7mm-08 Project #2

Cleaning up the Action

Now that the action has been barreled I turned my attention to cleaning up the outside of action. The finish on a factory action is fine but I like to clean it up. It is just one of those little touches that I like. 

 Here is the action on a mandrel that I built out of the old barrel. I clamp the mandrel into my vice, it is a really convenient way to hold the action when working on it. 

 Here you can see the action after the first passes of sanding with fine paper and a sanding block. You can see from the bluing left in the low spots that the action is not flat. I make my sanding blocks out of hardwood and cut a radius in them to match the outside profile of the action. 

 Here is the other side, more of the same. If left like this you would notice that the action was not flat after the final polish and bluing. So I like to take the time to flatten things out. I also remove any tool marks and scratches. 

Here is the final cleaned up action. I will not do any internal truing to this action as it shot really well before I disassembled it and I had already lapped the lugs and polished the rails when it was a 22-250