Mauser Refurb

A few months ago my grandfather gave me an old Mauser action 8mm rifle. He had gotten it fairly cheap many years back. I don't have any way of determining the origin of it since most of the markings are worn away completely. It appears that it was converted to a sporting rifle at one point. It had a lot of wear. Most of the bluing was worn off of the receiver, and the stock was rough and most of the finish was worn away. Unfortunately I was so excited to get to work on the rifle that I failed to take pictures with my good camera and only have a few off of my phone that I took.

This is the stock after a few good wipe downs with mineral spirits. The mineral spirits took off the remainder of the finish and also lifted the old oil out of the wood as well.

After a long sanding process I decided that I wanted to do a traditional oil hardened finish on the stock. So I picked up some Linspeed.

After several coats utilizing the Linspeed "dual application" process you can see for yourself that the results are pretty impressive.

I had some time between coats of oil so I took the liberty to re-blue the receiver. For it being such an old rifle I was able to blend the bluing so you couldn't even tell that it was redone.



After all was said and done I think that the rifle came out looking pretty good. My grandfather actually tried taking it back after he saw how nice it came out.

More updates on the way!

Shotgun Hull Base Wad

So recently I have noticed that on several of the forums I have been going on there has been a lot of talk about "what type of shotgun hulls should I use when reloading". What are the pros/ cons between using one brand over the other? You could go on for days about the minor differences about them but in my opinion it all comes down to the bottom base wad of the hull. I normally reload 2 3/4 #8 or 7 1/2 "target loads" at first I used to use Federal Top Gun hulls since I found them the easiest to reload on my machine. Other hulls would get stuck on some parts of the loader or the crimp wouldn't hold over time. I was sold on the idea that Federal hulls were "the bees knees". Then one day somebody had read my post on here about my current shotgun reloads with the Top Gun hulls and mentioned that they have a paper/ fiber base wad. If the base wad has ever been exposed to water/moisture then it will break down and could cause barrel obstructions, or even just normal breakdown of the wad itself over the course of time. I did not know that about the hulls I was using. So I took the liberty of cracking open a few more common hulls so you can see the difference in quality of the hull that you could possibly use for reloading. 

These are the base wads of 4 different hulls that have been fired, reloaded, and fired again. The first one on the left is a Federal Champion Paper hull. It has a fiber base wad that only after 2 firings has started to break down quite a bit. There are noticeable separation cracks throughout the wad. The second from the left is a Federal Top Gun hull also with a paper/ fiber base wad. It seemed to hold up a little bit better than the Champion but there are still noticeable signs of the wad breaking down. The third hull is a Winchester Super Target. It has a separate base wad insert. It shows very little to no wear in it. The white plastic insert is hardly even discolored from the powder. The only problem that I have with reloading this hull is not the base wad, its the quality of the rest of the hull. The plastic is very thin and soft. They tend to mushroom out at the top when you crimp them. I have also had trouble with the final crimp holding after a long period of time. Ill pick up a box that I had loaded a few months back and have shot rolling out of the corners. Finally all the way on the right is a Remington Gun Club. These have been my hull of choice to reload lately. The overall structure of the hull is great. Very rigid durable walls. Its hard to tell they are even reloads most of the time. They hold their shape very well, and the base wad is all once solid piece of the hull. It's not fiber/paper nor is it a plastic insert. its just one solid molded hull base wad and all. After I had reloaded the Gun Clubs several times I cut one down and the inside of it still looks as if it were brand new out of the bag. I hope that this helped out those that were un-aware much like I was. More updates and projects to come!

The Winchester

Over the weekend it was abnormally warm in Chicago. So a friend of mine suggested that we make the best use of the weather and go to the range. We ended up going to the Winchester Gun Club in Franksville, WI. We had a blast to say the least. Its a shotgun only club. We dabbled in some skeet, trap, 5 stand, and sporting clays. After spending the day there we were looking at the memberships on the way out, and realized that if we would have just become members at the beginning of the day they would have pretty much paid for themselves already. The gentleman overheard the comment and cut us a deal. He took all the money that we would have saved on our rounds and applied it to the cost of the membership. Twelve dollars and 5 minutes later we were the two newest members of the Winchester Gun Club! Now I have plenty of hulls to reload in the near future.

Also under the press now is a new .45ACP load. I changed over from the 185gr. HP to a 200 gr. alloy SWC. still using the AA#5 powder at about 6.8.gr I'll have to go to the range this weekend and see how they perform. Thats about it for now until I receive some parts to finish the Marlin project. Next on the list is going to be some 9mm wad cutters and possibly refurbishing an old duty revolver for a friend of mine.