About Me: A certified yet non-professional gunsmith learning the trade through trail and inspiration

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Sporterized Arisaka Redux: Part 2 Trigger Guard/Magazine

This is Part 2 of a series on the re-finishing of a Sproterized Arisaka Rifle

See Part 1 (dis-assembly) here, and Part 3 (the Stock) here


Regarding the trigger guard, I will be giving it a nice taper from front to back, making it look more like a hunting rifle and less like a military one.
In the process I will remove the pits, grinding marks and other surface imperfections. In this picture you can see the contour I put in the back of the trigger guard. Also note the grinding marks where the builder made clearance for the rear tang screw and didn't bother to remove them. I'll file the back nice and smooth.

 From this angle you can see the slight taper from front to back
Here it is after some sanding, still a ways to go
 Here is the trigger guard/floor plate after sanding and one round on the buffer.

 Also I will be tapering the back end of the magazine follower, this will allow me to close the bolt when the magazine is empty, without pushing down on the follower. All modern rifles sport this feature. You can see in the red circle where the bolt hits the magazine follower and cannot move forward unless you press down on the follower.
I need to angle the back of the follower
 I used the disc sander with the 60 grit pad, then sanded with, 100, 220 and 500 grit before putting it on the buffer. The bolt now glides over the follower, smooth as glass.
Here is the floor plate/trigger guard after bluing.....looks much better
and finally a before & after comparison

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