60 AIRGUN WORLD http://www.airgunshooting.co.uk
up Hydrographics. They have done a massive
amount of work for me in the past, dipping
stocks etc., and I was deeply saddened to find
out that Jon Sykes, the owner, had sadly
passed away; a great loss, he always made meTIM FINLEY
PLEASED TO
METEOR!
Tim Finley concludes his major refurb of a neglected BSA Meteor MKII
T
he 1966 BSA MKII Meteor I had managed
to find at the right price was now in bits.
The beech stock, with its two vandalised areas,
just needed stripping down, sanding smooth
and refinishing, although I knew I would have
to put some work in to remove the name and
initials that some idiot had carved into the
stock. BSA dyed their basic beech stocks a
lovely rich reddish colour, and the modern
replacement is a Colron brand Indian
Rosewood dye. They also varnished their
stocks and I chose a satin varnish to seal this
one and make it durable because it needs to
be as an outdoor gun. This was all work I was
capable of myself.
The stripping down with fine grit wet-and-dry
and wire wool took me a few hours, but the
wood dying took a full week of treating and
sanding down in between the four coats. The
number of coats of dye you treat it with depends
upon what colour you want, of course.
The action was another matter; recoating it
to look like a professional job, in a black
semi-gloss painted finish, was certainly not
within my skill set.
HYDROGRAPHICS HELP
The Meteor’s barrel and action had been sitting
in a gunsmith’s workshop for a year gathering
dust before I retrieved it from him and looked
laugh every time I went to see him.
His son, Harry, now runs the business, ably
assisted by Phil, a long-time member of the
Hydrographics team and who let me dip a
stock with him the last time I was at their old
premises. They have since moved to a new,
much bigger building, but not far from the
original site, and they were the right people to
refinish my project gun. I should have taken it
to them in the first place! It only took them
three weeks, and they made a fantastic job of
it, too. The original paint proved a bugger to
remove and took a week of treating and
retreating to take off fully back to the bare
metal. The internals were masked off to protect
them prior to a base coat and then the
semi-gloss black finish. They even sent me
pictures of its progress! Sam and Phil are top
men, that’s for sure. It cost £130 to get it done,
but it was well worth it to me. They also painted
the elevation wheel for the rear sight as most of
the paint had worn off.PART 2
I had to start by sanding
the stock down.