cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Victorian Sensibility A little while ago I'd ordered a leather thing for my on-going Mauser sporter project. It laces onto the top of the stock like a boot, for the purpose of raising the height of the stock's comb. See, a rifle's stock is typically designed to align the marksman's eye with either the open iron sights or with a scope. In the case of the sights, the eye must be kept low, wheras a scope is higher and requires a slightly different position. The old Brazilian stock that I reshaped and used for this very old Turkish Mauser was designed for use with open sights and thus it has a low comb. Having scoped the rifle I found my head improperly aligned, so I bought this leather thing. The baby, who is almost 2 and no longer really a baby, has dubbed it a 'rifle boot.' Which is not a bad name for it. Point is, it came yesterday and I put it on the rifle and it looks really fucking cool. Like an old WWI sniper rifle. I love old-fashioned rifles and this just brings the whole package up a notch in that sense. Practically nobody puts these things on their rifles anymore. Most stocks these days are made for use with a scope in the first place. Only a few things left to do on this rifle. Install the sling swivels (which I've had for ages but haven't gotten around to drilling the holes for them), glass bed the action and reblue all of the metal. I could do the sling swivels and the glass bedding in an hour or so. And might very well do that this weekend. The re-blueing is another prospect altogether. I've never done any blueing and it's a very involved and prolonged project. It's also one that I can wait on if I want to. The rifle will work just fine with it's worn and mismatched blueing (there are parts from various old Mausers brought together here). I've spent *years* gradually building this thing and am damned eager to just get it shooting already. It would be nice to be able to hunt with it at least once this season. It's turning out to be rather heavy, what with the boot and the scope and the very long barrel. But that's all right. I have much lighter rifles to carry when I'm going a long way off in the woods or mountains. With the extra weight, this one will be noteworthy for it's low recoil even with a full-power European 8mm hunting load. It is an elegant piece of machinary. Almost Victorian in it's union of metal, wood and leather. A tremendously satisfying object even apart from it's practical application as a weapon. I would imagine that those steampunk people would understand. 9:30 a.m. - 2008-12-03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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