This Old Co-ax

C

Chainsaw.

New member
I picked up and old Coax press from a friends grandfathers estate, the thing is old enough it is labled BONANZA rather than FORSTER, guess that makes it at least 30 years old? It had been used alot and had also been through a house fire so she was a little worse for wear. Well I recently picked up a powder coat gun and the winter weather has me itchy so I decided this morning that today was gonna be the day. Were gonna spruce her up like I've been wanting to for a while.

This was after a good wash in the solvent tank, didnt make much difference.



 
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Today I took her all the way down to bare bones parts then took her to the sand blast cabinet. There the original coating laughed off the sand blaster so I went back and took the needle gun to it for a solid 45 mins, that took that bulk of the original coating off. Then back to the blast cabinet which had a much easier time getting the rest of the fluff off.

Fast forward to this evening and I got to work with the powder coat gun. The wishbone, main beam and bottom follower all got done in red.



Tomorrow the handle tube, links and links buttons will all get blasted and get a coat of stearling black. Pics to come.
 
Re assembly will be fun.
PC makes everything thicker.
I see you DID NOT cover the mating surfaces.
Bet youll be grinding the PC off to fit them back.
Looks really good however.


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Always something very satisfying about bring something back to life. Looking forward to more reports. Good luck.
 
Nice job! Those presses will churn and burn forever, they are built really solid as you can see. Never pass on one if it comes your way.

Ron
 
Well it looks like it wound up in the right hands, not too many people have the equipment to remove let alone coat.

It does look good.

I fear Texas45 is right, going to have to clean off the surfaces.

Not sure how hard that is with PC, never done any, heard about it is all.
Re assembly will be fun.
PC makes everything thicker.
I see you DID NOT cover the mating surfaces.
Bet youll be grinding the PC off to fit them back.
Looks really good however
Click to expand...
 
So I got quite a bit more done today. I spun the bars on the lathe and brought them back to shine with some green scotch brite. They had been wacked with a waffle face hammer at some point so I needed to de-mushroom the ends with the belts sander. Ill have to buy a small tap to chase the threads on the end of the right (as facing) bar being it got smacked too.



I also took some time to chase all the threads with a tap, between a little powder coat leaking in and years of gunk they need a cleaning.

Today I got the small bits like the handle, spent primer tube, pins and bars sand blasted and coated. Started to assemble her back together. In the next few days Im going to take a stone to the case jaws and shine them up, Ill put some oil on them to try to keep them gleaming for a good while, perhaps Ill brown or blue them. Its coming along well. Cant wait to pull the lever on some 30-30.

 
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looking good I have one also it's got to be close to 30 yrs old but yours looks a hell of a lot better can't wait to see all done.
 
Smoke, yes they do free float. Apparently thats one of the biggest draws of these presses is they really help to minimize run out/concentric.
 
Been loading on an old Bonanza for more years than I can remember. Thousands and thousands rounds with no problems.

Parts are available from Forster should you need any. A few lost or worn out ones have been replaced on mine several times. Drop tube, jaws, jaw springs, etc.

As an after thought; there's 2 sets of shell holding jaws needed to load all cartridges on your press. I forget the nomenclature, check out Forster web site for them.
 
Hog buster, good to know, I do infact want to replace the primer seaters. They are perfectly serviceable but look like a pair of worn out sneakers on a fellow wearing a tuxedo. Thanks.:cool:
 
If I remember they changed the priming shell holder to a spring loaded one that fits all. The primer seaters stayed the same, I think. I never used them, too slow. Hope you got the long handle with yours, the short one can be a PIA.
 
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