My Old Mauser - Part 3

[Snakedriver]

Just for fun I decided to give my old Mauser a new look by giving it some different clothes. Back in the 80’s I found a replacement stock at a gun show in mid Missouri for $10-15. It wasn’t in very good shape, but it had all the metal parts with it so I thought I would get it and make a project out of it. It took a few years, but you guys gave me the inspiration to try my luck at something new.

The replacement stock had been “Bubba’d” pretty bad and the metal parts had all the blueing worn off, but were bright and not rusty. I filled the Bubba damaged with some oak pieces, gorilla glue and some walnut filler putty to get it smooth and back to its original shape. I started out painting it with some “flat” Krylon camouflage paint in olive drab and some flat clear sealer over the paint for durability, but it was too smooth and showed greasy fingerprints really bad whenever you touched it. My next step was to paint it with some multi-color flat Rustolium paint with a light texture. I was hoping for a little more greenish color, but it has a distinct blueish hue instead. Still not too bad though. The light textured paint cured the fingerprint issues.

I then thoroughly polished all the metal with steel wool and degreaser and re-blued them with some Birchwwod-Casey’s “Super Blue” to get them all black again. The Super Blue works great, I would recommend it if you are doing a project.

I think the results turned out pretty good, what do you guys think? The original natural wood stock was not harmed in the making of this project. All I have to do to put it back in it’s original form is to remove a couple of screws and barrel bands.