Some of you know that a friend (sqezer) of mine at a gun show called and asked if I wanted another MK-85 - $85. Did not take me long to say yes! - even if it is in bad shape - the parts would be worth that.
This is a picture of the rifle he sent me.
LeRoy bought the rifle for me and said he would ship it. But when he got home and took it apart to check it out - he found it was loaded!!!! - he removed the BP and pushed the load out then ran some patches through - discovered some pitting in the breech area and bit on the hammer floor. Wasn't sounding real good but I asked him to go ahead and send it out.
It arrived on Monday - it physically really did not look that bad. I spent the day cleaning up and working on the pitting - minor pitting and I did find a little bit more just beneath the crown. With that I broke out the JB's and worked the bore over. Got the rifle pretty much ready to go and since it was only 3:00 thought I would run to the far and see if it would shoot! Oh! I did one other thing removed the green wood stock and dropped the rifle in a DISC Elite Thumbhole stock. Dropped right in and really felt good!
Right now the 'PLAN' is that I will probably load this rifle the Junior High kid across the street so he can muzzleload hunt with his dad this fall. But before I could do that I wanted to make sure it would shoot. I just can not understand why some would not take care of their rifle and let the decay happen. But! I was confident the 'ole girl' would shoot! MK's are tough!
Got to the far and got setup - I had laser bore sighted the rifle at 13 yards in the house so I set the target at 50 yards as I was pretty confident I would be on paper. Another change I removed the scope blocks and the rear sight and installed a Williams WGRS peep - I really do not like these because they are what I call a 'slide and glide' sight. I much prefer positive clicks like the Williams FP peep...
The Rifle did not disappoint! I ended up quickly shooting 2 different groups before I had to hustle back to the house. Hope to get out more with it this week...
Not to bad for an $85 rifle!
