Thread: Marlin Ballard restoration

After looking at the photo of the inside of the breechblock I can see no reason why the entire rear face that has cracked out cannot be built up with weld and remachined to increase the rear face by 1.5mm (.060"), rebore the pivot hole, anneal then re-case harden the entire hammer. If you get binding from the mainspring at full cock, then a small radius could be filed (before hardening) at the junction of the two faces to bring back that small area to the original dimension. You would need to do a sketch with accurate dimensions first so you can accurately position the new pivot hole.

Originally Posted by gundoc

After looking at the photo of the inside of the breechblock I can see no reason why the entire rear face that has cracked out cannot be built up with weld and remachined to increase the rear face by 1.5mm (.060"), rebore the pivot hole, anneal then re-case harden the entire hammer. If you get binding from the mainspring at full cock, then a small radius could be filed (before hardening) at the junction of the two faces to bring back that small area to the original dimension. You would need to do a sketch with accurate dimensions first so you can accurately position the new pivot hole.

That's pretty well what Mr Vulcan and I came up with in the weekend
Now I need to sit down with my welding guru and see how he would approach it

What's not so obvious it it's a surprisingly small hammer with a small diameter pivot screw
With a very powerful main spring that has quite a static weight
I guess that's why the Ballards were legendary target rifles