Another furniture restore

Darren Wright

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Springfield, Missouri
Last week I picked up a Spanish Mauser Model# 1916 from J&G out of AZ. When I got it home I pulled it out of the box a found I had bought a well used gun made in 1926, but not from shooting it, the barrel is clean and some pretty good rifling yet. The stock on the other hand has a whole lot of dings, a few gouges, and one crack in the fore end on the bottom.

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Friday night I stripped it down and removed all of the metal from the stock, cleaned up all the cosmoline I could and put the metal parts aside for further cleanup.

Tonight I broke out some spray stripper and a scrub pad, got all the finish removed, and found I have a nice walnut stock hiding under all that gunk. Both parts got a good rinsing of warm water and hung up to dry for a couple of days. I have a couple of spots that will get a acetone/whiting treatment to pull out some oil, then I'll be steaming as many dents out as I can before fixing the crack and sanding down to a more uniform finish.
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I'll see how the metal parts clean up, but most likely I'll be bead blasting them and re-bluing the parts that need bluing, polishing the others. The barrel had a couple of small spots that have some light surface pitting around the wood stock area, but will get covered again by the stock/fore end.
 
Very cool, cant wait to hear how it shoots. How hard is it to get ammo for it and is it standard or special, i have no idea.

What finish you going to put back on that stock once you done cleaning it up?
 
What bluing product do you use? I used to use Brownell's Ospho-Blue, but haven't done any gun metal refinishing for many years.

I've been using that as well, typically 3 coats with some burnishing with bronze wool between coats. I've seen videos on folks using it on heated parts (150F - 200F) and others doing just on room temperature parts. I've only been doing room temperature. Which method did you use? I've also seen folks seal the bluing with BLO (at least on the non-moving parts, barrel, plates, etc), others using just gun oil. Did you have any preference?

Very cool, cant wait to hear how it shoots. How hard is it to get ammo for it and is it standard or special, i have no idea.

What finish you going to put back on that stock once you done cleaning it up?

Depend on how well the dents come out and if there are any dark stains left. If there are stains, I'll probably do some early american stain to even it out. I'll be doing BLO for the final finish, probably with some japan dryer in it to speed up the curing process as Dave H. suggested on my last one. I was really happy with the way it turned out.

Btw. It's a 7x57 round, not too uncommon. I would have liked to find one in .308 (7.62x51), would make shooting a little cheaper, but they sold out pretty quickly. I've heard that the 7mm is actually a nice shooter though.
 
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I've been using that as well, typically 3 coats with some burnishing with bronze wool between coats. I've seen videos on folks using it on heated parts (150F - 200F) and others doing just on room temperature parts. I've only been doing room temperature. Which method did you use? I've also seen folks seal the bluing with BLO (at least on the non-moving parts, barrel, plates, etc), others using just gun oil. Did you have any preference?...

Btw. It's a 7x57 round, not too uncommon. I would have liked to find one in .308 (7.62x51), would make shooting a little cheaper, but they sold out pretty quickly. I've heard that the 7mm is actually a nice shooter though.

I've never tried heating the parts. Don't know if it works, or not.

I've also never used BLO for 'sealing' bluing. I've always used wax instead. Works well for me.

I really Like the 7 X 57 round. Had an older Mauser in that caliber about fifty years ago, and also had a Savage 110 action with a rethreaded Mauser barrel in 7 X 57 that was a real tack driver. Back in the '60s, the 7 X 57 mil surplus ammo was really cheap and plentiful, too.
 
I've never tried heating the parts. Don't know if it works, or not.

I've also never used BLO for 'sealing' bluing. I've always used wax instead. Works well for me.

I really Like the 7 X 57 round. Had an older Mauser in that caliber about fifty years ago, and also had a Savage 110 action with a rethreaded Mauser barrel in 7 X 57 that was a real tack driver. Back in the '60s, the 7 X 57 mil surplus ammo was really cheap and plentiful, too.

Thanks, I may try the wax seal, using just paste wax?

I got a box of what appears to be surplus ammo with the gun, was $20 for 100 rounds (brass cased even), which most I've seen is about $20 for 20 rounds. I suspect it's also the corrosive stuff, so will be sure to clean it well after.
 
Thanks, I may try the wax seal, using just paste wax?

I got a box of what appears to be surplus ammo with the gun, was $20 for 100 rounds (brass cased even), which most I've seen is about $20 for 20 rounds. I suspect it's also the corrosive stuff, so will be sure to clean it well after.

Just paste wax - Plane ole Johnson's.

Check the ammo for Berdan primers if it's really old stuff. Non-reloadable. I've not seen any 7 X 57 steel cased stuff. It's all been brass. You may need to anneal the case necks before reloading, though. What's the headstamp on it?
 
Just paste wax - Plane ole Johnson's.

Check the ammo for Berdan primers if it's really old stuff. Non-reloadable. I've not seen any 7 X 57 steel cased stuff. It's all been brass. You may need to anneal the case necks before reloading, though. What's the headstamp on it?
I believe its made by FN, but will check tonight.

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Darren you should talk with Jarrod , he just picked up a MK1 and a Chinese 1917 rifle and one other I don't remember.
He gets into the conservation manly of the guns.
Looks like an interesting project.
 
Tonight I steamed out some dents, which worked well, and then took the scrapers to the stock.

The fore end had some pretty nasty gouges in it, so I mostly smoothed those out. I need to fit the upper guard to the stock again as I took about 1/32" - 1/16" off the sides of the stock cleaning it up.
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The right side of the stock
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Before and after of the left side of the butt and comb area.
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Here's the crack in the fore end, which includes a dutchman that the crack went right through. I cleaned out the crack with a pick and steam cleaned it a bit also, I can get it to open up a bit with some twisting, so should be able to get the glue in where it needs to go.
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I'll need to probably use some barkeepers friend to try and remove some of the staining overall before sanding 100 to 300, then we'll see if it needs some stain before applying several coats of BLO.

I should some time this weekend to get the metal parts into the blast cabinet and cleaned up.

Darren you should talk with Jarrod , he just picked up a MK1 and a Chinese 1917 rifle and one other I don't remember.
He gets into the conservation manly of the guns.
Looks like an interesting project.

Thanks Dave, I'll make time to connect with him.
 
Thanks. I had started blasting metal tonight, but the hose to my automatic drain on the compressor blew out, so finished emptying the tank on what I could and then did a little fitting of the upper hand guard and some sanding. Also treated some of the dark stains with some barkeepers friend, which seemed to help on some of them getting the black from the metal out.
 
Today I got the stock sanded to 320. Considering where it started from, it looks pretty good, I wasn't going for perfect though.
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And decided that with the dark stains left they would blend in better with some stain, so went with Early American.
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I'll start rubbing in some BLO over the next week. My replacement hose should be here this week for the air compressor, so will hopefully finish up the metal cleaning this week. I have a little filing to do on some of the parts, but should be ready to blue by next weekend.
 
Why BLO? Why not Birchwood-Casey Tru-Oil, or one of the other stock finishes? Watco 'Natural' also works well and gives a nice sheen. The don't need frequent reapplication like BLO does, either.

I simply haven't used them before, though I think I do have a bottle of tru-oil on the shelf that came with a kit I bought a while back. Does is dry faster than BLO?
 
This weekend I got the rest of the metal blasted and re-blued, today I spent about an hour re-assembling it all. I think it turned out very well. I wasn't going for a like new restore, but something with a little wear still.

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BTW, Took Jim's suggestion and went with the True-oil, which worked very well (Thanks Jim!). Also did check the head stamps on the box of ammo and it was FN36 (see pics below).

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