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| 1988 Remington 35 Whelen bedded in a Bell and Carlson stock with an AC Douglas Brake |
6 years ago I bought a 35 Whelen in Remington 700 Classic. The rifle was from Remington's 1988 offering. Apparently the Whelen's that year flew off the shelves ... it was the first large commercial product run of the caliber.
My Whelen looked somewhat worse for wear, but the price was right and given that I wasn't sure I would like the cartridge, the old Rem Classic did just fine. I promptly set about rejuvenating the old-timer.
First I gave the bore a good cleaning and made sure that the rest of the rifle was clean ... the previous owner had been kind to it, so not much cleaning was needed. Then, I went to work restoring the bluing ... it looked sad.
I ran a small test strip using Blue Magic metal polish and was delighted with the result. The polish came off completely rusty, but left the metal looking much healthier. My concern was that it would take off too much bluing, but the Remington bluing held fine. I gave the barrel and all visible parts a blue magic rub. After that i applied a few layers of carnauba car wax and the barrel looked amazingly good; it once again had that 1988 Remington shine.
My next project was to bed my Remington Classic stock. It was my first ever bedding job, so I proceeded with extreme caution; perhaps a bit too much caution because I was too sparing with the epoxy and ended up with several small hollows. The bedding did it's job though, and the rifle's performance improved markedly. Up until now it had had trouble holding zero for even a few months.
A scope upgrade to a 2.5 - 10 x 50 Nikon Prostaff 5 completed the package. Experimenting with a variety of ammunition (reloads and factory) and dropping 3 moose and a couple of elk over the next few years had me falling in love with the rifle and the cartridge. It became my go-to rifle.
