Trick for putting pillars in a stock

I have an old Forster case trimmer cutter shaft and already had a bunch of neck turn pilots. It has come in handy for putting pillars in stocks. I can usually come up with a pilot that fits the factory hole nicely, chuck it up in a Milwaukee M18 1/2 inch drill motor, run it in slow mode and bada bing, bada boom the job is done in less time than it takes to setnup the drill press.

Change out the pilot to fit the hole in the aluminum pillar and it faces them off nice and square to set the trigger guard at precisely the right height.

It was something I came up with out of the blue and now a couple friends are doing the same thing using various brands of case trimmer cutter shafts.

It dulls the cutter shaft after a while and it has to be touched up from time to time, but not too bad. I don’t think it would be a good idea to use the cutter shafts I trim brass with, but it isn’t hard to find used case trimmers cheap. My buddy made up a whole collection of pilots on his lathe for his.

Good tip. More than one way to skin a cat, as they say.

DG

Great idea, I like it!

You can buy an interchangeable counterbore set for not much money, or simply step drill it with progressively larger bits
I’d rather do that than mess with my trimmer

I’ve got a pretty decent selection of counterbores, don’t have any this large diameter. I had this shaft that was part of a $50 grab bag I bought to get a 541 trigger and I put it to good use.

I use the counter bore does the same as the case trimmer and shaft but has better chip clearance/removal.