#2
Bulgarian milled T3. Wearing soviet laminated furniture.
Furniture was purchased painted black. I sanded/stripped the paint (too much work). Underneath was purple/pink looking stained wood. After 3-4 coats of Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil, unexpectedly finish transformed into beautiful light brown classic looking mid-20th century laminate. Another surprise was multiple coats of Birchwood created deep grain luster that very much looks like shellac, Even with obligatory non-uniformity in places as if it was re-arsenaled and touched up some time back.
Metal is finished with Birchwood Super-Blue, 3 coats with light steel wool carding in between and afterwards. Wanted to make worn hand-polished look, but it appears it's a long way to go to reach that. Still thinking of a faster method to get there. Original blue finish only remains on the top cover, rears sight block, gas tube and trigger guard. Gun is a mix-master from me scraping out my old parts bin. As rule of thumb with a mix master build - significantly more fitting and finishing work required. Almost every part fought me back. Well over double of what kit build would have taken. But with milled Bulgarian kits in short supply this is something you don't really have a chose with. This was started well before polish milled kits showed up, else I would not have taken this route. I would not recommend this as a simple build, even considering that milled builds are typically one of the easiest ones.
