Page 44 - Dec 2022

You'll Shoot Your Eye Out
Above: John Wayne , rifle in hand, in this film poster from
perhaps his best western in his later years, The Cowboys.
Poster offered by the Picture Peddler. Below; Lou Stans'
replica of the "Headless Shell Extractor". Boys and their toys
and Men and their tools really need a lathe for Christmas.
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I have also used the lathe to make
non-automotive, sometimes obsolete items. One
notable piece relates to an old rifle I bought at a
gun show years ago. Yes, just as I like old British
cars I have a soft spot for old guns. This
particular one is a .45-70, Springfield ?Trap Door?
infantry rifle. Rifles of this type were the first
?standardized? arms that used metallic
cartridges that were issued to the US army
(1873).
If you watch John Wayne westerns I'm sure
you've seen them. This one was in unusually
fine condition and I found out why ? and why,
too, the price was low. There was the tube
section of a cartridge stuck in the chamber and
the rifle could not be loaded or fired.
It had apparently sat this way for many decades,
unmolested and unused! The rifle had issue
stamps from the 1880s.This problem turned out
to be more common than anyone would like and
was mainly due to the weak copper alloy used in
manufacturing the cartridges (brass came later).
The weak cartridges would crack and fail around
the circumference near the base (called the
?head?) leaving just the tube stuck in the
chamber and the soldier with a useless weapon.
Right around 1876 the US government designed
a tool known as a ?Headless Shell Extractor?.
These could be used in conjunction with a
cleaning rod to remove the broken cartridge
tube from the rifle?s chamber. George Custer
would have given his eye teeth for a bunch of
these clever, little tools. As the story has it, the
7th Cavalry was plagued by this cartridge
problem at Little Big Horn. So Custer did in fact,
give his eye teeth (and much more) to no avail.
But that is a whole 'nuther story.
What does all this have to do with my lathe?
Well, I was able to hunt down a picture of the old
tool and with that and the good old South Bend
Lathe, I was able to make a replica of the
?headless Shell Extractor? . It worked great and I
now have a fully functional very old rifle to go
with my very old car.