A Little Gunsmithing With My Table Top Mill

Back in October I picked up a Northwest Trade Gun put together from Caywood parts by Arizona gunsmith Mike Roby. The NWTG was one of the most important firearms in North American history, being made by the tens of thousands from the mid-18th to late 19th Centuries. It's basically a single barrel shotgun that was wildly popular with Indians and to a lesser extent, whites.

As a smoothbore, it's very versatile in that you can load it with shot for small game and birds, buckshot for larger animals or defense, or a single ball for large game.

The Caywood/Roby NTWG is a lefty, which made it impossible to resist.

It's a 20 gauge which translates to about .62 caliber.  My goal for it is to develop a round ball load that will allow me to hunt whitetail deer out to about 50 yards. That means I need to keep my shots on a paper dinner plate at that distance.

The first time I shot the gun I was getting pretty good groups at around 25 yards but they were about 10" low and a foot left. I decided the best way to correct this would be to add a rear sight, since as it came it only hand a front sight.

Last week I dismounted the barrel from the stock and used my Grizzly G8689 mill to cut a shallow dovetail.

The rear sight as it currently appears. After I settle on a load and get it zeroed, I'll narrow the blade to match the barrel.

I took it to the range yesterday and tried several different ball/patch combinations but failed to get what I consider an acceptable group, so more experimentation is necessary. One thing I'm going to try is 2Fg powder instead of 3Fg.

ASSuming I'm able to develop a good load it'll become a deer gun for me. It's under 8 lbs. and has a nice sling, making it nice to carry. Recoil is not bad at all with a hunting load. The large balls should drop deer nicely.

Many machinists turn their nose up at these small Chinese machines. Would I like to have a Bridgeport mill? Of course! But I don't have anywhere for it. This mill and my 7x14 lathe are quite capable of doing useful work as long as you confine yourself to their working environments. For making small parts or even modifying bigger ones, they've found a place in my toolkit.