Repairs on a Polish Mosin-Nagant M44, pictures and story

[louthepou]

Hi everyone,

Recently, I decided to work on a Mosin-Nagant M44 I have had for about two years. A cracked and missing piece of the stock was bugging me ever since it got here.

So, I guess mostly to practice for future projects, I decided to go at it. I fixed other types of damage before but this one had its own challenges, so there I went.

I first cut out the damaged area just enough to get flat surfaces.


Then, I cut a piece of wood just slightly larger than the area I needed to fix. Now, it would have been fun to find the exact same type of wood as what the Polish Mosin is made of, but all I had here at the moment was some Picea mariana, aka black spruce, aka 2 by 4 lumber... Sorry for this historically inaccurate portion of my repair. One could argue that in time of conflict, someone would have used whatever was around, as long as it worked...


Sanding and filing adjusted the piece of wood so it fit snug in the cut-out part.


I used dowels to make the repair sturdier. Here they are before they go in, showing I drilled the holes at different angles. I would have liked to have angles at the front and back tips of my piece of wood, but I remembered that technique after I did the cutting, so I decided to angle the dowels to have a similar reinforcing effect.


I glued everything in place, using West Epoxy glue.


A day later:


Then I started sanding. The top and outside portion were easy; different sizes of dowels wraped in sanding paper allowed me to get matching curves for the spot where the bayonet rests. The inside portion needed special treatment (carving and making sure I chipped the right spots), so I drew guiding lines, matching the other side still intact.


Here is the result of the carving


Here is the result during the staining and oiling:


And here's the final result. The metal was almost all bare (much of the blueing gone), very likely (from the looks of it) because a previous owner removed it with steel wool and lots of rubbing. I reblued the metal that was bare.


I am not happy with the difference in colour; I would have liked to do a better job at matching. I may decide to redo the finishing portion of this job...

Comments welcomed, as always!

Lou

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.