How tight is tight?????

[G.T.]

Hello to all, today was an interesting day! As I mentioned before, all my time up until now with the barrel project as been threading and chambering... Did good on that so really the worst is over... learned tons of new info. (New to me!) and hopefully will retain enough to sustain me in the next go-around.... Probably next year... Anyway, today was torque, index, and mark at 6 o'clock all the barrels to their respective receiver, or in the case of loose barrels, to a 1920 commercial receiver that seemed to be nominally correct? So, what did I learn today? The first thing I learned, is that the bull barrel clamps up far better that the tapered Luger barrel, but this is to be expected and is no surprise. But, it give one a positive result in repeatability that you normally don't get... As in tight with no possibility of deformity... (I really like that! ) So, time to finish torque the barrel to the receiver... 15, 25, 35 pounds, done right? Ahhh, nope! At 35 ft. pounds the torque wrench takes a big skip, and then settles back down to 35? More crush than expected.... Same at 40, same at 45, didn't stop until 50 ft. pounds... and, it was tight, but not overkill... came loose with my receiver wrench just as you would expect? Sooo, it's 50 ft. lbs of torque for me, no matter what the books say? (do they say anything about torque? ) Indexing was a simple task of using an "I" letter stamp and also using the existing mark on the receive to time / locate the final position of the barrel / receiver relationship! I'm happy to say, all went well and we are off to the next step! And that means off to Olle, hopefully he will pick up the story on his end of the production, as I find it all interesting and a bit amazing still, that this can be done, and has been done for well over a century now! Best to all, til...lat'r....GT.....

BTW, last little bit of info. solid hand tight, and the distance to full 50 lbs of torque tight, was about .080" to .100" of travel to align the index marks... That means, "Real tight, real fast" .... amazing ain't it! ....