Hakim pt.2

Posting up the next batch of pictures here, these detail my work of stripping the stock and refinishing the damn thing. The finish is apparently easy to chip but remarkably resistant to stripping, something that might pose a problem when I attempt to redo the damned thing, but we shall see.

The stock removed from the action, ready to begin the process. 

The first round of stripping did remarkably little to the finish, I began to worry that the project would drag on far longer than I intended. 

The wood was making progress, but you can see how the finish wasn't coming off evenly, a problem I wasn't able to solve entirely.

Very noticeable patches of finish that wouldn't come off...I think this was the third or fourth scrubbing by now.

For whatever reason, the finish just wouldn't come out of this area. My best guess is that oil from the maintenance of the action seeped into the stock over the years, as is the tendency of the tang area of the Mosins; this makes evening out the color of a stock quite difficult. 

Final stage of the stock before I began staining it. In hindsight, I should've hit it with more Denatured Alcohol to coax the last of the finish out, maybe even lightly bleached the wood to lighten it up, but I was well over the project by this point, it was in its third week, far longer than I like.

Pics of the (for the moment) finished rifle up next!