The Winchester 77 Project Part 2

Time to get to work, if you missed part one, click here

Disassembly time, after removing the two take-down screws the action comes loose from the stock, the trigger guard is held in place by a metal clip and screw

Still in the trigger guard is the magazine catch, I'll polish then reblue it

……..and we discovered the problem with the safety, the spring and clip were missing. It is very common to lose the c-clip and without it the spring goes awol.
The lever was loose on the shaft, so I will source a new lever, spring and a couple of the c-clips (you know, just in case...)

This is what the opposite end looks like when installed

That screw in front of the trigger is to adjust sear engagement

I'll get to work on the stock first, I am going to use Citristrip to remove the old varnish

Someone put in a layer of gauze in the barrel channel

yo can see the varnish has yellowed and is hiding the beautiful walnut underneath

This stuff was sticky, very hard to remove, had to apply the stripper several times and follow it with an acetone soaked rag

Here it is with 99% of the old finish removed. The wood chips are from another stock I was working on the day before

I installed the reproduction butt plate and noticed two things, 1. the lower screw hole was stripped out and 2. the lower screw hole was not drilled in the center and the new butt plate was way off

The new reproduction butt plate, next to the one that came off the gun, you can see at the bottom of the old one, it has one side ground more than  the other

So I drilled out the hole to 1/4" and glued in a wood dowel for a plug

While the glue was curing, I drilled the holes for the sling swivels.

Next I fitted the butt plate using a file and sand paper

Then using a clothes iron and a wet rag I steamed out the dents

After getting the dents out, I sanded to a 400 grit finish, now it is ready for oil

Here is the stock after the first coat of oil cured, I sand in the next coats with 400 grit sand paper

There is a small crack in the stock, I filled in the back side with some clear epoxy

Here is the stock after 4 sanded in and 1 hand rubbed in coats of oil

Before and after

Time to get to work on the metal