Argentino M1879 Rolling Block. Is it worth restoring?

[killforfood]

Thanks also to all commentators for their opinions and advice. I concur 100 %. That rifle is now looking so good that a rebluing would be out of place.

Agreed… As I said from the start I will only proceed with what you guys deem as correct and proper for this rifle.

But I would be curious to see whether the meths actually removed any grime around the wrist.

The stains remain but are mellowed enough that I’m not bothered by them.

Time for a side note;
Back in my younger days I paid to have a large Mule Deer head mounted. I was really proud of that buck. There are a couple flaws in the mount though. He was shot in some very rugged country up in the Eagle Cap Wilderness. I had to get him down to a flatter area to proceed with gutting and in the process he fell off of a large drop off. Unfortunately a tip of an antler was broken off. Also in the process of caping out that big Roman nosed buck, I accidently sliced through the hide around one of his cheekbones. Both of these flaws are very apparent on the mount but I wouldn’t change it for all the world. Every time I see that spot on his cheek where the knife slipped through I’m reminded of how proud I was to have caped him out all by myself. When I see that busted off tine, I recall how dangerously steep that mountain was and how he began sliding down out of control when I tried to move him. It was a wild ride to the shelf but I managed to hang on even despite those antlers whipping around, trying to impale me. Yah I think the stains are ok. They’ll remind me of all our efforts to get this far.

I recommended at the start that you make several burnishers from the diskette covers. I hope you did so, but you have not yet confirmed it. If you have several of them, you can pre-curve some for the sharper curves, where finger-flexing is not sufficient.

I just de-commissioned four more diskettes and will make a nice assortment of burnishers. I’ve found that these diskette covers vary in thickness and stiffness. It will be interesting to see how this expands their usability. I'm also going to hammer out some cartridge chisels like Claven2 suggested.

To make a clean job of finishing the stock and to avoid marking the metal parts with the burnishers/scrapers you have (presumably) now made, you will have to disassemble the rifle once more. But as you have seen, the RB is an easy system to dismantle and reassemble.

Yah , I think I’ve already covered about the only dumb mistakes that could be made.

Eventually you will become bored with this. No trouble. Just wipe over the rifle with a piece of linen, and you will begin to see the start of a sheen on the surface of the wood, rather than a shine. It will never look like the top of the table on which it was resting for your pics in the last post, and should not do so.

I’m fine with that. I’ve never been a fan of the “Weatherby look”.

If you want a wall hanger, then at some stage, when you are satisfied with the wood surface, you will simply re-assemble the rifle and....

...hang it on the wall?

I hope not!

I hope you want to shoot with it.

Patrick, I would be derelict in my duties to stop now. Of course I want to shoot it!
We can cover this aspect some more in the future but I have been reading everything on the web that I can find about it. Apparently these rifles typically have very long throats and some folks have even resorted to making they’re own longer than standard brass from .43 or .44 basic. They reported much improved accuracy for their efforts. Another common issue is rim thickness affecting proper head spacing. Some of the brass that is made from .348 Winchester can be problematic because the rim is too thin. I will worry about all of this later when you are ready to give advice.

Pass the BLO
Joel.