I sure can. She's 90% done.
I'm waiting on a block of pewter to do a nosecap on the forend, and was going to update then, but since you asked, this is where it's at right now. I've had a ball doing it, I had no money to get work done so had to learn how to do it all myself. Most of it is old world techniques, no complicated tools etc, just time and patience. The Case hardening was the only thing I farmed out and worth every penny.
The rust pit and sling hole filling was done with a TIG welder, all the draw filing by hand. A tip for anyone doing the same- don't anneal the part before filling it in. I found that once it was filled in with weld, draw filing was really easy because the file wouldn't touch the receiver, just the new steel gobbed in there. I cut new spur checkering with needle files and got rid of the front sight, cutting a dovetail to put a tidy little Beech flip sight on.
A clean up of the parts and nitre bluing as previously mentioned really sets it all off. I'm no photographizer, I just can't get pics that do it justice. They pop like jewels in real life. As they sit right now, you can see in the pics, they're a little worn. I didn't clear coat them, and it's suffered from a lot of disassembly so I'm going to redo them all again at a later date. No hurry for me though.
The fore end was held on by a crappy pin run horizontally, so I made up a threaded dovetail adapter to run a 1/4-20 screw in perpendicularly from the bottom, no more wobbly fore end for me, no sir.
I sweated the rear sight back on the barrel and rust blued the whole shot, I'll probably nitre blue alternating bits on the ladder the next time I gear up for it.
I'll see what I can do for the nitre bluing, but if you check out youtube, the guys doing on there aren't lying. It's really easy, the hard part is getting the saltpeter. What an ordeal that is.
Stay tuned!
Here we go!
As found:
As she sits, waiting on fore end completion, picture that foreend about 1" longer in pewter:
Reciever in state du crappy:
Filled in, drawfiled, polished, nitre blued, jeweled and new firing pin:
Hammer and block with worn checkering, craptacular firing pin and generally tired:
And Fini:
Front sight before:
And after cut dovetail and Beech installation:
So, I've got a few more hours of pewter/fore end work and it's done.
I've put about 50 rounds of 50/70 through it, so that's like what? 25 pounds of lead?
Anyway, I wasn't getting scientific about it, but I was
sledgehammering a 10" gong at 100yds 8 er 9 out of ten times off hand.
Next, I think I
NEED to work over another in 45/70 in a cavalry carbine kind of style like one of these:
I'm all geared up for casting and loading 45/70, so I'd be an idiot not to, right?
