Chinese Letter Gun

[bbush44]

I thought I would be the first to post up a couple of pictures of a letter gun. I know Adam has/had some prettier ones, and thought this might provoke him to post them up. I picked this up from Classic Firearms last year on one of the sales they had. It is the only all matching letter gun that I have. The bluing is pretty good, but I am pretty sure it had been drug behind a truck before it made it state side.
Here is how she arrived.














I cleaned her all up, and tried Tung oil, instead of BLO on the stock. I'm still  on the outcome.




Is that a bullet hole? Or where it hit a a large rock on one of its trips down a gravel road?





I apologize for the crappy pictures, but it is all I currently have of her. She now wears a Chinese coil sling, and shoots well.

[Dannyboy53]

Those dings give it character in my humble opinion, it good looking! Better pictures than mine. Thanks for sharing Brian

[Loose}{Cannon]

Ooooo    I like the looks of that one.   

[running-man]

That stock has some neat grain lines on it Brian.  I don't think I'd ever seen it all cleaned up; it came out pretty decent with the Tung oil, if not a bit light for my tastes. 

I still have yet to get a letter gun at all from this new batch, I have a 188k Ghost, six digit /26\, and 2x 2 mil /26\s.  I'd like to get a nice 3 mil /26\ CAI gun (with a side swivel maybe)  and then a nice IO or TGI letter prefix to round out the early Chinese collection.

[bbush44]

I agree RM, It is a bit light for my tastes also. I only have one other Letter gun, but it is a bit of a mix matcher.
After the stock was decosmoed.

[Adam7]

Not bad at all!  The only way to get that stock looking nicer would to heavily sand it and remove the dings.  I had a 'ghost' with a similar crappy stock that I redid, after some heavy sanding it came out nice.

 

Now I know a lot of folks will say 'don't sand!!' And I was once of that same thought as well... But my opinion has changed now that I have refinished my fair share of stocks.  If your already making it 'other then issued' by refinishing it, I say heck, go all the way.  At least when your done it more closely resembles how it originally was made.

I might show off a few of my letter guns when I get the chance.  I have 1 in particular that is absolutely beautiful.  I haven't and don't need to touch the stock on it.  The majority of my early Chinese rifles have had similar stocks to the one you show here.

[Worm]

Adam! Show your letter guns! IIRC you were thinking of collecting all of them at one point. How many you have?

[bbush44]

As you can probably tell I did very little sanding. I just knocked off the rough edges with some 150 grit. Most of the spots on the stock are so deep and cover a large area I would have had to sand the stock down to a tooth pick to get them all out. After taking some denatured alcohol and removing what little of finish remained all of the scars kind of grew on me. So I just left them be.

I did refinish a couple of the extra stocks I picked up off ebay from buymilsup.
Before



After



If I screwed one of these up, at least it wasn't a matching stock.  ;D
I agree with Worm post up your Letter guns.
Brian

[Worm]

wow nice job with that stock bbush

[Dannyboy53]

No doubt, that does look good.

[jusridin]

I love the just drug behind a truck look, turned out nice bbush!

[Stoned_Oli]

Wow, it seems they have it in for the F's! At least yours made me feel better about mine... 

I have one made 3600 before yours; it, too looks like it fought off a killer robot attack in hand to claw combat. And it's MY only matching letter Chinese as well! (I do have one with a replacement stock on it, but it came in a renumbered replacement stock to begin with.
I can't decide on fix, love, or sell, TBH...



Yours on the other hand, much improved... and I bet she cuddles better too... 

[Lmbass14]

Purdy Brain, you did good my friend.

[Justin Hell]

Guns with character like these really make you wish you knew what experience they have seen.  I doubt it was anything involving clumsy teenage girls from the drill team, although it almost looks like it in some cases.   Nice restorations guys, color me jealous. 

The closest I have had to these is my T53, the ugliest gun I own, but sitting next to my excellent condition SKS's she looks like a well seasoned woman in a harem of virgins. 

Fortunately, I like both.