No 4 Handguard Repurpose

I need a HG for a Krag rifle I re-barreled. Because of the cost and difficulty finding one, I decided to use a beat up no 4 example to make a facsimile that can be worked over into one. 

The width is, or nearly identical for the Krag stock and there is plenty of material to work with to bring to final shape.

I want to fit some spring steel I have for the hand-guard clips, but need to locate some tiny brass rivets to attach them. 

All I could find are the copper ones. Otherwise, I might just anneal some nails trim them down and fixture the pieces together. Hopefully when I do that, the work I already accomplished doesn't become destroyed. Anyway, never throw things away that you can make into something else if you have to is my point for all of this. 

Finally finished this one off less some drying time. Couple things learned here. 

It's probably a good idea to fashion a mandrel for peening the rivets. Something like a scrap barrel or a piece of pipe for better accuracy. Otherwise an errant strike could wreck things rather quickly.

 Use a good stock sealer prior to applying any oil to avoid so many applications.

 Locate better material for making the actual band springs. I used heavy gauge pallet strapping which works, but is not completely ideal. The primary reason is, you want to be able to spot detent where the rivets are squashed, so they don't protrude too much where they meet the barrel. They will need excess material removed to work correctly.

 And, its kind of fiddly when fitting out because of how thin it is. Once you get it, it will however work as long as it becomes drawn up tightly enough to the bottom of the hand guard to be loose and no wiggle once married up to the stock. Luckily, the in-letting for the band spring is very shallow which allows a certain purchase to be available for avoiding unnecessary slop.

To make an actual replica HG, is hard to do for this rifle system because of how thin and delicate they actually are. This one, is a tad heavy because I didn't have the fortitude to make it as thin as it should actually be for the first attempt.