Thread: Weathered Weatherby Wizzum

It's official I cannot be helped I have a sickness there is no known cure
So I picked up what looks like a well carried but seldom shot Weatherby Vanguard in 270WSM off a forum GC, I had tried to hold off in hope that someone else would buy it but alas I have no self control and ended up grabbing it.
The barrel looks very tidy inside, crisp well defined rifling, very nice crown job done on the muzzle, a little blueing worn on the outside but nothing an oily rag won't keep at bay.
The bolt is very smooth, has the straight flutes as found on Weatherby's MK 5 and Vanguard's alike.
The trigger was pretty average it was a lightly spongy and heavy (not unusual).
first thing I set about doing was to strip the action out of the stock and remove the trigger to see if I could improve on it's mediocre feel.
I gave it a thorough clean out with brake cleaner removing 20 odd years worth of dried oil and crap in the process, I then sparingly lubed all the pivot points with machine oil.
I then removed the bottom pin allowing the trigger to be removed along with the captive spring that controls the trigger pull weight.
the face of the trigger that sits against the sear was also coated in dried oil/lube of some sort so I cleaned that up too, whilst in there I removed about 3/4 of a coil off the trigger pull weight spring to try and improve the heavy trigger pull weight.
Once reassembled I cocked the bolt applied the safety and tried to pull the trigger, everything worked like it should.
Next I disengaged the safety and gave the rifle several decent bump tests to ensure no accidental discharge was possible, again all good.
The trigger was much cleaner breaking with just the smallest amount of creep it was a little lighter but still not as light as I like them, but light enough to shoot load development groups.
If this rifle proves to be a good shooter I'll look at getting the trigger improved professionally or just fit a jard/timmeny but that can wait.
No pics of any of the above but happy to provide some if anyone is curious.

Next up it was time to address the well weathered stock. The finish on the ejection side was actually not too bad but the oppisite side the finish was pretty much worn off completely in places from being carried (a lot).
here are a couple pics as I received it.







Next up I sanded the finish to clean up any scars and key up the surface ready for the new finish, then applied a couple coats of textured paint.



Once the texture coat had flashed off, I applied a couple coats of Matte Gray.



Then finally once the Gray had flashed off I finished it with a gold web pattern and a few coats off Matte clear.





The last pic makes the gold webbing look very muted (this is due to indoor lighting, I did take some pics out in daylight however I cannot access them while at work so will add them tomorrow.
I will pick up a spartan flush cup to bed into the fore on Thursday whilst I am dropping it off at the smith to have the muzzle re threaded.
Will update with further pics once the flush cup is fitted and the muzzle threaded to match y suppressor.
barrrel is currently 21.5" which is where I intend to leave it. once all the work is completed I'll start a new thread in the reloading ballistics section detailing the load development process. Still need to acquire some ADI2225 for that wee escapade.