HuntingNet.com Forums - Underhammer Build

Bingo!

All of the parts needed for the build are sitting in the corner of my man cave as I type this, except for the stock wood which will be on the way to me shortly.

Corey offered me a decent looking walnut stock blank from one of his canceled projects for a really good price. Thanks Corey.

I picked up the hardest to find item this afternoon, a piece of 3/4" thick cold roll steel plate for the breech block. I needed a rectangular piece about 4" x 5". That's not something available from a hardware store or that guys have stuck in the corner of their garage. Here's the story.

About two miles from my house, out past the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, are the sales office and warehouse of an industrial steel supply company that supplies steel to the oil industry and construction firms.

I walked into the sales office and explained what I was looking for to the guy in a suit behind a beautiful wood desk. He laughed and said, "I can sell you a 6 foot by 10 foot sheet, or a 1 foot by 20 foot flat bar." I allowed that that might be a little more than I could use, or afford. Then he said, "Tell you what, go down that hall and out the back door to the first warehouse. Find Chris in the little office immediately on the right and see if he can help you."

Well, the office was little - about eight feet square. Sitting behind a beat up army surplus looking gray metal desk was a guy in a moderately soiled blue uniform who looked something like Jabba the Hutt. Nice guy. He said, "I doubt we have anything like that laying around. But go back outside walk down the gravel road on side the building to the end of the second warehouse. There's a guy back there named Elliott working on a load. He might have a drop-cut like that around somewhere.

The walk to the back was about 200 yards. There were three guys in very dirty blue uniforms trying to lever up forty foot I-beam to hook it up to a chain hoist on an overhead track twenty feet above. "Are one of you guys Elliott?", I asked. The one who looked like a black Ichabod Crane wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand and said "That's me."

Well Elliott spent a good ten minutes searching through a pile of scrap and came up with a piece of 3/4" plate that was six inches by sixteen inches. "Best I can do", he said. "Perfect", I said, "how much would that cost?"

"Go up front to the sales office and get me a coke from the machine by the door, and it's your's", he said.

I walked back up to the sales office, got three cokes, drove my truck down the gravel road to the back of the second warehouse, and gave Elliott the cokes and five bucks. Good people. DONE DEAL.