Hey guys, been restoring my old Sun Project M40A1 and was posting its progress on another forum I frequent, figured I'd post it here as well and see what the AZ folks thought.
I've had this SP M40A1 (pre- XB) for about a decade. I bought it from stoneeaglewolf, who was and continues to be one of the best airsoft snipers I've ever witnessed. He'd regularly get many kills with this rifle per game, shooting 400 fps w/ .20g bbs, against people with full-auto aeg's shooting the same velocity, and rarely take a hit himself.
Anyway.. the rifle got painted a green color during his ownership.. and at a later date, I decided to paint it a semi-quazi-sortof desert multicam pattern. Now, I want to restore her to her former glory and strip off all the years of layered and cracked paint and reveal her beautiful wood underneath. I've basically just used an entire can of paint stripper and the stuff made a dent, but the base coat of the paint he had used is stubborn and is barely coming off..
Here she is, as she sat right before I started the process (sorry, didn't think I was going to post this project so I didn't take any better "before photos")
This is the ultimate goal:
Now for some weeks of work:
After stripping it three separate times with liquid paint stripper.
Here is some progress, after about about 2 hours of sanding with 120 grit, then 220grit sand paper. Still need to get the pistol grip area and front end a bit more, and then move on to finer grits.
Now, having sanded down the stock more, and coated it with a coat of cabernet. The wood has definitely seen some action, being a rifle that is over 10 years old which saw a fair bit of crawling around in the dirt and mud, but its cleaning up.
It's not the original walnut color that it was way back when, but I prefer more red tones like cabernet and cherry. The color is a bit lighter than in the picture.. was having trouble finding good lighting.
Will update next with the stock when its finished, as well as when I start working on powdercoating the metal parts.
