Refurbishing a production Great Plains Rifle

[Wolf777]

Forgive me since this isn’t truly a build, but it seems like this might be the place to ask for help in creating what I want and need without wasting time and money first.

I’m a left handed shooter and though I know I can shoot a right handed muzzleloader just fine, I am having a hard time finding one that I love without castoff or extra wood on the left side of the stock for a right handed shooter.

My ideal rifle would be a browning mountain rifle type aesthetic with steel accents. These obviously weren’t made left handed and are heavy especially with the raised cheek piece. The only manufacturer that makes a left handed mountain rifle that I’ve found that are close to an original hawkens is the Lyman GPR/Investarms Gemmer.

They dyed these so dark and with black accents they are not very aesthetically pleasing, but can be overlooked if they shoot well.

If I refurbished one of these, would it be better to remove the bluing from the butt plate, forend cap, escutcheons and wedge keys and try and plate them silver/nickel, or just try and find silver replacement pieces from TOTW?

How much could I reasonably sand down off of the stock to refinish. I am thinking about a shou sugi ban type finish and just don’t know if it would work if there is stain penetrated down deeper.

Thanks in advance,
Josh

 

[PEARL DRUMS]

Stain generally doesn't penetrate very far, alcohol based dyes dig deep. I'm not sure what that rifle may have been colored with. The hard part about removing the finish and color from a stock is about the inlets. You don't want to take off enough to get clean wood and be left with "proud" furniture. Like the lock sticking out above the lines of the stock and the butt plate being bigger than the butt stock end. I'm not a gunsmith and I'm just barely a fledging builder as I'm in the midst of building a new stock from lumber for a TC. I have refinished several guns and I have made gobs of self bows. So, stains and dyes are something I do know a thing or two about. As for the furniture. If you want silver/nickel color you can just remove all the color from your pieces and they will be just that.

 

[ChuckJonesWagon]

This may, or may not help you. I don't know. I have a T\C kit rifle that I acquired in the late '70's. After the "build" bug bit me I took the old T\C and changed\filed\sanded\refurbed it.

I used files to reshape the stock and I also inletted an original Hawken (repro) plains DST and TG. I was simply tired of looking at that T\C TG.

In any event, I just started with 100grit sandpaper and removed the old finish. The pic below is the stock before it got refinished. I also removed the Fo-Case Hardining using Navel Jelly. Naval Jelly will remove bluing very fast....I mean if it touches something that's been blued, the blue is no more.

Anyway, this may or may not help you get where you wanna be. The second pic is the finished rifle.