I wanted to post this, perhaps to help others. I made a lot of mistakes doing this gunbuild that helped me with my subsequent and most recent Abellan Midhandle that I think came out great. Whereas this was complicated, the new one was simple. I learned that I had a lot to learn/relearn about the basics.
Intended Gun Specs:
Abellan Euro trigger
Tin Man Handle (easiest for me to use as I've already made the jig for it)
Shoots a 130 or low overhang 120 cm shaft
I don't remember the length; I just cut it for the shaft desired (I had 3 of these shafts lying around)
Abellan Reel (I have 6 of them)
What I did right:
1.) I used some scrap wood. It's leftover padauk and sapele (both cheap) and I just did 3 laminates.
2.) The shape is good for a roller.
3.) Mostly everything, except what I detail below.
4.) I cut the old muzzle off and restarted.
Mistakes:
1.) I tried to remove too much wood with the router bit at once. As I was removing the wood for the roller area, the bit grabbed and messed up the wood. Additionally, the router chips the wood in certain directions, which is difficult for me to predict. It would be much less of an issue if there was much less wood to remove. So I had to lengthen the slot forward. It grabbed again, so I had to lengthen it forward. This caused a cascade of problems.
I should have made a jig and removed a lot of excess wood by drilling it with a forstner bit out or taking many more passes. I ended up making a jig or guide for the router to follow, but I used a piece of pine that got messed up. I had to make the router guide with MDF, which is a good choice.
2.) The above problem made me lose excess muzzle space and made it really hard to install the lineguide and the wishbone retainers.
3.) I drilled the holes for the wishbone retainers (the 1/8" rod that goes over the roller) before trying to bend them to the right length. Do it opposite, it's a lot easier to drill the holes exactly where they line up rather than trying to bend to an exact dimension. I ended up scrapping the first set I made and making a longer set. I had to fill holes with epoxy, which you can barely see.
4.) I initially had the SS roller holder a little too tight, so I had to add a washer here and there to make it right. I shaped them using a belt sander. Don't try drilling SS with anything less than cobalt bits. It's pointless, I found out.
5.) Because I had to lengthen the roller slot, I basically had to install everything as shown. I was originally going to just oil this gun because it's the easiest way, but because I got epoxy everywhere when putting in the stainless bits, I ended up putting two coats on the gun.
6.) The above happened after a day of diving with it. The screws took more loading than I expected, and I bet some water got in there due to carelessness and caused expansion. The same crack happened on both sides, this one is more pronounced. The lesson here is to spread the load better and to move the screws much further back or otherwise eliminate them.
7.) Linerouting is important. I hope you can see in the photo below that the shooting line (yellow) crosses over the bands. During field testing, they got hung up on the tied wishbone, rendering the reel useless. I can foresee that it could get caught on the bands also. In this case, it needs to be routed directly in the middle or even along the side of the gun. I was just going to install a guide (like the gun below) to route the lines down the middle and stay in between the bands.
8.) Bending things perfectly is difficult. I put the 1/2" SS flat stock on a vise and tried bending it perfectly. There are some weird angles that you might be able to see in the photo, but are obvious in real life. I should have just kept it flat and added a wood spacer. Not pictured are the pins for loading the gun at 3, 3.25, and 3.5 x stretch (which I calculated).
Final thoughts:
1.) I started fixing it and making a better gun. This one was too long anyway and the lack of shaft overhang made aiming more difficult. If you notice, I cut it much better the second time, but I still chipped the wood. I've put in epoxy there, so it's ready to continue.
2.) The roller system is pretty nice as it makes for a very pleasant shooting gun that is easy to load. Most of the time for bad vis or small fish, I didn't even increase the band stretch, just loaded it. This light loading and the smooth Abellan trigger made it good, despite all the difficulties.
4.) Thanks to Wood Guy for the roller, they'll be used in an even more ambitious roller experiment coming up. What can I say, I like tinkering.
5.) I got all the SS bits from onlinemetals.com and the specialty hardware, the threaded standoff that the roller rides on (thanks Tin Man).
