Say Hello to my Lil Friend!!!!

I've been finishing up a project I started long ago, back the phones were bolted to the wall and had cords. A time when cassettes ruled and VHS and Betamax were battling it out.

Before I had a drivers license to go shooting we would duct tape our boomstix to the frames of our bicycles and ride of into the woods or down to the creek. I grew up in Hickville and it wasn't anything unusual to see a group of kids with guns going off to make noise.

On the way back from such a trip we decided to race back home, I had a 21 speed bike and had put plenty of miles on it so I was showing the rest of the group the rear reflector and hauling ass when a good sized dog misjudged my approach speed and his angle of attack. (This dog apparently was not taught physics, geometry or any of Newton's laws. If he was it didn't stick.)

I hit him full on in the side and went flying over the handlebars and the Ruger 10/22 that had been securely taped to the frame of the bike came loose on the second bounce and took a beating.

I took many more bounces and also took a beating.

The dog however seemed to be just fine, in fact he walked over gave me a kiss on the face and sauntered back home like he had just saved the world. It was a good thing for him my rifle was well beyond crawling range.......

The barrel and receiver were covered with the newest duct tape invention, Camouflage!,, Hey it was cheap, looked cool and could be removed fairly easily if I wanted.

Those parts were more or less protected and didn't get much damage, a couple light scratches and that was it. The stock and sights however took a pounding, front sight got bent and the bead pooped off, rear sight broke in half and the adjustment blade ceased to exist.

The stock got a bunch of scratches and a couple fairly deep dents.

So I took it apart to fix it, roughly in 1984. I have finally finished it.

Here's what I got done way back in the dark ages:

Sanded off most of the factory finish on the stock,

Ground/sanded the biggest dings and scratches. I also rounded off the square edges along the top of the stock along the barrel and where it meets the receiver.

 

 

There was a fairly deep scratch along the rear of the grip along with some gravel dings, when I started grinding them out I realized that I could make it look like had a purpose, that indentation makes a space for my palm and feels pretty smurfy.

 



 



Same thing here big ding and several scratches along the bottom on the grip, so grinding those out carefully gave a smaller grip radius for the pinkie.

The black marks were put on recently as a guide for what I might change or add to, some I did some I didn't.

So fast forward nearly 30 years and this is what I ended up with:

This is after the first staining btw.

Made a smaller barrel strip and shit canned the barrel band,

 

 

Bedded the barrel to hopefully improve the accuracy,

 

 

Got rid of the barrel band notch and slicked up the fore end of the stock. I also got rid of the knuckle on the top of the stock and that cleaned up the looks a bunch.



 

 

 

 

 

Added a dimple for the thumb on the fore end, disguising yet another big ding.

 

 

 

And the finished product after a couple more coats of stain and many coats of polyurethane.





 

 

 

 

 

The sights have been replaced with a set of stock takeoffs. The stain colors were Minwax "gunstock" and some "rosewood" mixed in and the poly is semigloss from a spraybomb. Its a bit blotchy but that's ok, I'm not a woodworker and high school shop was long ago.

I will be adding a trigger kit, lever style mag release, auto bolt release and a scope soon.

Just so ya know, this was the first gun I ever shot.

I don't know when Pops got it but it seems like this gun was always there. I have put more rounds thru this thing than I could ever count and while I feel a bit ashamed that it sat neglected for so long I am so happy to have it back and ready to go.

Sunday we'll get it sighted in and ready for tree rat hunting!