The M94 Project Revived

A long time ago, to far back than it should have been, I started a refinish of my fathers 30/30 Winchester. This is the one that got laid under a bed then got rained on and ignored for awhile. It had some major pitting on the barrel and some minor on the magazine tube. I spent many hours filing the barrel by hand, filing the magazine tube. Anyway I got all the that done and then we went to Virginia and came home and started using my limited work space as a refinishing and home improvement work center, then I had joint issues and so on and so forth. I got back to working on this gun last week then Cherry Pie took over the space once again. Now, I'm back at it.

Here is the whole mess on my improvised work bench.

I ended up filing the receiver too as it was dished and wouldn't match the bluing I use (Brownells Oxpho Blue) This took a lot of filing to make a nice flat surface. Every thing is polished to 600 grit and I believe that is as far as I'm going.

The wood is fitted to the metal and it too was sanded to 600 then buffed with 4 aught steel wool. It will eventually get a slight stain and rubbed many times with linseed oil. Due to some factory issues with the wood not all wood to metal interfaces are seamless. I usually take pride in making the joints absolutely perfect so that no seam can be felt. But even with some wood too low to repair it is looking good.

Here is the bottom of the butt stock where the tang is inletted into it. Notice the gap in the upper right curve? There is no taking that out without doing a whole bunch of relieving of the front end of the stock.

This is all the major bits and pieces, polished and waiting for some bluing.

I know the pictures are not the best in the world but Hey, I gotta work with what I got. Hand polishing really stimulates the arthritis in my shoulders and the stooping over does a number on my lower back too. Pain aside, this is the one hobby I love doing the most.

More pics to come as I make more progress. The marathon of polishing yesterday just about did my shoulders in, so there is no telling what will get accomplished on it today.

Model 94 Update

Still no pictures. Cherry has not uploaded the camera program to the new computer. She's worried that adding ANTHING will slow the new one to the speed of the old one.

Here we go. I have all the internal bits polished on their wear spots. The barrel and magazine tube is polished. I stripped and sanded the buttstock and fore end. The wood is smoothly blended into the metal. Smoothly hell, some of it looks like it grew out of the wood . I took the wood to 600 grit and finished with 0000 steel wool with 3 dewhiskerings thrown in. Any way things were looking towards blueing and staining. Until.....I decided that the factory finish on the receiver would not match the blue going on everything else. So... I started to sand the blue off and found the receiver is dished in the center on both sides. Time to break out the files again. I have one side filed and sanded to 600 grit and it needs to go to 800 or 1000 grit. I wanted to have everything ready for blueing and finishing before we leave for Virginia. I don't know if will happen. I may have to finish the receiver when we get back.