jackpot who would have thought?

[bearhunter]

About 12-15 years ago, I bought a bunch of milsurp stocks from an old gunsmith that had been using them for firewood in his shop. He was one of those men that had absolutely no use for a milsurp, other than to make them into a pretty sporters. He did a beautiful job on them to. Many of them were new in their crates when he bought them, by the crate. He sporterised hundreds of milsurps and made a decent living at it.

To make a long story short, as he aged, he started selling off barreled actions and bits and pieces, like cleaning rods, screws, stock bands, sights, barrels etc. I bought as much as I could afford. He was generous with the stuff, after all, he considered the military trappings to be junk and only worth scrap prices. From his words, he had burned a few hundred brand new milsurp stocks that he had taken off the actions as well as may more that were in various condition.

I bought a dozen complete wood sets for Mausers, with all of the metal, other than barreled actions and in a few, the barrels were included, like on the Siamese Mauser and a 1935 Brazilian in 7x57. He charged me $20 for the lot. He gave me several mismatched sets of No4 and No1 wood, a Japanese type 99 stock, A couple of Reising stocks and a few of P14 and P17 stocks. He even threw in a couple of Springfield 1903 stocks, a C type, a scant and a straight grip stock. They were all complete units. To bad he didn't throw in a decent Springfield Krag carbine stock and hand guard.

Back to the topic. Just before Christmas, I bought a 1908 Brazilian Mauser, barreled action with matching bolt, trigger guard etc. Guess what I found in my stock pile. The matching stock and metal parts. The seller had bought the action and left it with the old boy to turn into a sporter but his sight got to bad to finish or even start, so he gave him the barreled action back, to do the work himself. He felt he was never going to do it and it was so pretty that he might as well sell it. I bought it for about twice what he paid for the whole rifle and thought i was getting a good deal. What a deal I got. Now I have a matching 1908 Brazilian that is complete for a very reasonable price. Considering the fellows lived 300 miles apart, the odds of the parts coming back together are astromical.

I went out and bought 20 scratch tickets and won $3. I guess the match up was my lottery.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.