Gunsmithing Bubbasmithing Part Deux: Hold Ma Beer

[Trigger Monkey]

I had a lot of fun with my last bubba gunsmithing adventure and this time I'm setting my sights on my Bergara HMR. The plan right now is to paint the barreled action, bed it into the stock, and then refinish the stock in a Kuiu Verde pattern.

The paint I'm using for the barreled action is from Advanced Auto, it's Duplicolor Engine Enamel with Ceramic, I've seen some other guys use it on AR's and such so I thought it'd be fun to try it on a bolt gun.

Unlike the last time, I'm going to bed the stock with a more traditional Marine Tex epoxy and after my experiences from last time I'm not using Plumbers Putty to block off the nooks and crannies. It took me some time to find good, or close rather, color matches for the Kuiu Verde pattern but I've settled on Rustoleum brand Ultra Matte Slate, Dark Taupe, Camo Green, and Camo Khaki. I'm going to make the stencils out of blue painters tape, a method I used once to do a multicam finish on a stock and use a cheap camo net stretched over the stock to replicate the underlying mesh pattern of the Verde camo.

Nothing too crazy really but stay tuned, the next update should be after I get the barreled action painted.

 

[clcustom1911]

Looks like fun to me. I bubba'd my 10/22 stock a few months ago.

 

[Kadams1563]

Looks like fun to me. I bubba'd my 10/22 stock a few months ago.
View attachment 7192740

What in the heck.... You should move that 10/22 stock away from that Manners to give it all the help you can.

 

[sam4886]

I'm looking forward to seeing how your Kuiu paint job turns out.

 

[Average guy]

Patiently waiting results

 

[hlee]

I'm a bit more impatiently waiting...

You're bubba smithing the cheek rest on your rifle inspired me to do the same on a magpul x22. And, now I'm waist deem in a second. And, a polymer stocked shotgun may not be that far behind. Why is it that I have less reservation drilling holes than I do applying paint?

 

[VSP968]

The Duplicolor ceramic engine enamel is tough stuff- I’ve used lots of it on miscellaneous brackets and other small parts on automotive engines- it’s tougher and wears better if you can bake it in an oven after applying.

Nothing crazy hot : 125F for an hour is usually enough prior to assembly.

Make sure the parts are thoroughly degreased before painting. Acetone works or MEK if you have access.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

Does it stink? It can't stink, I went through that mess once before with Duracoat in the basement.

I was hoping to paint this past weekend but holiday shit got in the way, it's all prepped and ready. I did contour the brake a little more, will post pics of it soon.

 

[VSP968]

No worse than any other spray paint and nothing like Duracoat- that shit is nasty!

I suggest you bake it while your wife isn’t home.

Mine gets pissed when I use kitchen appliances “the wrong way”: baking things in the oven that aren’t food and washing stuff in the dishwasher that didn’t come from the kitchen.

 

[waspocrew]

Looking forward to the results!

 

[Darayavaus]

Does it stink? It can't stink, I went through that mess once before with Duracoat in the basement.

I was hoping to paint this past weekend but holiday shit got in the way, it's all prepped and ready. I did contour the brake a little more, will post pics of it soon.

remember that duracoat has hardener in it, and if you breathe it in, it's going to harden in your lungs. Considering it's not soluble inside the body, that is a problem. respirators and ventilation are absolutely required.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

The first thing I actually did to kick this project off was contour the muzzle brake. This is a cheap brake from Damage Industries that I got on sale and it's languished in my parts bin for a few years at least. It got resurrected because it looked pretty good on the HMR barrel but I was in a hurry so initially I put it on with a crush washer. In a word it was ugly, but functional.

Skip ahead and I had some shims from PRI that didn't work on one barrel but they were perfect for thinner contour barrel on the HMR. Some filing and sanding later and at the end of the taper it pretty closely matches the contour of the barrel. This will mostly likely get painted to match the barrel.

 

[waspocrew]

The first thing I actually did to kick this project off was contour the muzzle brake. This is a cheap brake from Damage Industries that I got on sale and it's languished in my parts bin for a few years at least. It got resurrected because it looked pretty good on the HMR barrel but I was in a hurry so initially I put it on with a crush washer. In a word it was ugly, but functional.

