Handguard repairs

Been a while since I've been on here but I suppose wisdom is needed at all times. Hope everyone is well.

So this here is a Remington P14 I picked up some time ago and have been chipping away at, from repairing the stock with a crack working back from the tang, a crack in the bridge of behind the mag well, and the recoil block which was 100% sheared off from the rest of the stock.

I still need to cut out and make up a hardwood block to rebuild the recoil block, since there is still some play between the stock and action block, which I suppose could be what sheared the recoil block in the first place.

However, my other, simpler, concern is this erosion of the front hand guard and partially of the rear.

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Both the front and rear section of the front handguard have rotted away and the steel crescent brace of the rear has rusted to pieces. My two options I am willing to follow both include hacking off these rotten ends and replacing them, but I am wondering if I should either make up these new ends from scratch myself (and spend god knows how long at it), or rind some repro guards and splice the ends onto my old guards then make everything good.

I planned to cut the old ends off at an angle to maximise binding area for the new wood as well as possibly add length ways strips through both new and old wood to act like a dowel.

Any other ideas appreciated. Cheers.

I had found a set of NOS WWII replacement handguards for my P14 about 7 or 8 years ago as well as a matching R stamped retaining ring on eBay. The main difference is steel or iron rivets instead of brass otherwise they were exact.

Was that an Ishapore "shark gun".

Definitely needs TLC!

Careful "shaving" away of all the rotten bits from the "inside" will remove the least amount of the "show" timber. then comes the fun of "grain-matching".

However, in these "confined to barracks" days, it seems like a good project if you have all the materials at hand.

The problem with getting NOS guards and just putting them on as is is that this stock has been sanded and abused quite a lot, so fancy new guards will look ridiculous to say the least, but I am seeing some used ones around, just dont want to butcher up a perfectly fine set of old wood.

It is a very very ugly old rifle to say the least haha. I am however not familiar with the term of 'grain matching', may I ask for some explanation?

Grain matching. Trying to find replacement wood that has a grain pattern similar to that of the hand guard.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by nijalninja

The problem with getting NOS guards and just putting them on as is is that this stock has been sanded and abused quite a lot, so fancy new guards will look ridiculous to say the least, but I am seeing some used ones around, just dont want to butcher up a perfectly fine set of old wood.

It is a very very ugly old rifle to say the least haha. I am however not familiar with the term of 'grain matching', may I ask for some explanation?

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I didn't install them as purchased. It took months to distress and stain them to match the original stock. I have to admidt it was kind of tough to rough up these perfect parts but the end result came great. No one who sees the rifle has even suspected that they weren't original.