One of these: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampamuffe I assume?
Ugliness aside, it would doubtlessly work, but as others pointed out, there are all wood solutions which are just as strong and historically more accurate.
One of these: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rampamuffe I assume?
Ugliness aside, it would doubtlessly work, but as others pointed out, there are all wood solutions which are just as strong and historically more accurate.
One man's Mede is another man's Persian.
Crap grade birch would not be that bad, if it were just that - what disqualifies the common ready made wood dowels is that they are compressed wood, supposed to expand when wetted with glue. A desirable property when pegging wood surrogates or plywood, but likely to cause solid wood to crack.
E... I reserve my stock of maple and hickory dowel for ramrods, and successfully use the birch dowels for repair of torne screwholes in pneumatic devices. I did not know that any dowels are engineered (I think I knew that some of the pre-made pegs and bisquits were, but never use them) but it has been quite a while since I've bought any. I bought a whole bunch of dowel material many years ago and I'm only using it one inch at a time.
Good dowels are available, and birch can be hard. But what I see in the big volume stores is crap and just not suitable for much. I've just whittled pegs (and rounded them by chucking in a drill and sanding) when I need to repair a hole.
I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that I use fiberglass loading rods in the field, at the range I use a 1/4" stainless steel T-handled rod with a muzzle guide.
One man's Mede is another man's Persian.
One man's Mede is another man's Persian.
A question for those in favor of using a plug/dowel over replacing with machine screws... When I attempted to do this previously on the Speed Graphic, I drilled out the holes to size, epoxied in birch dowels from a wood supplier (not from a big-box hardware store), allowed them to dry, sanded them flush, and then attempted to screw the shutter plate back in using replacement screws of the same size, but they did not hold. The reasons why this did not work are not exactly clear to me, but I suspect it was 1) the dowel plugs were not large enough - I used 1/8" dowels because the screws were so small, and I didn't want the work to be visible/to punch a hole in the leatherette on the body of the Speed Graphic, 2) the birch was too soft at that size, and/or 3) the screws were just too small - the originals, IIRC, were size #0, brass wood screws. Any thoughts?
Historical accuracy is much less important to me than functionality. Given this, is the consensus still that the better approach is to epoxy in hardwood dowels and use the original/replacement screws? I will certainly be using bigger dowels, and these screws are already closer to a size #2 than they were with the Speed Graphic, but I was thinking that machine screws were something I'd be less likely to mess up, and the risk of over-tightening and stripping (the hole) is pretty much eliminated with this approach. Basically, I won't have to hold my breath every time I take a screw out or put it back in.
Thanks for all the input. I really appreciate it.
William
R&R of a wood screw should be a fairly rare event. If you are planning to R&R often, then maybe the non-traditional approach would be best. I assumed (I seem to be doing too much of that too often lately) that you were planning on mounting a back and leaving it there.
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