View attachment 7194631

Skip ahead and I had some shims from PRI that didn't work on one barrel but they were perfect for thinner contour barrel on the HMR. Some filing and sanding later and at the end of the taper it pretty closely matches the contour of the barrel. This will mostly likely get painted to match the barrel.

View attachment 7194632

Looks good so far!

 

[Buckshot0351]

Update?

 

[Trigger Monkey]

I'm painting today and getting stock prepped for bedding today. Sorry it's been a while on this one, I had to back burner the project when I had a bunch of reviews and articles to knock out. Pictures will be coming later today.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

Ok, paint's on and I would say so far so good. I sealed off the inside of the action with some left over pipe insulation and painters tape. Since this stuff isn't specifically for guns I decided to play it safe and keep the bolt raceway clean so that it won't bind up. I also plugged the trigger slot and bolt release slot with play doh. In my experience it works pretty good at staying put, being easy to clean out, and sealing off areas. Action was prepped with a green scotch brite pad and cleaned off with non-chlorinated carb cleaner then heated with a blow dryer.

I'd just finished the final coat so the paint was still wet there. It went on pretty thin, it didn't even fill the small roll mark on the underside of the action, I was pretty impressed. As near as I can tell it's tough as hell too, about an hour after I took this pic I dropped the muzzle brake from about 5 ft. onto concrete and there was just barely a small scuff mark.

 

[Aftermath]

View attachment 7213879
Kuiu on my 80% lower bull barreled 5.56x45

 

[C4N4DIAN]

Looking forward to see where this goes !

 

[Trigger Monkey]

Play Doh or modeling clay? A word of caution, Play doh has a VERY high salt content...taste it!

Play-Doh. Ever dug modeling clay out every orifice of a rifle that it got smushed into? It's a son of a bitch. In my experience Play-Doh has been more user friendly, I just don't leave it in for more than 24 hours and I don't taste it.

 

[Average guy]

This begs the question do you have any input on the best tasting crayons. All kidding aside great point about play dough. Could be a bad situation if not used carefully.

 

[Buckshot0351]

Modeling clay is a PITA. Only used it once and thought there had to be a better way. Play-Duh!!!

 

[sam4886]

I like plumbers putty. Much easier to work with than modelling clay.

 

[Aftermath]

I use modeling clay when bedding. I get most of it off with plastic tools and the rest comes off easy with some PowderBlast and q-tips or pipe cleaners or toothbrush. You really should taste that Play-doh. And Elmers glue, too. Just remember, Epstein didn't hang himself but Weinstein should consider it.

 

[Fourtyfive]

Looking good. Gonna have to follow this one, as I do my own bubbasmithing. That is the exact same color/paint I used to refinish my lathe. It has been pretty durable so far, and holding up to all the oil and chips flying at it for a few months now. Should hold up pretty well for a barreled action.

 

[Totoro]

Great info! Please post pix of metal after spray painting.

Thx

 

[Trigger Monkey]

My new Oryx chassis for the Remington 783 came in last night so I was fooling around with it but I managed to get to the stock work a little today.

The inside of the stock is painted the same speckled finish as the outside and covers up the aluminum skeleton that the action is to bear on.

The paint came off the aluminum pretty easy but I'm sanding down the the rest of the paint to prep the area for the bedding compound later on. This way at least the action will be bearing directly on aluminum and not on the paint that's covering the aluminum.

I'm going to let the paint cure for a few days, I have it setting next to my heater to get some heat on it, I don't have an oven that I can use to bake it so that's the best I can do. That being said, the brake took a fair dinkum tumble and still looks pretty good, I think it'll be ok.

While I'm waiting for paint to cure I'm going to get to work on the stencils tomorrow afternoon and maybe do a test run on an old stock at some point. The goal is to emulate the Verde pattern...

 

[Trigger Monkey]

Bedding block is prepped, hopefully tomorrow I'll be bedding the action, we'll see how the day goes.

Another mod that is going to be happening is that I'm filling in the two holes I drilled a while back to attach a Pic rail for tripod mounting. This worked for a while but my goal is to have as many of my rifles as I can be able to directly mount to the arca clamp on my tripod with no adapter. No Henderson, RRS, or $40 arca plates in this rodeo, I found some low profile arca plates from Sunwayfoto that should fit the bill, they'll be here next week.

