Mk 1 Airsporter .

[zooma]

Some time ago I bought a nice working Mk 1 Airsporter that had sight grooves on it.

I kept the rifle for years so anyone interested could see the patna of the groove cuts matched the patna of the original old blue finish as it did not look like these sight grooves had been added at a later date.

As time passed by I decided I no longer cared if the sight grooves had been cut in the factory (perhaps by a worker who wanted to add them to his own rifle) or not and started to appreciate that this addition had made this Mk1 rifle into a very "practical classic" that could be used by those of us that now find open sights not so easy to see!

Having decided that this rifle had no real interest to a collector I decide to strip it and to rebuild it to a "better than new" standard if possible.

The first job was to get the metalwork across to Manchester for polishing and and a new blue finish (including all of the screws). Whilst the metalwork was away I stripped the three piece wooden stock. It had no splits or signs of any delamination or damage and the wood was nice too so I gave it a new oiled finish that brought the wood colours and grain out beautifully and then finished this with a hard Briwax finish.

When everything was ready for reassembly it was checked and lubricated before being put back together again.

A nice new Hawk 4 x 32 sight was fitted and it is now an excellent (but unusual) example of a Mk 1 Airsporter that is also very nice to look at and practical to shoot.

If it was a .177 I could use it every week but as I can only shoot in our local clubs these days it seldom gets a .22 pellet put through it.

Has anyone else "abused" a nice collectors rifle to produce something they consider to be an "improvement" without loosing the lines and features of the original ?