Bummed out, I continued to to rust blue the receiver, action and barrel while I figured out what I wanted to do. Finally, I decided that this was just the excuse I needed to buy some more tools!!!!!!!
My Wheeler Action Wrench and Barrel Vise arrived yesterday. As well, I finally made contact with Ken Womack out in Nevada, and ordered some vintage parts to make my other roller complete and accurate. Buoyed up by those successes, I snuck out of work and went down to my favorite arms dealer, and bought a box of 7mm Mauser for the other roller. I also picked up a cool older bullet puller. See, I am definitely going to want to fire the No. 5 7mm Rolling Block, but because of the headspace issue, I would need to customize the brass. Now, I could order brass, bullets and so on on line, for $50 or more, but this Winchester box was only $25, and the puller was $12!
So, this morning, I knocked out the bullets, filled the case with 10 grains of Unique and some packed cream of wheat, and fire formed the brass. After the replacement parts arrive, I'll reload the casings and fire the gun at a discount!
But back to the Lemonton. I have decided to torque the receiver on myself, correct the tenon dovetail, cut a new extractor slot, cut off the crown below the bad front sight dovetail, recrown the muzzle and cut a new front sight.
A number of sites and forums I read indicated that about 50 - 60 foot pounds is the proper torque for a receiver, so with the wrench and a cheater bar at three feet, I hung a bag of 20 lbs and gently torqued the receiver on.
I used brass shims for the receiver wrench, but I should have wrapped the cross threads with electrical tape, because I scratched the new bluing on the receiver an barrel a little. Oh, well, I will have to re-blue anyway, since I made sure to pin punch the barrel and receiver to mark the position after torquing. I stoned the punch mark burrs out and will have to rust blue again to cover that anyway, as well as the new crown and dovetail.
After torquing to about 60 lbs, you can see the dovetail for the fore-end tenon is well over. The front sight is just as bad. Fortunately, the fore-end covers the mistake here, so I just recut the dove tail level and it came out fine.
There is no way to save the front sight dovetail, so I cut about .8" off the end with a hack saw.
I plan to buy the Brownells 45-70 One Caliber muzzle facing kit, the 11 degree cutter, and the .920 muzzle radius tool next time I get paid, or come into some cash. My gunsmith used the hand crowning tools originally and they worked pretty good, so I'll try it myself.
Meanwhile, I have widened and flattened the extractor slot. That spot in the middle is where the extractor screw hole centers untorqued, so It will now clear the screw even torqued, and it's straighter that the one my gunsmith had cut. I'll make a new extractor this week while waiting to get paid again to order those other tools.