Paint on the barreled action looks good, a few blemishes but i figure those can be touched up later. I'm going to fill in those divots with some red and white paint to replicate the stock configuration.

 

[waspocrew]

Looking great!

 

[Whit1721]

Looking great! Looking forward to more and following this thread.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

Ok, I apologize for the delay, the family illnesses and work have gotten in the way big time. This past weekend I made the time to bed the rifle and fulfilled my lifelong dream of fucking up another bedding job. Well not too bad really but I definitely shouldn't quit my day job. I was in a rush so that probably has everything to do with it but let's focus on some of the positives first.

1. I didn't glue the action into the stock. The OneShot case lube didn't a pretty good job as a release agent.
2. The pillar guides that I made from two old action screws worked great to locate the action in the stock as I was dropping it down into the epoxy. I wrapped them with masking tape to create a slip fit into the pillar.
3. Near as I can tell the bedding job is stress free when I give it the action screw test.
4. I was able to clean it up pretty good with files and my Dremel set to kill.

Some of the bad...
1. I think some of the WD-40 leeched down into the epoxy as I was cleaning up the edges and caused a failure when I pulled the action from the stock. Lucky for me this happened forward of the recoil lug so I was able to sand down the barrel pad and basically make the barrel free floated forward of the lug.
2. Some of the paint came off the action and is pretty much embedded in the epoxy, unsightly but doesn't seem to harm anything. I'll touch up the action when I paint the stock.
3. It was right about the time I was dropping the action in when I realized I didn't tape the stock off...

So not my best work ever but all I have in it is the cost of the epoxy and many of the sins are going to get covered up when I paint the stock.

I'd also previously filled in the holes for the pic rail and located the new ones for the Arca plate I'm going to attach this week. I seemed to have lost the drill bit that I need so I have to pick one up tomorrow.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

Ok fellas, finally putting this project to bed, it's been a long time coming and wanted to get it done sooner but various reviews and family obligations occupied much of my free time. Over the weekend though I was able to paint and get everything reassembled, so all that’s left to do is go shoot it.

Now, I'd already painted the barreled action and I have to say that I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out using the cast iron engine enamel.

First off I just want to say that hindsight being 20/20 I should've tried this out on a bitch stock first before attempting it on the actual stock. However, I was impatient and went hell bent for leather to get this done so that I could cross it off my list. To make the stencils for the camo pattern I laid out sheets of parchment paper and ran overlapping strips of blue painter's tape on both sides. I made two sheets like this and then traced out patterns that I felt were close to the Kuiu Verde pattern and cut them out with an exacto knife. Come to find out there's a company that makes vinyl stencil sets for the Kuiu Verde pattern and others, go figure. Now, instead of parchment paper you can use wax paper, I've done that in the past and I'd have to say that it may be a little easier to get the tape to release with the wax paper.

After I made the stencils the next step was to prep the stock for paint by taping off the flush cups, bedding area, and anywhere else I didn't want paint to go. Laying down the paint was a pretty simple process. I started out with the slate grey paint first and put down two coats. Using the small to medium pieces I covered about 20% of the stock before laying down two coats of the OD Green.

After that paint dried I attached the larger stencil pieces, overlapping some of the grey and generally covering an additional 20-25% of the stock or so.

Anything not covered by the stencils got two coats of Dark Khaki followed by a the camo Khaki with the netting to create the mesh effect. This is where it kind of went off the rails for me honestly, I had trouble keeping the netting tight against the stock to get a good mesh pattern and in some areas the darker khaki just got completely covered. I should've started over when I realized this but pressed on.

I let the stock set overnight before I peeled the stencils off and put on several coats of matte clear finish. First of all, it wasn't that matte but it's all I had so again, I pressed on. Also, I realized that when I made my stencils I could've made the steps less blocky with more steps/finer detail but that would've been a paint both figuratively and literally when it came to cutting them out. This is why I think I'll opt for pre-made stencils next time.

All reassembled it’s pretty close to what I had envisioned, not perfect by any means but I think I'll keep it around for a while until it starts to wear off or I get bored one day and need a project.

