I couple of weeks back I posted about getting my new Tula and a couple o' SPAM cans full of ammo.
When I used some mineral spirits to slew away the cosmo it also took off some pretty big patches of the shellac as well. CURSES ! ! ! ! ! !.... OK, let's get out the coarse steel wool, add some lacquer thinner to the mineral spirits and strip it down. Got it down to the wood with a bit of elbow grease and the solvent.
Stained it with some dark brown leather dye and after it dried for a few days I used a couple of coats of polymerized tung oil on the wood. Still need to do two or three more coats. But as you can see from the picture below it's not too shabby looking for military wood. It's a little darker in real life. The flash lightened up the wood by quite a bit. More of a darker coffee with just a little milk sort of look.
Over the past couple of days I did some small upgrades.
First was to pack the sear/spring with a "washer" cut from some of the soft steel pipe hanger strapping.
Next was to eliminate the floppy trigger by making and installing a spring that pushes the trigger back. Now it stays lightly against the sear instead of flopping around as with stock. And the roughly one lb of positive trigger pressure slightly aids in reducing the trigger pull. I need to get a "fish scale" to measure the pull but it seems like it's around 6 to 7 lbs as it sits now. These two mods of packing the sear spring and the trigger tensioning spring worked so nicely that I'm going to do the same mods to both my M44 and the '43 Izhevsk 91/30 as well.
The points where the trigger rubs the sear spring and the sear to bolt hook surfaces were stoned to polish them with a super fine ceramic knife sharpening stone. As a result the trigger has a nice smooth pull with no "gravel" feel up to where the sear breaks with a snap.
The forestock end was resting against the barrel so I made up a thin shim and put it into the forward screw recess in the stock. WIth that the action seated down with just about a millimeter or less of movement needed for the front of the stock to touch the barrel. I "corked" the stock using a single layer of file folder card stock. This produced a slight amount of friction to pull the foregrip into place. Over the top I had to add two more layers to allow the upper cover to push evenly all around the barrel. So now the barrel is free floating other than the "corked" point at the forward stock band. Does this sound about right?
Finally the rear sight was fixed up. The groove was slightly widened and deepened to almost double the stock depth. My old guy eyes need this sort of help or I may as well stand back and just throw the bullets by hand for all the accuracy I'd have. With the groove widened slightly and greatly deepened I can see the front pin centered between the sides of the rear groove far more easily and the top corners of the groove are far easier to line up with the top of the pin.
Front sight body was bumped over to center it on the mount to hopefully compensate for not normally shooting with the bayonet in place. Further bumping will wait on results from range testing.
The hinge pin was punched out and the blade and elevation adjuster removed for this U mod. At the same time I filed off a fair amount of metal from the lower bevel edge of the adjuster body so it should hopefully shoot lower for the closer in stuff. The notch and adjuster body work were then cold blued to touch them up along with cold blueing the new refurbished muzzle crown.
The picture here was taken once it was all back together. Now for a sunny day to take it to the range and try it out.
When I used some mineral spirits to slew away the cosmo it also took off some pretty big patches of the shellac as well. CURSES ! ! ! ! ! !.... OK, let's get out the coarse steel wool, add some lacquer thinner to the mineral spirits and strip it down. Got it down to the wood with a bit of elbow grease and the solvent.
Stained it with some dark brown leather dye and after it dried for a few days I used a couple of coats of polymerized tung oil on the wood. Still need to do two or three more coats. But as you can see from the picture below it's not too shabby looking for military wood. It's a little darker in real life. The flash lightened up the wood by quite a bit. More of a darker coffee with just a little milk sort of look.
Over the past couple of days I did some small upgrades.
First was to pack the sear/spring with a "washer" cut from some of the soft steel pipe hanger strapping.
Next was to eliminate the floppy trigger by making and installing a spring that pushes the trigger back. Now it stays lightly against the sear instead of flopping around as with stock. And the roughly one lb of positive trigger pressure slightly aids in reducing the trigger pull. I need to get a "fish scale" to measure the pull but it seems like it's around 6 to 7 lbs as it sits now. These two mods of packing the sear spring and the trigger tensioning spring worked so nicely that I'm going to do the same mods to both my M44 and the '43 Izhevsk 91/30 as well.
The points where the trigger rubs the sear spring and the sear to bolt hook surfaces were stoned to polish them with a super fine ceramic knife sharpening stone. As a result the trigger has a nice smooth pull with no "gravel" feel up to where the sear breaks with a snap.
The forestock end was resting against the barrel so I made up a thin shim and put it into the forward screw recess in the stock. WIth that the action seated down with just about a millimeter or less of movement needed for the front of the stock to touch the barrel. I "corked" the stock using a single layer of file folder card stock. This produced a slight amount of friction to pull the foregrip into place. Over the top I had to add two more layers to allow the upper cover to push evenly all around the barrel. So now the barrel is free floating other than the "corked" point at the forward stock band. Does this sound about right?
Finally the rear sight was fixed up. The groove was slightly widened and deepened to almost double the stock depth. My old guy eyes need this sort of help or I may as well stand back and just throw the bullets by hand for all the accuracy I'd have. With the groove widened slightly and greatly deepened I can see the front pin centered between the sides of the rear groove far more easily and the top corners of the groove are far easier to line up with the top of the pin.
Front sight body was bumped over to center it on the mount to hopefully compensate for not normally shooting with the bayonet in place. Further bumping will wait on results from range testing.
The hinge pin was punched out and the blade and elevation adjuster removed for this U mod. At the same time I filed off a fair amount of metal from the lower bevel edge of the adjuster body so it should hopefully shoot lower for the closer in stuff. The notch and adjuster body work were then cold blued to touch them up along with cold blueing the new refurbished muzzle crown.
The picture here was taken once it was all back together. Now for a sunny day to take it to the range and try it out.
