chuckndenver and my Remington m1903 parts queen

[ssgross]

This rifle came to me as a parts queen, in a Boyds stock with a poorly aligned barrel channel. Receiver appeared to have been sandblasted and then cold blued, and the barrel was a 5/44 SA replacement barrel, likely NOS with perfect bore and still short chambered.
I fitted a new minelli stock, finish reamed, etc. over the holidays last year in this thread
https://www.milsurps.com/showthread....l=1#post490702
then sent the barreled action out to chuckndenver to be re-parked, and scope bases mounted. I just finally got it back on Friday and finished assembling, trigger adjustment, and other final fitting of the bolt over the weekend. Here it is now...
Attachment 117690Attachment 117691Attachment 117692Attachment 117693Attachment 117694Attachment 117695Attachment 117696Attachment 117697
The color from my raw linseed oil has really started to develop since the pics in the post above 5 months ago. The wood in the minelli stock was heartwood on one side, sapwood on the other. I was worried it would never look right, but it it starting to blend. I was fortunate to have a NOS handgaurd with some similar features on the same sides.

Now the reason for the title...Chuck is amazing!, and here is the story to prove it...
The work I had done was drill, tap, and braze on my Earle bases, mill my handgaurd, and re-parkerize the barreled action, park or blue some other small parts. Bluing and parkerizing was wonderfully done, and he sent it all back to me at the beginning of the month.
However, there was damage on the FedEx return trip to me. The box was packed well and tight, no exterior damage, but the front base had shorn off, snapping the screws flush with the barrel. In one of my small parts bags, the front sling swivel was gouged and scratched. It looks like Fedex put heavy weight on top of my box. Not chucks's fault at all. I texted him a picture, and he called me back immediately to discuss. I sent the barreled action back to him the next day. He tried but was unable to pick out or drill out the brazed in screw fragments, so he was forced to drill new holes slightly forward. Not only did he make it right, he went out of his way to make the fix look nice by filling in and smoothing over the part of the rear screw that would have been visible, gave me a new handgaurd milled to fit the new position, triple checked the rear base for damage, and double checked the barrel had not been bent in the incident - all at no additional cost to me - he even stuck some cash in the box to cover shipping it back out to him. It probably would have been easier and cheaper for him to just file a claim with fedex and then throw their money at me, but he didn't. He took the extra time to ensure that this rifle, which I had put so much time into, turned out perfect . He rushed the repair to the head of his line, and then called me during his vacation to make sure I was satisfied.

Enjoy your vacation Chuck!

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