Ok, What Is A Tophat?

I do have a senes of humor, although sometimes it’s a little warped, twisted, dry, or just plain sick. I must confess that while viewing all of the squirrel kill videos, I burst out in laughter. I guess that I am a sicko too. Oh well.

I went to Tony’s website and viewed everything that was there. I noticed that he had polished a top hat. His was shiney and beautiful. Mine had ugly machining marks and a dull look to it. Bingo! I know, I’ll polish mine too! And with that I was off! (Why is AF’s machining so coarse?)

I summoned my ten year old boy, and proceeded to tell him the best that I could, what a top hat was, and how we were going to ploish ours. I found a machine screw and promptly beheaded it. I then screwed it, along with a jam nut, in to the top hat and chucked it up into a drill press. My son watched in amazement. I spun it up to just over 1000 rpms, ( this was obviously the perfect time to teach drill press safety and useage). Next was a brief tutorial on silicon carbide paper, (wet/dry sandpaper to him). We started with 220 and worked our way to 400 lubricated with a little break-free. All the time I was measuring how much material I was removing with dial calipers. He said, “what kind of measuring tool is that dad?” Another opportunity to teach something that has all but disappeared from public education. Tooling and mathematics together; that’s what some of your math is really used for, I told him.

I noticed that Tony’s appeared to have a tiny radius on the end so I retrieved a small single cut file and demonstrated thoes skills. I also got to teach him a little about files. When we were finished, we had a part that resembled what was in the picture, and best of all we had done it together. I reassembled the tophat/valve and we shot a few rounds to see if it was ok. Sure enough, no harm done. We both agreed, our Talon SS still shoots well.

I am not pretending for a minute to have Tony’s experience, skill, or expertise. I just saw a tiny part of the puzzle that I knew I could do. I am hoping to save up for a tune job next year. Thanks to Tony, and Adam, and everybody else who contributes to this forum.

Thanks Adam. That makes sense. Good explaination too. My first thought was similar to Skybones’. I pictured Fred Astaire with that hat and cane.