1) Again, I must apologize for the lousy focus in these pictures but I just can't get this camera to do what I'd like it to do. I'm just about ready to clamp things up and solder the ribs and the muzzle wedge into place. I find it helpful to have at least one screw holding the ribs in position to make sure that they stay square to the barrels and don't shift position during the soldering installation. I filed up this little block of steel that you see here, had it micro-tigged into place, drilled it, and tapped it 8-40. Below the barrels you see the underside of the top rib, drilled and counterbored for the mounting screw. You'll notice that the rib is all black. One of the tricky jobs in these builds is to get your top rib to mate perfectly with the barrels, especially at that transition point where the barrels taper abruptly from the breech reinforce area down to the smaller diameter. The only way that I know to achieve this is to smoke the underside of the rib over a candle flame and then screw the rib down just as tight as you can to the barrels(another reason for installing the locator screw). Then you remove the rib and you'll find bright shiny steel where the smoke has been rubbed off. You carefully draw file those shiny areas, then re-smoke them, re-install the rib, and repeat this process untill you can't see any light on either side of the rib when you hold the assembly up to a bright light. This is a tedious process which can't be rushed and usually takes me a couple of days to complete, in my spare moments.

2) Here I'm smoking the rib again over the candle.

3) Here I'm screwing the rib down tight onto the barrels.

4) Draw-filing those shiny areas.

5) Fitting of top rib is complete, there is no light visible between the rib and the barrels when I hold the barrels in front of my work light.

60 This locator screw will eventually be used as the front mounting screw on the forward scope base.