Some Good News and the 2A1 is ALMOST Completed

Greetings and Salutations!
Good News First
Gretchen: Not a tumor. Scar tissue and non-malignant fluid buildup apparently. So that’s a plus. She gets home on Sunday.

Then

Many Thanks to all of you who offered up the prayers and condolences for my man Nando. His wife greatly appreciated it all when I sent the link to her. She’s having a tough time as she was with him for a loooong minute. Unfortunately I can’t afford to fly out to the Memorial/Celebration of Life as it’s on May 2nd, and it’s in San Diego. Bit of a bummer but Nando would understand I’m sure.

Now
As far as what I’ve been up to? Well putting the finishing touches on the 2A1 of course. Working on the weapons is my Zen, so of course I went full retard and worked on it. Mind you I failed to document everything, as well… this wasn’t for show, but more for sanity.

I personally think it’s coming along nicely:

Like I said before, I went with the Parkerized finish, which is grey. As you can also see, the wood? Yeah, it’s magnificent. Considering what it was:

That’s a mighty leap from start to finish.
Here’s a close-up of the action before:

And after:

I did lose two small chips of wood out of the buttstock as you can see while doing the final fitting. Not bad considering how much carving I did… so hey… it is what it is.

The nosecap also started out crazy rough:

and I think, came out fantastically as well.

Of course it’s a different nosecap, as like I explained before, the Hindu 2A1 has ‘squared ears’ for the sight protector as opposed to the ’round ears’ but that’s the same wood on the top as is pictured on the bottom.

The only thing I have left is the bolt.
UN-fortunately, I found that the bolt handle and cocking piece are NOT happy being installed on the new receiver. Considering they were taken off the donor rifle which is a “DP” (drill purposes ONLY!) rifle, and all parts are marked as such, the general rule is that ANY parts off a “DP” rifle are essentially unserviceable under ANY circumstances. Leastways by the Brit Armorers rules.

Hence why the wood on the weapon in the ‘before’ pictures are all painted up like a mo’fo. In my case, I cheated so to speak. The bolt however, even with my various tests and checks, well… the bolt doesn’t want to ‘play nice’ so therefore I’m waiting on another couple of pieces/parts and fiddly-bits to complete this thing right.

The bolt head and extractor, having been donated by you kind readers and being brand new… or I should say “new-old-stock” are sufficiently safe, so I ordered a “NOS” bolt handle/cocking piece/and what the Hell… a new bolt mainspring. Once the parts get here? Well it’ll be a brand new bolt, and once it passes headspacing and test firing?

As the Brits say, Bob’s yer Uncle.

And after that?
Well… The next project besides the 1911 is rebarreling the SMLE. I was shocked to find a good condition Lithgow (Aussie) made NOS barrel. Leastways they said it was NOS… the rust and pitting tell me otherwise. That being said however is the rifling is OMG xtra-crisp compared to the current barrel on it.

So I (of course) dropped some shekels to get the Lee Enfield Barrel Wrench. Once I get that, you’ll be seeing the pictures or maybe even video of that. And if I can pull that off properly, I may even look for a Mk4 barrel to get the Canuckistan Enfield redone, and then sell it or raffle it off. What say you gang? Recoup my expenditures via a raffle or sell it outright?

SO that’s been MY week so far.
I really look forward to April being over.
This month has purely sucked a fat dead donkey dick I swear.

So More Later
Big Country