Traditions Pennsylvania refinish project.

[RhinoDave]

Time to start another resurrection. This rifle is in pretty rough shape appearance wise. All the original inlays were removed and the voids filled with some sort of epoxy. All the furniture is fitted very roughly and the patchbox looks like it was fitted with a steak knife. Looking for any thoughts or ideas to make this thing look better. Any ideas towards making it look more like a Berks county rifle would be greatly appreciated. Open to anything and everything at this point. Including ways to get the epoxy out of the inlay areas. Acetone didn't make a dent.

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[davidmc62]

you can remove alot of wood from those production guns that would make those inlays probably go away, the patch box....thats another story.

 

[MSW]

taking wood down will probably eliminate the inlays. the dreadful filler on the patchbox may be a bit more difficult.

good luck with your project, and let us know how it turns out.

 

[stevenjay1]

You can get inlays and patchbox design that is larger than the current ones and do the work correctly.

 

[RhinoDave]

My first thoughts were to simply thin the forend down to eliminate the inlays but unfortunately, it looks like the manufacturers process was to cut the inlays deep, partly fill with epoxy, and press in the inlays flush with the stock. After digging out most of the epoxy, I felt the stock was to thin to rasp down far enough to eliminate the inlays. I ordered new ones from traditions and am working on replacing them. Same thing with the hearts on the wrist. The voids are very deep and I simply cannot remove enough of the wrist to eliminate the holes. I am filling the wrist inlay with walnut inlays to see how it looks.

 

[Crewdawg445]

Remove the wood... to the point you are scared then remove more. You have plenty of wood that can be removed from that stock. With some good elbow grease those Spanish made guns can be perdy neat and some real shooters if given the time of day. :thumbsup:

 

[Col. Batguano]

The PB is a bigger issue. Certainly the piercings in the PB sides can be filled with wood that is spliced in and inlaid correctly. Is the PB finial also glued in place?? If the wrist of side ones are too deep or lousy looking you could inlay slightly larger ones over the top of them. Another potential fix might be to inlay a couple of layers of brass wire around the perimeter similar to the way silver decorative wire is done. For that matter you could use silver too, as the contrast or border edge might actually be attractive. Possibly you could heat and peen the sheet brass wider to fill more of that ugly glue gap?Then of course the last option would be to painstakingly cut out a matching part with sheet brass, and braze it on to the existing part, and re-inlet the whole thing.

 

[Elnathan]

My father has one of those, and it has the same filler around the box as does yours.

 

[44-henry]

You might consider just re-stocking it, maybe make a Schimmel and just keep the lock and barrel and build the rest of the hardware.

 

[Col. Batguano]

You might consider just re-stocking it, maybe make a Schimmel and just keep the lock and barrel and build the rest of the hardware.

That's an even better idea. There are so many things that are just plain wrong and ugly about that gun. You could easily slim down and fix the comb, cheek piece, wrist, chunky fore end, lock panel sweeps, lock panel margins, wrist hump, and general clunkiness, but you can't do much about the PB being inlaid incorrectly, and globby look to the other inlays. I'd ditch that TG, trigger, and PB for sure, and maybe the BP. Not to mention that the grain direction is really prone to run out and cracking through the wrist.

 

[Billnpatti]

I'm in agreement with the stock replacement idea. I think the stock that you have is too screwed up to salvage properly. Take a look at what these folks have to offer. I have dealt with them and have found them to be great folks to deal with.
http://www.longrifles-pr.com/stockscomponents.shtml

On the other hand, if you are set on salvaging the stock that you have, many old rifles show signs of having had extensive repair work done to the stock. You might want to go that route.

 

[44-henry]

The crazy thing is that if you did decide to re-stock it, selling the existing stock along with the hardware you probably wouldn't want to keep anyway on Ebay would likely net enough to buy a pretty nice stock blank. It is unreal what the Ebay crowd is willing to pay for these days.

 

[Col. Batguano]

The crazy thing is that if you did decide to re-stock it, selling the existing stock along with the hardware you probably wouldn't want to keep anyway on Ebay would likely net enough to buy a pretty nice stock blank. It is unreal what the Ebay crowd is willing to pay for these days.

Ain't that the truth.

You will have far fewer headaches going forward if you start out with materials that at least give you a chance to attain success, and let you make your own mistakes, rather than starting out with someone else's, and trying to figure that out, with materials that won't give you a chance to attain anything other than mediocrity at best. And the hours you'll spend on it will be about the same.

 

[Treestalker]

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

 

[RhinoDave]

Thanks for all the great ideas and suggestions. Definately has given me lots of things to think about.

 

[RhinoDave]

Due to both limited resources and ability, I'll only be trying to refinish the existing stock but I really do appreciate the suggestions. I managed to get replacement stars for the forend and by removing all the epoxy from the voids, I can set the inlays deep enoungh to remove some wood from the foreend and eliminate the gouge marks from the removal of the orginal inlays. I wanted to see if some of my ideas for the buttstock make any sense. I want to reduce the hump at the front of the comb to smooth out the transition from the wrist and also curve the bottom edge to follow the PB so the butt doesn't look so clublike. Thoughts please before I do these.
This is going to be fun. Looks like the raised cheek is going to get alot thinner.

[/url]DSCF3313 by Dave, on Flickr[/img]

 

[Col. Batguano]

From what I can see of the comb from your first picture, it appears to be of a roll over shape, and convex the whole way. Why don't you ditch that shape, and re-do it in a more Late Lancaster sort of shape? That's what the butt plate would seem to suggest anyway.

As was stated earlier, a star shape like this really isn't correct for schools other than Bucks and Bethlehem / Lehighs, and certainly not all of them used stars. If you re-contour the cheek rest you may not be stuck with using that shape, and could go with something more appropriate. Also, from the picture it doesn't really look centered on the cheek rest, but maybe that's the camera angle.

Not sure on the Muzzle Cap. It looks like over 1/4" of barrel is exposed, which is an awful lot. If the cap isn't too long already, maybe you could make a new one and get the front of it closer to the muzzle. 2" would be about maximum length for a MC.

As was stated earlier, I would similarly toss the PB and side plates. Get some blank material, and just design and cut something that is bigger (or at least will fully cover the existing hole. If you want any piercings you'll have to splice in some wood or other material to allow for it. Not a big deal, but I would suggest using wood. You could also fill in the cavity and re-locate it. Yeah there will be a glue line, but most of that will be covered by the PB side plates anyway, so what the hey.

 

[RhinoDave]

Testing my new photo hosting. I deleted my photobucket acct. and removed all my pictures from that site. These are the pictures from the first post.

 

[RhinoDave]

Got a chance to do a little work on this and would like some input on whats been done and where to go from here. Like stated earlier, I simply don't have the resources to replace many of the parts and since I'm just an amateur at this I'm simply shooting for passable and not some work of art. All I've really gotten done is the star inlays on the forend and the heart inlays on the wrist. I used wood inserts on the side hearts and will outline them with wire after getting to the final wrist and comb shape. These pictures are to show what I've done to reshape the butt stock and this is where I could really use some feedback. Thanks in advance for any input both pro and con.
Before

After

Before

After

 

[Barry Stewart]

Looks great so far! I really enjoy refinishing and modifying factory guns as well. Thanks for posting and keep us updated. Finnbarr