Karabiner 88 Ear Restoration

It seems like Bubba just loves to file the front sight guard ears on Kar 88's. I now have two of these rifles, both matching with untouched wood and in great condition besides the ears... So I'm faced with the classic Kar88 dilemma. Do I sell these rifles (probably for a profit) on Gunbroker or do I try to restore the ears? I talked to a member on Gunboards who claims to have restored several of these a few decades ago. He said

"Its been like decades since i did it. IIRC i milled off the damaged ears to down to the base. silver soldered oversize metal square on to the level base and then milled and shaped new ears. I had a jig to hand the whole thing on for milling. I sold it years ago." and "It/they looked fine with only a thin silver line before finishing, Line almost disappears after final finish, Could be tigged on if you have equipment and skill. If lost wax casting wasn't so expensive you might sell a couple hundred upper pieces until saturation. Probably far less than income than set up costs. I approached an Italian company long ago and they said about same thing. Restoring ears via my way was only my choice. Worse even now as material costs are stupid high, Europe is closed for duration, Doubt many could make a buck doing it for others."

Really I am just asking for some more advice from the members here. Have any of you done anything like this before? The kar88 is probably my favorite little rifle and I would love to get these two back into trim! But I also can't stand looking at those ground-off ears haha. So any discussion on this is more than welcome!

Here they are side by side. As you can see, the rifle on the right has a crack running through the ear...

I can’t speak for the restoration part but did the one with the restored ears (Serial 82) come from the Ohio Civil War Show last weekend? I remember handling one similar at that show.

cj556 said:

I can’t speak for the restoration part but did the one with the restored ears (Serial 82) come from the Ohio Civil War Show last weekend? I remember handling one similar at that show.

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Yeah it did, I talked him down in price! Honesty one of the cleanest examples I've seen.

Here’s one vote for Tig, minimal HAZ’s and you can even work up some kind of heat sink too, to keep the HAZ’s away from areas you don’t want it to go, markings, other areas of original finish etc. I go with the smallest electrode I can. To replicate a patina in the weld area, that can get tricky but the biggest aspect of it, is inducing a little corrosion and working it carefully. There are a couple of members here I could recommend, but I don’t want to speak for them, they maybe covered up in work as well. Projects like this where a rifle is fairly minorly messed with can seem like an “easy fix” at first, but such restoration work can get expensive quick so you have to decide if it’s worth it to you, or do it yourself.

flynaked said:

Here’s one vote for Tig, minimal HAZ’s and you can even work up some kind of heat sink too, to keep the HAZ’s away from areas you don’t want it to go, markings, other areas of original finish etc. I go with the smallest electrode I can. To replicate a patina in the weld area, that can get tricky but the biggest aspect of it, is inducing a little corrosion and working it carefully. There are a couple of members here I could recommend, but I don’t want to speak for them, they maybe covered up in work as well. Projects like this where a rifle is fairly minorly messed with can seem like an “easy fix” at first, but such restoration work can get expensive quick so you have to decide if it’s worth it to you, or do it yourself.

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Although I would love to do it myself, my welds are definitely to sloppy for this haha! I've had the one rifle for a few years and was waiting for a second before starting to try this. Guess I'll just have to see what others say. What did you do to get that corrosion started? Just body oils? I read somewhere that REDACTED works well.

It’s probably not prudent to share many restoration techniques on an open forum, you never know who is reading. I’ll shoot you a PM later.

I'm not so sure that bubba ground the ears down. I have one also. There is some thought that these were done post WW1 for police issue. Where or what that thought came from I don't know but it is interesting conjecture.

Yeah, I have heard that theory before. It just seems like if that was the case then the grinds would be much more consistent and well done?

samuel990 said:

Yeah, I have heard that theory before. It just seems like if that was the case then the grinds would be much more consistent and well done?

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Maybe? Unless it was an order put out to each police district? That might explain the variation. WAG on my part though.