Way back before Gibson`s was bought out by Wally World and the gun laws were much more relaxed me and a couple of my friends bought a lot of military riflles very, very inexpensive.
These rifles would be in metal trash cans up and down the aisles of the sporting goods section. We normaly paid anywhere from to to 20 bucks each for them. If you knew what you were looking for you could find new, never fired rifles in these batchs.
We`d take em to the shop and strip the Cosmoline off of them, cut down the barrels, relieve , float and glass bed the stocks, bend and jewel the bolts, drill and mount scopes, etc.
A lot of them we sporterized with inlays and white lined and replaced the buttplates.
It was amazing at some of the beautifull grain patterns you would find when you stripped the military finish off of the stocks.
Wished I`d kept a few of these now in full military, especialy the Garands.