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    Bren MKIm restoration

    Thought you might enjoy these pics. Unfortunetly its a deact but a deact that looks a lot better now. This gun was by far the worse Bren I have ever seen. It was a very bad torch cut kit and looks like it was welded back together by satan himself. Then to top it off it was spray painted with cheap black spray paint (note not suncorite) while it was covered with dirt?

    A gentleman contacted me a few months ago asking if I would restore it for him and he was desperate so I took it on as long as I could take my time.

    The gun just looked so bad I couldnt resist. Like a dog out in the cold.

    He agreed so here we go. Sorry for all the pics.





    Is'nt that terrible, looks like they used a roller to paint it.












    Then have a look at the barrel, looks like they used vice grips in the barrel to squeeze it into place or something like that.





    I have no clue what happened here? Weld the gas adjust when the gun is allready super-deactivated. Only Peter himself could probably get this thing running again it was welded so tight. Then look at the barrel behind the flashider? WTF?



    Now the wood was typical DP walnut, and he wanted the white paint off as well as the stock and grip cleaned up some.







    I began by stripping off the paint and then by taking a wire wheel to it. He also wanted the welds cleaned up as they were quite obvious and large. My plan was to mill them down a bit by hand so they were not so obvious.









    I reshaped both sides of the welds here as he requested but couldnt go any further as I was worried about the integrity of the welds. That was all that was holding it together.



    After lots of work I managed to get out the vice grip marks out of the barrel and reshape most of the poor welding on the rcvr. It took forever. To do it so there was no size difference between the two sides of the barrel when I ground off the imperfections took about a month as I could not take the barrel off for obvious legal reasons. I used sandpaper belts to get underneath and wrapped it around etc etc.








    Then the wood was completed and all cartouches were preserved. Just boiled lindseed oil with a spoonfull of stain and then a bees wax, turpentine BLOicon slop to give it some sheen. I then purchased a new carry handle as well a new flash hider.












    After I wire brushed the gun I lightly bead blasted the entire gun and then degreased, heated with a heat gun and used oxpho blue for the entire unit. I used oxpho blue as parkerising will show all the welds on the gun and well it obviously wont fit in a park tank. oxpho blue is a permanent cold blue and the only one that really works in my opinion. It gives you a blackish grey blue finish that does not run. I find it actually mimics the look of the original finish quite well actually.

    Heres the finished product. It will never shoot again but at least it looks a bit better.













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    Last edited by mrclark; 03-19-2011 at 08:45 PM.

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