Marlin .22 LR

So I mentioned briefly in an unrelated post that I had painted my Marlin model 60 .22 LR rifle. This rifle is what I will be using to get reaquainted with all of the precision shooting principles that I have forgotten over the years. I regret not taking a picture of the rifle beforehand, but if you really want to see what it looked like before I got my hands on it, I would recommend just going to the Marlin website where they have a good representation of what it looked like prior to this project. For clarification purposes, it's the blued barrel with the walnut stock. It was a Sunday and I was bored, so I decided that I would go to the local X-Mart and pick up a couple of necessities for painting this rifle. Going into this, I knew I wouldn't find what I really should have had for this project, so I decided to make do. I picked up 3 different shades of rustoleum paint - an olive green, a black and a brown. My initial thought was to go with the matte colors X-Mart had available because I had the feeling that the dried thickness of the paint wouldn't interfere too much with the moving parts of the rifle. Instead, I went against better judgment and picked up this textured paint. I did this for two reasons - The first reason being that I felt that if the color of the cap was an accurate representation of how the paint would look when dry, the end result would be a far more natural looking color than a bold green, brown and black. This paint was much more subdued. The second reason was the dried texture was far more course, almost like that of dull 80 grit sand paper so my thinking was this would benefit grip and reduce slippage on the stock.

Going into the project, I disassembled the rifle in the same manner that several websites told me to do so. It came apart with relative ease. I had the action and barrel separated from the stock after loosening two screws. I also took the liberty of just taking the remaining two screws out that held the trigger assembly to the stock. For lack of professional painter's accessories, I used several layers if surgical tape I had laying around and covered the action and the bottom of the receiver. I set my screws and trigger assembly aside and took the stock out to my back deck to be painted. Luckily, I had a beat up trash can that I could use to prop the stock inside so I could paint it with a minimum of handling and any overspray would likely find its way back on the stock rather than my grill or any of my kids' toys. What I should have done was dispense of a few wire hangers, hung the parts and painted them that way, but like I said, this project came not out of necessity, but out of boredom so I made my choice to paint it this way. It is also probably worth mentioning that the can claimed that the paint dried in 15 minutes. Since I was painting this outside and it happend to be in the mid to upper 30's and not even in direct sunlight, this wasn't the case. I covered the stock as evenly as I could with the green paint which I wanted to use as a base coat for all the painted parts. Once I felt that I had adequate coverage on the stock, I went ahead and grabbed the receiver/action/barrel assembly and painted it in the same fashion I did the stock. Once that was done, all that was left to do was wait. After almost an hour and a half, which is a rough estimation because I let an entire movie play out before I went outside to check on the parts, I went to check the status of the painted parts. Feeling about 90% dry, I went ahead and opened up the black which went on more like a charcoal color, which initially worried me but ended up being better than I could have hoped for. I applied this only to the stock as I thought that I may not mind a strictly green barrel. Once the shine was out of the black, I went out and applied coats of the brown. When this was done, I left the parts outside to dry for about an hour. Going out to check them after that time revealed to me that the only way these parts were going to dry in an acceptable amount of time was if I pulled them inside where it was significantly warmer. Thinking that the paint dried well enough, I cut up a cardboard box and laid the parts out to finish drying so I could put the rifle back together.

Late that night, I went to give the rifle one final check to see if it was even close to ready to put back together. I lifted the stock up and was amazed at how good it looked, despite a couple of areas where the paint ran (cold weather tends to make wet paint do that.) I flipped the stock to see something that really disheartened me...... The areas of the stock that made contact with the cardboard had no paint on them. Nothing was there but wood stained from the paint surrounded by scabby dry paint from where the paint lifted. This is what haste gets you. Despite this small problem, I was able to put the rifle back together with no problems.

I'm sure that any hunter/tactician could have and would have told me that using rustoleum on a rifle was the worst possible choice I could have made, but I really don't care. It suited my purpose and none of the painted surfaces of the rifle are at risk of marring or stripping due to firing it. If anything, the paint will eventually begin to lift off due to other reasons such as rustoleum being for things like outdoor furniture, not being dragged around the woods. The experienced tactical shooter would have exercised a lot more patience, created a better environment for a project like this and used what is considered to be the proper materials for this project, such as Aluma-Hyde paint which is specifically made for rifles. I decided to go another way. What I did was cheaper and it did the job I wanted it to do and all things considered, ended up being fine for the rifle. I already know that when it comes to acquiring my next rifle, it will be a .30 caliber bolt action with different parts that actually have certain tolerances that the rustoleum would interfere with regardless of how much better I think the finish looks. The mistake that immediately comes to mind was the election to paint these parts in near freezing temperatures. Had I waited until spring, this project might have been more successful. The second mistake I made was corraling the parts rather than finding a place to hang them for painting. Finally, the third mistake I made was not doing any surface preparation prior to painting. While the consequences of my election to do no surface prep have not yet evidenced themselves, I'm sure I will see them down the road as the rifle is used more frequently.

Overall, it was a fun project. I immediately recognized where I went wrong and what I could have done differently and will likely carry these lessons learned into my next endeavor. Keep in mind that the training I received was strictly in shooting a specific weapons system, not painting them. As I go continue these efforts, I'm all too sure that my weapon painting skills will improve. It being the time of year it is, it will likely be a while before I get to being able to fire outside of a range environment, but if I can come up with anything worthy of writing about, I'll be all over it. Until then, keep your muzzles pointed up and down range....