Sometimes about 25-30 years ago I got my first M 96 Swede. It was rough, had a couple of mismatched serial number parts, although I knew nothing about all that a the time. It was a 1898 model with 4 digit serial number. It had an awful beech stock full of dents and scratches, and I later learned it had been heavily sanded at some point, ie the finger groove edges were well rounded. Bluing was almost non existent. A friend had gotten a bluing tank, so I disassembled and cleaned up the parts and told him no polishing, just get a matt or semi gloss blue, whatever came out and that did turn out nice. I steamed and reworked the stock so it looked nice, but beech is hard to stain evenly so was never happy with it. Late last year in my modest research I learned that the French walnut was the proper wood for the 1898 rifles, so I acquired a walnut stock , cleaned it up a little and installed it. Numbers on the stock do not match, but the beech stock did not have any numbers anyway. By some accounts I have "bubbaed" the rifle, but in my view It would never be a truly desirable collectors item, so I simply made it look more like orginal. One other modification for my older eyes was the installation of a set of MO JO double diopter sights, which can be removed and the original sights simply replaced. No drilling and tapping involved at all. If I could get one of the original Swedish diopter sights in good condition, I might have it drilled and tapped for that.
