The Saga is coming to an end!
Yesterday, in my post and quote from timbitsaregood, I used him to add some levity to this sad story of a fine old rifle being abused almost to death.
Tim PMed me this morning and the following is an excerp from my PM reply to him which should complete the story. BTW, he is too sharp a newbie to have picked up the great offer that I made to him.
"This is a great user group and the information here is invalueable. The story of my trials and tribulations with the poor old 1913 BSA badly bubbaed SMLE is certainly not a DIY thread. I truly needed help and suspected that it was me and not the rifle. Not so, It was the persons who lowered the value of the rifle in the first place and those who followed, until I decided to finish the "sporterizing" and found the disgusting things that had been done to it.
Your post to the thread allowed me to inject some levity in the situation. I had not at that point finished the job.
When yesterday afternoon I started the cold blueing, with the fore stock wedged apart from the barrel, it took me over 4 hours to reassemble all. I had serious doubts during this process that I would be successful as the hot water needed to rince the cold blueing soaked into the wood, swelling it. I used a hair dryer to finally get all together again."
Incidentally, last night I went in to the stickies on this forum and found the great stuff that has been posted there ( badgerdog?) the references on the Milsurp site. I came upon the post there of another BSA, a 1912, exactly like mine that was really only scrap when the soldier carrying it was killed. That rifle may be only so much scrap but it tells an eloquent story where as my rifle hides it's story of abuse internally.
Again, I want to thank all of you who took the time to post here during my experience.
This is my last post, I promise, on this thread.
