Finished the Frankenfield and BOY!!! AM I Pleased!

Greetings and Salutations!
Whew… LOTS of ‘work’ this week.
Lawn mowed
Bushes trimmed
All done in-between the torrential downpour(s) that we should have had back in April. The whole weather system seems a bit ‘off’ and depending on who you follow/read, it’s because we’re at the end of the 4th Cycle, i.e. the Polar Shift/Flip and realignment.

I’m not quite sure where I sit on that particular issue.

I mean if something of THAT magnitude were to happen, whelp… let’s just say it’s Game Over and let’s see what happens after. There’s only so many quarters a person can ‘play’ metaphorically speaking. And considering when you start talking about geologic time? Like man is but a ‘wisp of smoke in a whirlwind’ so to speak when you start going down those rabbit holes Aye?

So… instead, I’m focusing on what I can.
I.E. finally getting off my ass and doing some work to finish up that Short Magazine Lee Enfield that I dubbed the “Frankenfield” as the pieces-parts run the gamut for production and manufacture.

The barrel is a Aussie Lithgow barrel. It has some massive exterior pitting on the surface, however, the rifling is genuinely pristine. Don’t tell G but the barrel ALONE was $300+ as a like new barrel (rifling wise) is like unobtanium these days.

The receiver is a Indian Timeframe receiver, HOWEVER it’s got the markings that the factory it was produced in was still being run by the Brits. The ‘wrist’ of the receiver has the Crown and “G.R.I.” stamped on it. That being Georgius Rex Imperator aka King George VI, as the receiver was made in 1950, and does not have the RFI stamp on it (pics to follow)

The bolt and nose cap, as well as the trigger assembly are British as well, and marked as such.

Hence why I’m referring to it as my “Frankenfield”

Now, It’s been a loooong minute since I worked on this thing. The last thing I had done was I had to have the barrel reseated as it bound up on me, and I didn’t have the tooling to fix it. My brother from another mother DID however have the gear, and he fixed it up for me back in February? plus or minus? The problem was/is time, time ask me for anything else but time…

I mean it’s been a BUSY year so far right?
Add on that nasty AF crack in the main stock and I was sort of at a ‘done for a while’ point. Here’s the pics of when I first got the barrel, receiver, and the subsequent donor rifle

Nasty, pitted and rusty.
Like 90% of ALL my restoration projects.
This is what it looked like after I scrubbed it:

A couple of days in this noxious witches brew of a rust remover, bluing remover and as you can see, that sucker was STRIPPED down to the bone.

Then, the receiver looked as such:

I apparently neglected to get an ‘after’ pic before restoration after it too went into the ‘bath’ to remove everything from it.

The donor rifle was the usual “D.P.” marked (Drill Purposes ONLY) weapon that was demilled with a big ole hole drilled through the chamber and a steel rod welded inside. I might have plans for one of those drilled-through receivers, but we’ll talk about that another time… a lower pressure round (think handgun sized) wouldn’t need an intact receiver… I’ll leave it at that.
Here’s the monstrosity of Cosmoline and Bad Karma:

And on tearing it down, I discovered much to my horror, a HUGE crack on the main forearm of the wood. This is the MAIN piece that is supposed to support and put the whole weapon together, and replacing it is $$$ IF you can even find a replacement, as pieces/parts are getting a wee bit scarce these days… the last ‘new’ MK 3s rolled off the line in 1957…

Here’s the crack that demoralized the fuck out of me:

I did the repair, and did it via ‘traditional means’ which meant getting a brass screw that’s designed to put the wood back together again, wood-gluing and filling the hell out of the crack, and praying.

I glued the hell out of it, and set it off to the side for a loooong time.

I was just too afraid that I’d find some more fucked-uppedness, so I took a break.

You can see the brass screw/pin and the remains of the crack that didn’t fill completely. To be truthful, I didn’t want to erase it, as this old Warhorse earned it’s scars, so instead I fixed it, and moved on. I also DID find another crack that I fixed in the same old manner:

When you see a brass ‘spot’ on the wood on one of these old rifles, more likely than not it’s a repair to the wood. So anyways, I did lay off the project for like 6-8 months…

Up until the other day when I realized I needed to get off my ass, and finish the damned project.

So I’ve been going at it like gangbusters for a few days. One of the things I did was gather all the parts up, and finished off refinishing the wood after getting it stripped. Alas no pics of that being in progress either… I mean there are, but for the sake of brevity, you can see the final product, and judge for yourself.

Once the front parts were good, I decided to finish the buttstock, and for fun, I added an Iraqi Army brass identity disk, ‘cos it IS the Frankenfield, and also, I did enough time in Iraq so why not?

Now, on the flip side of the stock, the grain?
OMG
GORGEOUS tiger stripes running naturally through it:

It’s really nice and ‘pops’ so well.
And then, I got everything blued. THAT was an all-nighter, getting the better part of 9 hours until 0300 to get finished:

Final assembly was this AM, and thanks to Gretchen for taking care of the Dooney, although -I- did get the 0400 feeding/diaper change…

The final product:

with some close ups:

…and YES
It shoots. I already tested it today out at Cowboy’s place, where I had helped him zeroing his new SIG red-dot on his AK.

I’m rather please with myself and the final outcome.
This one seems to have some decent accuracy as the rifling on it is very good and distinct, but until I put more than the three test rounds through it, I have to follow up with a range report later after we get out of this rain and it cools down a bit.

So your thought?
More Later
Big Country