Bolt Jeweling with a 5C Spin-Indexer

[charlesb]

I plan to jewel the bolt soon on a 98 Mauser I am working on. In a discussion forum I read about somebody using a 5c collet spin-indexer to jewel rifle bolts.

I have spin-indexer, and know that it rotates 360 degrees in one degree increments.

Here's the indexer I have, it cost me 29 bucks on sale. ( Click image to enlarge. )



Here's the front of the indexer, with a 5c collet ready to use. - You crank the handle on the back to tighten up the collet, once you have poked something in there.



To get the bolt in the indexer, I used a screw-in heat sink that I bought long ago on eBay, for welding on bolt handles to Mauser bolts.



It screws into the back of the bolt ( after firing pin removal ) like this:



The turned-down section on the end is .625" in diameter, so I put a 5/8" collet in the indexer.

Here it is, ready to be moved over to the milling machine, or a drill-press with a cross-slide.



I am thinking about making a home-made tailstock that will engage the firing pin hole with a bit of polished piano wire, or something like that - but it may not be necessary as the indexer is pretty rigid, once it is bolted down to the mill, and the pressure used in jeweling is very light.

At any rate, this is how I ended up not having to buy or make a bolt jeweling fixture. When I get the new bolt handle finished up and the bolt polished, I'll be in good shape for jeweling it.

I thought maybe some of the other folks here might have a spin-indexer laying around, and need to jewel a bolt.

The spin-indexer is more versatile than a regular bolt-jeweling fixture. - You could try spiral jeweling for example, or a more complex repeating pattern. - Work that cries out to be CNC'ed, but with patience you can do it manually with a spin-indexer and a milling table.

[alphawolf45]

Cheap as the spin fixtures are dont waste time building a tailstock, just buy a second identical spin fixture....Think I gave 35.00 for mine few year ago. Is there a sale on'em somewhere now?
.
I have never worked on a bolt action..Maybe someday........

[Harold_V]

Cheap as the spin fixtures are dont waste time building a tailstock, just buy a second identical spin fixture

That's pretty good advice, assuming they share a common center height.

Harold

[charlesb]

I dunno about sales on indexers today... I bought mine six months or so ago, along with a few collets as I was wanting to make butterknife bolt handles from 5/8" diameter free-machining steel. I had made one handle using V-blocks in the milling vise, which worked OK for a one-off, but would be way too slow for trying to turn out several at a time. - All of that measuring of angles, and so on. - The indexer makes all of that quick and easy.

I had that indexer and heat-sink laying around the shop for months, and it never occurred to me to utilize them for bolt jeweling until I read about somebody using an indexer for jeweling, and tried to figure out how they must have done it.

Bolt actions are not my strong point, either. - I've been concentrating on other things for years and left the bolt rifles for later - and now later has arrived.

The 98 Mausers are a lot like 1911 autos... Tons of tools and parts for them are out there, and established procedures for doing just about anything can be picked up on the internet.

Lots of fun!

[hammermill]

useing to spin fixtures if you lack a tail stock are not bad, a steady rest would also fill in.

clamp a a large bar in collets and then match up the bases on a flat platen belt sander and then hand scrape if need be.