Caldwell FireControl

[RWA]

Hi all.
I have a Caldwell Fire Control front rest & it is getting a little jerky. I am sure that a grease & oil change will do it wonders.

Question for those that have pulled these rests apart. Is there any tricks or is it just a matter of removing the 4 Allen screws around the perimeter and separating what looks like two halves. Do not want to undo the last screw and have it go sproing & have a 1000 parts all over the kitchen floor.

Thanks
Ross

[Brad Y]

I found aerosol dry lube to be ok. Don’t go overboard with it. The internals of these rests aren’t great. I also found by backing off tension it was better but you have to hold joystick in one hand and shoot with only one hand on the gun which is fine anyway. Without supporting the joystick the gun may fall. I upgraded one with a Farley top and custom base, was actually a really good rest in the end.

[scott/r]

It's an easy fix for these things. There's no springs or anything that will fly across the room in them. They are greased roller rods under pressure from the 4 Allen screws on the back side of the body. I made a huge difference to our club rests by polishing all the contact surfaces including the v blocks were the rollers rest on. You'll see what I mean when you open it up. I also drilled and pinned the 2 plastic knobs that tighten everything as well. If yours hasn't stripped yet, they will because there isn't much to them.
Scott.

[EWM]

After doing the above replace the 4 Allen screws with nylon screws & adjust evenly

[scott/r]

After doing the above replace the 4 Allen screws with nylon screws & adjust evenly

The 2 I did already had a Teflon cap on the end of the Allen screw so there was no need to replace them.
Scott.

[RWA]

Thanks guys. Your replies are appreciated

[Normmatzen]

I and my OZ friend Peter both bought Firecontrols some years back.
We soon found the bad features of it, so we modified them! We took the insides out and smoothed the bearing surface for the X-Y function and cut cabinet makers scrapers to fit the wall of the inside with the hole in it for the joy stick. It is easier than it looks as the scraper breaks almost like glass.
We glued these on the bearing wall. ?Then my friend made some brass "mushrooms" and drilled holes in a set of grub screw and bought some springs and tried till we found the correct spring rate. After coating the bearing plate with grease, we re-assembled them. I also worked on the vertical adjustment a bit and added a larger knob.
Now we had bench rests that worked Way Better.

We both progressed to better rests but I kept my fire control as it works better than some aspects of my commercial ,quality rest.