Kimel Western Six back from the dead
Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 7:57 pm
Neighbor brought this over a couple years ago to see if I could fix it. After a quick inspection I found that there were some parts missing and other parts boogered up that would need replaced as well. I spent a few weeks searching online looking for parts, but there was literally NOTHING available. Some Heritage parts fit, others didn't. He told me to keep it, it was given to him and he just wanted to get it checked out. It's a Western Six .22LR manufactured for Kimel Industries. From what I can find, Kimel was formed in 1967 and no real firm date as to when it was dissolved. It was in pretty sad shape overall.
A couple weeks ago I got a notice from Ebay that new items had been found for a search that I had done, and up popped a lot of Kimel parts that had all the hard-to -find parts that I needed. Waited until the last minute and put my max bid in, which was higher than I really wanted to put into a $100 max gun, but you know how it is... the only thing was that I had pretty well figured it to be a wall-hanger, so had bead blasted it and painted it a nice semi-gloss black, which now had to be stripped!
The only thing I really had to figure out was how to repair the screw hole for the bolt'trigger spring screw. Someone had drilled the 4-40 threaded hole out to 1/8", with what intentions I have no idea. So I drilled it out even further and threaded it for a 10-32 stainless steel insert that has 4-40 internal threads and epoxied it in place then filed it down flush.
Then I polished all the aluminum parts and blued all the steel parts.
Final step was a new stainless Heritage hammer and the spring for the cylinder advancement hand, luckily the Heritage parts fit and were available. Here it is, all together.
Took it out today and ran several different ammo manufacturers through it, the CCI Mini-Mags gave me the best group at 20 yards.
Always great to bring one back from the junk box, even one that's not a collectible or worth a bunch of money!
A couple weeks ago I got a notice from Ebay that new items had been found for a search that I had done, and up popped a lot of Kimel parts that had all the hard-to -find parts that I needed. Waited until the last minute and put my max bid in, which was higher than I really wanted to put into a $100 max gun, but you know how it is... the only thing was that I had pretty well figured it to be a wall-hanger, so had bead blasted it and painted it a nice semi-gloss black, which now had to be stripped!
The only thing I really had to figure out was how to repair the screw hole for the bolt'trigger spring screw. Someone had drilled the 4-40 threaded hole out to 1/8", with what intentions I have no idea. So I drilled it out even further and threaded it for a 10-32 stainless steel insert that has 4-40 internal threads and epoxied it in place then filed it down flush.
Then I polished all the aluminum parts and blued all the steel parts.
Final step was a new stainless Heritage hammer and the spring for the cylinder advancement hand, luckily the Heritage parts fit and were available. Here it is, all together.
Took it out today and ran several different ammo manufacturers through it, the CCI Mini-Mags gave me the best group at 20 yards.
Always great to bring one back from the junk box, even one that's not a collectible or worth a bunch of money!
