Thursday, January 14, 2010

Restoration and Modification of my Remington 511 Scoremaster

About 3 years ago I bought a little Remington 511 Scoremaster .22 bolt action. I paid 75.00 at the time, intending to refinish and update the little rifle. Time and life interceded, but I finally made the time to rework it over the past week. I ground the stock down quite a bit. The factory Walnut was shaped like a club, an ugly club actually.

I'm sure that in the past, the Inuit used 511 stocks to bludgeon baby seals. It needed help.




I used a Makita random orbital sander and 80 grit pads to do the rough cutting, and a Dremel tool with a course sanding drum to do some of the contouring. I began by cutting away much of the bottom of the stock, from the magazine plate forward, leaving the last 3 inches intact.




After course cutting the height of the stock's fore-end, I thinned the sides of the fore-end from the magazine plate forward. I used the Dremel to cut a contour channel on each side of the intact know at the end of the stock, bringing the contour to a rough point, and shaping the stock's tip to something resembling an arrowhead. Afterwards, I I deepened the pistol grip to a more comfortable shape. I went back to the Makita, switched to 120 grit pads, and finished grinding the schnabel fore-end and smoothing the worst of my sanding marks out of the rest of the stock.




I finished the stock prep by hand-sanding with 330 grit paper, making sure to remove all of the previous sanding marks. I rounded out with medium steel wool.

I plugged the old swivel-stud hole in the fore-end, and moved the stud back to behind the schnabel.

I left the stock in its natural color, and finished with 12 coats of Formby's Tung Oil, buffing with 0000 steel wool between coats, and allowing 24 hours drying time between coats. Here are the end results.




My next trick is to drill and tap the receiver for a scope, and I'm considering cutting and crowning the barrel to get rid of the front blade sight.


The rifle's bluing was still good, age-browned, but even.

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