the hammer strikes the pin, the pin engages the primer, and the magic happens). Because of this, reloading the weapon requires taking it apart, putting in the rounds (the backplate prevents just slotting them in like for a more modern revolver), then putting it back together. Yet for a bespoke weapon, I feel that backplate wouldn't be necessary, as Tony might be able to modify it to have a single firing pin that allows the hammer to engage the primer.

Prioritize strength of the design. Make it a single-action, loading gate-only revolver with a Ruger-inspired coil-springs and hammer (he's not going to be selling those, he figures Bill Ruger won't sue for patent infringement for a private gift, even if a lot of the internals used Ruger's simple and ingenious design for his Blackhawk).

It's not a revolver for gun-fighting, it's for carrying in a pommel holster on your saddle in case you get a shot at some kind a game that's either in season or legal year-round. Well, you really need two, for balance on the saddle, as that's what Texas Rangers would do historically.

[benz72]

Not to downplay any of the undoubtedly cool pieces that are in the inheritance, but I'd think the most salient point from a details gaming perspective is the shop itself. The ability to rebuild, customize or accessorize whatever they want is probably a more relevant capability than the particular stats on any piece they happen to find.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Icelander

So, this will be more of a Colt Walker look-alike than replica, and actually feature an extremely strong, milled from tool-steel, cylinder, sized and chambered for .454 Casull. Fortunately, the fact that Tony is using Colt Walker-inspired form factor, he has enough weight of metal to seriously overbuild any potential point of stress in the gun.

Oh my, that's going to be a beast of a weapon. As I just mentioned in another thread, a potential advantage of .454 Casull is that, if the user is so inclined, weapons chambered for it will happily accept the much more modest .45 Long Colt and .45 S&W (and the recoil when doing so would probably be more-or-less negligible for a weapon heavy enough to handle .454 Casull). If it is part of a pair, I wonder if it would work out to load one weapon for bear (.454 Casull) and the other with one of the weaker cartridges, then depending on the critter that pops up during the ride, you can grab the one that's appropriate. The weight won't be perfectly balanced (the .454 Casull is a heavier round than the others), but will be within roughly 0.1 lb (0.396 vs 0.3 or 0.27; even if this Super Colt Walker is no heavier than the original, you're looking at something like a 3% difference in weight between the loadings), which is probably close enough.

Also, I must say I love the way you come up with rich backstories, interwoven with real-world history, for background NPC's (and even backstory NPC's, considering Tony's long gone by the start of the campaign). I don't think I could manage it, but I'd imagine it helps make the setting feel like a real, living world for your players.