Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Getting a Ruger 338 win mag RS ready for Alaska

so I buy a wood Ruger 338 win mag RS blued gun. Want to convert to an all weather gun. what would YOU do?

Hint


Buy a Montana 223 and throw it in the creek....grin

Dyna Bore Coat in the bore. Dyna Gun Shield all exposed metal parts (everything but the bore).

McMillan stock.

Should be it. Reapply the Dyna Gun Shield as required (I think they say once a year or something to that effect).

Or coat the outside in Cerakote or similar.

Sell it !
Then replace with stainless steel.

Have you bought it or are you going to buy?

already bought I liked it since it already had the sights on

I'd put a Cerrakote on it and whatever stock you like. Had nothing but great luck with Cerrakote on the outsides of the metal and MicroSlick on the bolt and moving surfaces.

Agree with Beretzs, Cerakote all metal and buy a synthetic stock. Glass bed and go kill stuff.

Nothing like sinking $800 into a $400 gun just so you can hunt with it.

Sell it and buy a stainless/synthetic.

BINGO !!!

M70 Classic or Kimber Montana.

I'll third this idea.

I'll even pontificate that a stock SS Ruger Hawkeye will work well. I have 3 of them, all with original plastic stock. Haven't done much to them other than tweak the trigger and make sure it isn't binding anywhere when screws are tightened. I'll likely keep them as is. My Hawkeye UL in 30-06 has become one of my favorite rifles. It has shot lots of 1" groups with hunting bullets. You'd be all in for ~ $650. Replace the stock if/when you feel like it.

Leave it like it is, and go kill chit with it. Just give everything a good thin film of CLP Breakfree and then wipe it down every day real good a lightly oiled cloth and run a patch or lightly oiled bore snake down the tube daily. When you get back home, detail strip (as in remove the barreled action from the stock) the weapon in extreme detail going through it with a fine tooth comb and cleaning it. It'll do fine since it's just visiting AK for a few days. Don't make it overcomplicated, unless you want to drop another $500 into the gun. It's not like your moving to Alaska and throwing you're gun in the bottom of a boat for 4 months. Wood and blued metal have been working just fine for centuries before plastic and stainless steel came along.

IMHO�

Foxx

^^^^^^ This

There's more than a good chance that procedure will adversely affect the POA/POI relationship.

I would take it out of the stock, put a coat of wax on it, oil up the moving parts and go hunting. If the finish gets a little blemished, so be it. Like said above, wood and chromolly have worked for hundreds of years.

Cotton clothes and smooth soled boots "worked" for hunting for some time too.

Yeah but you are even further off subject now than when the thread started. The guy didn't ask what rifle he should buy or clothes he should wear, he ask what he needed to do to a the rifle he already owned. Very few have offered any useful suggestions.

He can have a very successfully hunt with his blued Ruger rifle and not be slowed down one bit if that's what he chooses to do. He doesn't need to sell it and buy another rifle or throw in in a creek like suggested above. It's one hunt. He doesn't need a stainless rifle with a new age plastic stock to do that. Simply protect the finish of the rifle and go hunting. It's not that hard, people have been doing just that for a long time.

I prefer laminated wood to plastic. So if you're worrying about stock warp I would pick up a ruger laminated stock, get'er dialed in, and hunt it. Protect the metal with something you can wipe it down with as with all guns. I concede there is some advantage to SS and plastic in bad weather but maybe not as much as marketing would have us believe.

Cera coat does not work the way I hunt. I get scratches and such since I go through and in brush a lot as needed.

I do the bore coat for the outer of the gun( and in the barrel) and just found out there really is no reason you can't use the bore coat for barrels for both, the non barrel stuff just dooesn't have anything in it for heat. That way I don't buy 2 differing products.

Coat it in and out, and watch it and oil as needed, check the barrel as needed but its pretty much sound. Recoat the outside if you get scratches. Easier than trying to put cera coat on for patches.

Bed that p hucker, first and foremost. I've seen more Rugers split stocks that weren't bedded.

Of course a McMillan would solve that problem.