Marlin model 1893 project part 7

Part 7 of this restoration, see the other posts here

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 
Part 5 
Part 6

The wood is now fitted to the steel

One thing to look for when installing the forend is the magazine/forend tennon goes in one way, the angled part goes towards the wood 

After sanding to 400 grit, I removed the wood from the rifle, took off the butt plate and sanded with 600 grit.

Time to add the oil finish, I will be using Minwax Antique Oil Finish
 

The first coat goes on heavy, wiping both with and against the grain. 

After letting it dry for 24 hours we sand in the second coat. Sanding with the oil creates a slurry of wood dust and oil, we then rub it into the grain to fill the voids. We will do this 3 or 4 more times. 

Here it is after 4 sanded in coats

We have completely filled the grain

I then buffed them with 0000 steel wool and applied the final coat, rubbed in by hand

We  got the small parts reblued, they look fanatastic

I found this replacement sight on ebay

here it is next to the original

The new one fits the standard 3/8 dovetail, the old one was slight smaller, so I had to open up the dovetail to accept the replacement front sight

It starts but wont go very far by hand, should be a nice tight fit

Back to sanding, here is just a sampling of the pits I need to remove.....now you know why I was putting this part off. This part is tedious and results come slowly, you just need to put your head down and keep working.

Here it is with most of the pits on the front half (ahead of the forend) removed. This is a 100 grit finish. I alternated between 80 and 100 grit and sanding in different directions.

Once I got both ends of the barrel sanded to 100 grit, I started with the 150 grit, here is one of the last remaining pits on the barrel

Almost gone, when sanding pits like this, you need to make sure you take even amounts of metal from all sides of the barrel, break the barrel up into 4 quadrants (top, bottom and sides) and keep rotating the barrel around, sanding all sides equally and blending the quadrants

You can barely see the little bastard now, this is a 320 grit finish

400 grit, it just a memory now. 

The barrel is ready, I need to go over the top of the receiver and the tang before sending it to be re-engraved. After engraving I will only use 400 grit or higher sand paper

Stay tuned, we're almost there...