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JC Higgins bolt action shotgun refinishing

3K views 8 replies 4 participants last post by  JoshSelf 
#1 ·
I picked up two shotguns awhile back from an estate sale for $75. Since they were cheap and beat up I made them my first project guns out of my expanding collection.
I chose to refinish the stock of my JC Higgins 16 gauge bolt action to begin. It had the basic dents and scratches all throughout and looked pretty ugly to begin with. I don't know if I did everything how experienced people would do it, but it worked for me and I love how it turned out. That's all that really matters right? :)
I started out with stripping the old varnish off:


After that was cleaned up I used an iron to pull the remaining varnish out and to pull dents and scrapes out:


The most damage on the stock was under the safety mechanism. I raised the grain of the wood and repaired it:


Once the stock was stripped to bare wood and sanded appropriately I began to add coats of tru-oil. All this happened after the wood dried over night. On the beginning coats I sanded in between, as more coats occurred I began wet sanding, using 0000 steel wool, and then rubbing on the oil with only a cloth to be smooth.


After it was all said and done with tru-oil I waxed the stock and reassembled the shotgun. Bottom picture is before and top is now:


I also got bored in between dry times and managed to used some spare supplies and such to give my 50yr old ka-bar a nice looking sheath
 
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