DIY – Camo Paint Your Own Rifle

I enjoy looking for good used rifles and pistols at pawn shops, and I have found a few really good deals there in the past.  The rifle pictured above is one of them.  This is a Remington Model 78 Sportsman and mechanically it was in great shape and had a very crisp trigger.  The only problem was that the stock was pretty beat up and had a hairline crack running through the forearm.  So after paying the cashier $120.00 for the rifle and doing all of the necessary paperwork I walked out the door with an old but good Remington Model 78 Sportsman and a fun new project.

Finding the right rifle accessories

Once I got the Model 78 Sportsman home, I knew that the stock would need to be replaced so I looked around for a while and didn’t find anything in the price range I wanted to pay, I was hoping to find one for under $40.00, but most I found were $75.00 or more.  My goal with this Model 78 project was to put together a rifle that was capable of shooting “close” to MOA at 500 yards for under $500.00.  Then not long ago a good friend of mine remembered that he had an old composite stock that would fit but needed a paint job, so he gave it to me for nothing. That certainly helped me stay under budget!  What a great guy, huh?

I then picked up a few accessories over the next couple of  months.  I ended up with a 12″ Harris Bi-pod ($80), a 42 Inch IceCord 550 Rifle Sling (about $45.00), a Hogue Recoil Pad ($20.00), and a 6 x 24 Bushnell MilDot Scope and rings (about $220.00) and about ($15.00) in spray paint.  So I had all of the parts together, barely under the $500.00 mark.  Now the Remington Model 78 Sportsman needed a cool tactical paint job, because the chipped up 1980′s metallic brown paint just wasn’t “TactiCool” enough.  So I opted to do a three layer camo paint job.  Take a look at the video below to see how I went about preparing and painting the stock on my old Model 78.

Click here to watch the video on YouTube if you don’t have Flash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgGH0Pb9Iec

I have yet to take it to the range to see if I can shoot close to MOA with the rifle at 500 yards, but I am pretty confident that the rifle can do it…as long as I can hold up my end of the deal!

Have you done any DIY paint jobs on your rifles? If so let us know how they turned out in the comments below!