Diary: CZ452 Varmint to LR Trainer

[Redhouse]

If the sight of nice walnut being bubba'd turns your stomach, look away now!

As with what mysticplayer is doing with a Savage, I have been churning the idea of making a long range trainer for a while now. Looked at the Savage TR, as it's also in the $500 budget range for the basic rifle. But have read mixed reviews on them. Also handled a MkII in a sporter style laminate stock (non-thumbhole) with a heavy barrel that would have been a good candidate for modification.

I had a CZ 452 Varmint, but it had the most gorgeous tiger striped stock and there was no way I was going to go to work on that, so I turned it over to a board member here. Given the overwhelmingly positive accuracy reports and my experience and comfort with the rifle, I picked another one up today from P&D. It has pretty plain wood, and so I don't have much remorse about sanding it down for my needs.

I like most of the way the stock is set up as is, with the exception of the wrist area. The forend is fairly flat/wide on the bottom, the length of pull is good, I like the pad they use. So, I'm only going to work on the area that I have roughly taped off:

I started off doing things by hand but quickly realized I was going to be at it for days doing it all with a rasp, so I broke out the belt sander. I've done minor woodworking before, so I know enough to know it's easier to take off than it is to put back on So, I went pretty slowly:

That wasn't enough to give me the feel I was looking for, so I hit it with the belt sander some more, then rasp to round out some corners/flats. Then, 80 grit then 100 grit paper, about half an hours worth of smoothing and rounding:

I did a tiny bit more blending as you'll see but this is essentially where I ended up:

I went ahead and hit the entire stock with 220 sandpaper to prepare for painting. This is where I spent a bit more time blending the previously sanded area with the rest of the stock, getting rid of the larger sanding marks left by the 80 & 100 paper.

I looked around the garage for some wood sealer, but I didn't have any. If you *really* want to do this right, you would hit up the bared open wood with some sealer before moving on to paint. I figure I'll go ahead without for now, knowing that I can always get back to/redo it, and also knowing that there is a little bit of risk that long term it will be more prone crack if not addressed.

Definitely clean it real good before moving to paint. I wiped it down with naptha, and when I saw some dust afterwards I went ahead and used a tack cloth on it. I taped off the butt pad as there are no screw access holes, I'm just going to leave it on for painting.

Again, I thought about whether or not to use primer. Being that I am using an ultra flat Krylon, and there are no priming instructions on the can, I didn't bother. I have a rig that I made for painting guitars and other various and sundry small items, set the rifle up on it. Garage is heated to about 15C so I shouldn't have any issues with paint not setting due to cold temp.

I've given it one coat of Olive Ultra Flat Krylon. I'm going to go hit it with some more and will report back in a bit.

 

[kombayotch]

Add a rear hook; the flat bottom rides the rear bag better since the surface is parallel and the hook itself adds more control. I added one to my B&C Anschutz stock and sanded down the huge comb. JB weld is your friend...

 

[Redhouse]

Still wet here, obviously. The area in the wrist still shows a bit of sanding marks, not sure if that will go away with more paint or not but not overly concerned. I bought some undercoat/stoneguard rubberized spray on material that I'm going to strategically place and that area may or may not get covered.

komb, I had thought about a hook and, for now, will be going without. I had a rifle before that had one, and for me it didn't really get used or add to my very loosely named skill.

I had also thought about flattening the area around the bolt recess but as it stands I'm glad I left it. As noted above, easier to remove material than add back, I'll try it out as-is and can always go back to it. Krylon is $6/can and the work costs me nothing, so further mods will be cheap.

 

[Redhouse]

Started clearcoating last night and sprayed a final coat this morning. Using Krylon matte clear, but as you will see it really does come out quite shiny - I first learned this painting the stock of my CZ858. I'll deal with that later.

Next on the agenda is grip panels or areas. I picked up some $9.99 Canadian Tire rubberized rocker guard to try. Debated about using patterns, rounding edges, funky shapes and just how much of the wrist area to treat. In the end, kept it simple. Low tack blue painters tape to mask everything off and here we go:

The rocker spray was really easy to use - runnier than I thought it might be, very easy to a) get a nice even coat quickly but also b) overdo it. This is the first coat....it calls for 6 hour drying time, but I don't have that kind of patience so I'll go look in an hour or so and see how it's setting up, and decide whether it needs another coat.

 

[Polar Man]

Pretty cool project, can't wait to see how it turns out. What else are you going to do to it to besides modifying the stock?

 

[Redhouse]

Polar, though I haven't done so yet I do plan on bedding the rifle.

OK so when I left off, I had put a couple of coats of the Rocker Guard on. In retrospect I would probably pick a different product if I did it over again. It's messy to work with, contracts when it dries, and when dry is not especially tacky. It is what it is and I'm not going to refinish it just now, so here's what it looked like when I peeled all the tape off. You can see that even low tack masking tape leaves a lot of residue on the finish...

OK why does this idjit have a hammer out? is it THAT BAD?? Actually, no, I came up with a brainstorm. While the black was still not fully set, and given that it's not that tacky, I took a punch and put a bunch of dents in the forend side panels to give it some texture....

Well, first my daughter suggested that I'd be welcome to use some of her nail files if I could figger out a way to affix them

She's grounded now.

Here's what it ends up looking like:

You can see that the edges of the panels are rough. I tried to smooth them somewhat during the next step, which was to light sand the entire stock to get rid of a) the tape residue and b) the shineyness (sp?) of the matte clearcoat. I didn't take pictures, but it was a not very satisfactory look, so I masked off the grip areas, wiped it all down with naptha/lighter fluid, and hit it with the Krylon olive again. I like the bare paint matte finish much better than the clearcoat, so am foregoing clearcoating it again.

Time to put it all back together. I'm going to bed it later, but am going to the range tomorrow so wanted to get it scoped. I had picked up a Tasco 6x24 Varmint, had one before on a .22 and was real happy with it. It does *just barely* touch the barrel, I do need higher rings darnit. I can still turn the front bell with no resistance but can feel it juuuuuust touching the barrel as I turn it.

I cut a small piece out of the front cover so I could put it on the scope, wouldn't go on otherwise due to lack of clearance.

And so, for the moment, I'm going to call it done but still really a work in progress. Here's how it finished up:

Yes that's electrician's tape around the border of the wrist grip area. Just for cosmetics, as the border's rough.

And the side panel, which is the ugliest part but does give a very nice tactile when holding the rifle offhand:

 

[Got Juice?]

DIY boxliner for trucks will give you the texture and feel you want. you can even get piano wire tape as a border edge. once set, peel off the tape you will have a razors edge