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Old 02-10-2018, 08:52 PM
Kiwishooter Kiwishooter is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JRAgunmaker View Post
At this time I don't have anything for sale. Just building one for my self. Nobody is paying me to get it done, so it's only getting worked on in between full days in the shop, fixing every vehicle I own and going to my boy's Sturgis High School Basketball and Baseball games.

I know the Howa rifles are very competitively priced. The reason for that is the quality of everything except the action, barrel and bolt. Everything else is designed to be cheap. The action is a very well made rendition of a small Sako. Barrels shoot quite well out of the box.

As mentioned above, a single shot floormetal and static follower would be much less work than building custom 09 Argentine style floormetal along with a follower and spring and the limited machine work on the action required.

Machining out of aluminum would be faster/cheaper than steel. It just doesn't rust blue very well. Still an economical option though.

As far as building parts to fit existing stocks. I probably won't go there.

I tried to source the mag spring and follower from the 2 US suppliers with very little luck. I did try several different ones like Rem, Ruger, Savage, MiniX and nothing worked as smooth as the spring and follower from my 223 "full size" Howa 1500. Followers are not too difficult to make from scratch, but the spring will take some tooling for my Richards Multiform bender. As well as outsourcing the heat treating.

The prototype mag box was bent around a plug machined to the inside dimensions. Works for one or 2, but I'll probably have the blanks laser cut then bend them here on the above mentioned bender.

Here's a few pics of where it's at now. The trigger guard isn't TIG welded to the rails yet and the hinge pin isn't drilled yet. The trigger might function well, but looks like an afterthought. It's gotta go.


Nice workmanship there James, while I did buy some bottom metal for one of my minis I doubt if I'd be buying any for a Howa, that is unless they release a left hand version.
If they did I'd be keen for some bottom metal.

Do you have any one piece bottom metals for the minis left??

Kiwi
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