Cleaning Rod

[thestelster]

I needed a very long cleaning rod for my Palma rifle. I need one 54" long. The only ones long enough are from BoreTech. But to get it from the USA was going to cost an arm and half a leg. So I figured I might as well go ahead and spend a small fortune in time and money making one!!

The rod is easy enough, 1/4" precision ground, and straight stainless, from McMaster. 6 feet of it! I'll do it up in the next couple days.

The handle was a different story. 2 NSK radial bearings: 1-609zz; 1-608zz, and a thrust bearing. So basically a spindle. It's a prototype now, but works perfectly well as is. Gleaned the diagram from the web, and sort of copied it. The shaft and handle is aluminium. I'll probably make the shaft out of stainless whenever I get around to it.

 

[Proxule]

Absolutely lovely, Thanks for sharing!

 

[Susquatch]

I've always wondered about putting football shaped plastic spacers along the length of the rod to stop it from damaging the bore......

 

[thestelster]

Well, it's done...for now.
1/4" stainless precision ground from McMaster. I made it 54" in length. Machined a notch on one end for the handle set screw. Drilled and tapped 8-32 on the other for bore brushes.

Setting it up on the lathe was time consuming. 28" of the rod was sticking out the back of the headstock, so I had to provide support along it's length so it didn't whip around. I stuck an ER40 collet in the head stock bore at the back which was held in place with a section of bicycle inner tube, and then passed through the holes in 2 1-2-3 blocks. I put some rubber tube in those sections, and since they were still smaller than the holes, I put the 1-2-3 blocks askew so that they were held more securely. At 1000rpm there was no whipping, but decided to go around 650rpm. No issues there either.

I used nylon tube caps to cover the bearings in the handle. (I'd prefer to make threaded caps, but that will mean either a larger diameter handle, or smaller bearings.) Which I can do in the future......maybe!

I'm also thinking of putting 2" of shrink tubing at the end of the rod, so that once the bore brush exits, the rod doesn't drag on the botton of the rifling.