The Restocked Remington Summit Follow-Up

This is more of a "where are they now?" post along with some rambling backstory.

Looks like a Benjamin Trail NP2.  Except there's no gas ram.  I shoehorned a Remington Summit (Sold by Crosman) spring piston action into that stock five or six years ago. 

Here's what my Summit looked like in the original Remington stock.   Glossy!  The Summit was an entry to mid-priced .177 caliber break barrel made in China.  It was probably rated at 1000+ fps or something similarly ridiculous.  And it was glossy. Really, really glossy. But, it was also super easy to cock and shoot all afternoon and that made a fine first impression.

Purchased years ago from Chuck at Precision Airgun -- both sadly now gone.  This was a factory refurb from Crosman who owned the Remington air rifle branding rights at the time.  I liked the clean lines and long forend covering the pivot joint.  Didn't like the high gloss, but figured I could always strip it and do a matte finish later.  Besides, it was cheap.  Maybe $100 including a plain steel muzzle weight, scope and mount.

Initially, I remember the rifle did have some lock-up issues.   It was inconsistent --a bit vague when the barrel clicked home   An overhaul of the power plant, replacement of the plastic pivot shims and a stronger detent spring solved all of the mechanical problems and then some.  The Summit's accuracy turned out to be better than its price or pedigree would've indicated.

There was never a plan or specific role for the Summit.  The rifle got hand-me-down parts from other projects.  I'd throw on a different scope or muzzle brake, shoot it for a week, admire its accuracy, then set it aside.  Several years later, I noticed mister glossy was cracking and I sourced what I had hoped would be a non-glossy, drop-in replacement stock from Crosman.  It wasn't quite that simple--I linked to that a few paragraphs back-- but getting it back in action was worth the effort.  

After several years now in the new stock, the rifle has changed very little from the  original set up.  

The plain Jane factory steel muzzle weight was traded for an early, now vintage, ported brake from Vortek.  In the 1990's, we thought these Vortek muzzle brakes were the height of aftermarket airgun coolness on our R1s and R10s.

The Bushnell 4-12x with an adjustable objective lens is probably mid 2000s vintage.  Probably a Banner model.  Definitely an eBay acquisition.   This is not the scope originally packaged with the Summit. That was a Crosman labeled 3-9x with AO and is currently serving on Volvo's QB78.

A Charlie Da Tuna trigger.  GRT-III 

UTG 11mm dovetail to picatinny rail adapter.   The Summit originally had a single scope stop pin hole in the spring tube.  I'd drilled another at some point, but was still rather limited in setting up the eye relief.   This adapter centers on the dovetails and doesn't introduce any lateral offset.     

One thing I've come to appreciate is modifying/reworking some of my air rifles.   It largely satisfies my desire for a new gun without buying yet another.  And I end up with something a bit more interesting (at least to me) than an off-the-shelf rifle.  To that end, I'm leaning toward stripping the stock and giving it a nicer finish.  And I don't mean glossy.

We'll see what shakes out.  

 

Remington Summit in a Benjamin NP2 Stock ???

Told my co-blogger, Nick, that I wasn't going to post this, as the entire project was just an exercise in frustration.  

Anyway, we do like content, so here's the gist:  The stock was cracking on my old Remington Summit air rifle.  Some online research suggested that a Benjamin NP2 stock could be a drop-in fit. After ordering a replacement NP2 wood stock, I discovered that some things on the internet aren't exactly true. The forend holes don't quite line up and the spring tube end cap is about 3/4" too short,  the inletting doesn't quite match in critical areas... And that was just the obvious stuff.  Truthfully, it was just looking like more work than I wanted to put into a Remington Summit.  At the very least, this was a project that I'd really need to be in the mood to tackle.

I leaned the NP2 stock against the wall and tried to forget about it.  About six months--OK, maybe a year and six months later--I finally got the urge to see if it would work.

Took zero pics of this in process.  Was sure it was going to end up in the trash with the original Summit stock.    The forend screw holes were off location by just a bit more than 1/16"  Had to go forward and slightly up.  This also entailed shifting the counterbores a very small amount.

A new end cap was turned from a piece of 1-1/4 black acetal.

Here's a better shot of that endcap.  Cut the radius freehand then fit it to the spring tube.  

There was work with a router to get the trigger unit to fit.  A long shelf also had to be cut in the right side inletting--and wood added--for the cocking lever roller. 






















The Remington's single scope stop hole wasn't in a useful place, so I drilled another.  The scope rings are from VISM.   Of course, they didn't have a recoil stop pin, so that got machined into the rear ring.

Even the rear action screw through the trigger guard needed modification.

After all that work, and the rife finally functional, I found that the cheek piece was too low. With a good cheek weld on the stock, the bottom of the recoil pad hit me mid shoulder. 

The quickest and easiest fix was to make the recoil pad vertically adjustable as I did for the QB 77 rifle.   Since I still had the raw material, I cut another butt plate from my nemesis plastic--UHMW PE.  And like the QB project, after all the shaping, I again struggled with the surface finish; lots of fine scratches that won't polish out.  After wet sanding and various attempts at polishing,  I tried bead blasting it.  Figured maybe some texture would blend the finish.  Used a fine glass media then wiped it down with a silicone rag. 

The bead blasting really did the trick.

In retrospect, the project was frustrating because it wasn't even remotely close to what I was expecting.  At least the Remington is finally in a new stock.  A stock that absolutely, positively is not a drop in fit.  No thanks to the damn internet.


Made some small tweaks to my IZH 61 a while back.  Try to get something posted later this week.  Thanks for checking in.