Big day today. Got her shooting without a hitch, and it was so close to being regulated, I went ahead and made two small adjestments, and she is shooting "barrel spread" at 25 yds. I didn't have the sights installed, so I left it there as a good place to start sighting in a final regulation.

So, now for pictures. First is the damascus skeleton butt plate.....and my feet :-)

Next is the action just before heat treating. The action is forged from 1075 and L-6 tool steel. These will get VERY hard, and that isn't what I am after, so I austenitize at 1400. This is just hot enough to harden, but not full hardness. In order to eliminate scale, the action is coated in anti-scaling compound from Brownells. It works nice, but sure is ugly...

and after the quench

The compound is removed by boiling in water. The action is then polished, areas not to be acid etched are coated with laquer, and the action is imersed in ferric chloride to etch the damascus.

the results are hard to photograph, but easily visable in person. Sorry for the fuzzy picture..