I'm also pretty happy with how my little Sunwayfoto Arca plate turned out, it mounted up great and locks into my tripod just fine. It's also nice and low profile so my hand still fits the stock pretty well.

Overall it was a fun project and any mistakes or anything that I'm not happy with I only have myself to blame. The last little touches will be to add some foam padding to the top of the cheek piece and make sure everything is torqued down properly.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

After I had attempted my ghetto Kuiu camo job I really wasn't that happy with it, I'd dropped the rifle into a Grayboe Phoenix for a bit and that stock was great. My camo job on this stock kept nagging me though so I said "what the hell, redo it". I settled on a quasi-Manners-esque sponge camo job using some Deep Forest Green, Charcoal Gray, Taupe, and a lighter gray color rattle can color.

Did you know that you if you use CitriStrip to remove the rattle can job you did, it'll also take off the original Bergara stock finish? Me neither!...good thing I was painting it over and wasn't worried about that but food for thought.

Anyway, I got it all done this past week and put back together, I'm hoping for some range time this weekend to take it out but we'll see.

 

[408w]

Looking 100% better now. Nice

 

[Baron23]

After I had attempted my ghetto Kuiu camo job I really wasn't that happy with it, I'd dropped the rifle into a Grayboe Phoenix for a bit and that stock was great. My camo job on this stock kept nagging me though so I said "what the hell, redo it". I settled on a quasi-Manners-esque sponge camo job using some Deep Forest Green, Charcoal Gray, Taupe, and a lighter gray color rattle can color.

Did you know that you if you use CitriStrip to remove the rattle can job you did, it'll also take off the original Bergara stock finish? Me neither!...good thing I was painting it over and wasn't worried about that but food for thought.

Anyway, I got it all done this past week and put back together, I'm hoping for some range time this weekend to take it out but we'll see.

View attachment 7523854

View attachment 7523855

Nice recovery....looks pretty good to my eye now.

 

[MLS2GO]

Looks good! thanks for letting us follow along. Maybe I'll get tha tdaring at some point.

 

[SanPatHogger]

Thank you for the Sunwayfoto name. I've been looking into a tripod and a way to put my gun on it. They look like they should work.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

I have two of those plates, I put the other one on the Titan 10/22 stock and it's been working great. Since, this is on a centerfire though I might replace the front flat head screw with a hex head socket screw to give it a higher profile and work as a stop of sorts.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

I went out yesterday and shot the HMR a little bit and I was pretty satisfied. With things being the way they are I didn't take a bunch of ammo with me or waste a lot of ammo. Zeroing at 100 was super easy, shot three, made my correction, and held on the group to confirm, other than pulling that one damn shot it was good.

I shot a little at 200 and 300 and off the tripod, which is where I figured the little Arca plate would maybe give me some issues/concerns. It connected to the tripod just fine but after a few shots it had slid noticeably rearward due to the recoil. I'd say for a hunting rifle or rimfire it's fine but for a tactical/match rifle it needs something specifically made for the purpose. I replaced it with my 3" Henderson Precision rail so it's all better now and the height is about the same as the Atlas rail so it's pretty comfortable in the hand.

So that's the conclusion of this little project, thanks for following along.

 

[Shawnson]

Looks much better now. I need to quit thinking about it and just get going on mine.

 

[Defy Gear]

Rattlecan skills are on point

While we don't make any plates for this application, if you have any need for MLok to ARCA rails, I know a guy

 

[stefan73]

Bubbasmithing requires HEAVY Dremel usage that requires a trip to a legitimate smith and a follow up post asking for help. Just saying

BTW, nice work

 

[acudaowner]

pretty gun nice work space , but no pic of any beer anywhere that makes me a little sad the title suggested beer there should have been one pic of a hand holding a cold beer .

 

[Trigger Monkey]

Rattlecan skills are on point

While we don't make any plates for this application, if you have any need for MLok to ARCA rails, I know a guy

Funny you mentioned that, I just ordered one of your MLOK plates this past weekend.

BTW I can make an MLOK adapter attach to anything I want with a file, some 10-32 cap screws, and 10-32 weld nuts lol.

 

[flatland1]

I think the 2nd attempt at the paint job was well done! Like the appearance and color combinations.