Hi all.
I just wanted to pick everyone's brain. I recently came into possession of a No4 mk1* for an absolute song, even came with a PH aperture sight. The only catch, minor though it may be, is that the wood is far from great. Im not a fan of the varnished finish, ill have to take care of that and refinish it with some oil.
There are 2 issues id like some advice on really.
The 1st (and probably hardest to fix), is the original owner had a medal or something inlayed in the the butt and removed it before selling it so I got a big nasty hole in the stock. I was considering having a mate turn down a brass disk to fill the hole. I think a big shiny brass disk against the dark wood would look nice, but honestly i think the inlay job is beyond me. Does anyone have any experience with this? other wise i might consider replacing the butt all together (if anyone has a No4 butt stock there not doing anything with and wants to make some beer money let me know)
The 2nd issue I have is the previous owner for what ever reason scratched (poorly i might add) some odd pattern into the lower fore stock and butt stock. It looks like its just made it past the varnish coat into the wood, so even if I strip the varnish ill still have the pattern in the wood. Does anyone have any tricks or tips as to how to tidy this up? its rather not go at it with sand paper and make a small problem into a big one.
thanks everyone for reading my mini essay