Mauser4me
Senior Member
For your viewing pleasure!
I just finished cleaning up/restoring a gewehr 98 I got recently. It is entirely matching (cleaning rod included!) besides the firing pin and buttplate. It was a hot mess when I got it. Lots of surface rust, someone had added some sort of shellc-ish finish which was flaking off, and it was very frozen together with rust in the screw threads. Then not to mention a major split in the stock running from the wrist to the heel of the buttstock, crudely repaired with gobs of wood glue.
But alas! After much cleaning it is all together again pretty darn close to it's former glory. I replaced the mistmatched firing pin & buttplate with correct gew 98 ones, and removed the broken front locking screw head (you can't tell from the pictures but when I received it, the head was already split in half), the shaft I have yet to get out but don't have the tools to do so. I sent the stock off to a very nice guy down in Nebraska who has worked wonders for me on my gun stocks. He was not able to save the original finish underneath the shellac in any way, but was able to strip all the gunk off, and apply a new correct finish. The wood's red color really came out! Additionally, he was able to re-do the split stock repair and you can hardly see where the split even was now. Other than the split repair he did, I was very explicit that nothing should be sanded, and you can tell! All of the old light scratches and 'character' are still there.
Overall I'm very happy with the results! Below are before pictures (from the seller when I got the rifle), and after pictures I took this afternoon.
I just finished cleaning up/restoring a gewehr 98 I got recently. It is entirely matching (cleaning rod included!) besides the firing pin and buttplate. It was a hot mess when I got it. Lots of surface rust, someone had added some sort of shellc-ish finish which was flaking off, and it was very frozen together with rust in the screw threads. Then not to mention a major split in the stock running from the wrist to the heel of the buttstock, crudely repaired with gobs of wood glue.
But alas! After much cleaning it is all together again pretty darn close to it's former glory. I replaced the mistmatched firing pin & buttplate with correct gew 98 ones, and removed the broken front locking screw head (you can't tell from the pictures but when I received it, the head was already split in half), the shaft I have yet to get out but don't have the tools to do so. I sent the stock off to a very nice guy down in Nebraska who has worked wonders for me on my gun stocks. He was not able to save the original finish underneath the shellac in any way, but was able to strip all the gunk off, and apply a new correct finish. The wood's red color really came out! Additionally, he was able to re-do the split stock repair and you can hardly see where the split even was now. Other than the split repair he did, I was very explicit that nothing should be sanded, and you can tell! All of the old light scratches and 'character' are still there.
Overall I'm very happy with the results! Below are before pictures (from the seller when I got the rifle), and after pictures I took this afternoon.
