Marlin 1895 Trapper

On Friday I picked up the Marlin 1895 Trapper that I had ordered. The rifle is a brushed stainless steel with a 16.5" barrel, oversize lever loop, Skinner peep sights, decelerator recoil pad, full length magazine tube and a splatter coated black hardwood stock. Everything looked fine at my LGS, but when I got it home I went through my usual routine of cleaning the barrel on a new gun. With a Marlin like this I like to remove the lever(one bolt), take out the bolt and ejector and run the cleaning rod through the chamber end. When I removed the lever I noticed the entire end of the lever that sits inside of the receiver was rusted. I decided I'd rather deal with it myself than go through the hassle of sending it off to a Remington repair facility, so I used some 400 grit wet and dry sandpaper with some oil and removed the rust. After finding the rust on the lever I thought it best to totally strip the receiver and check all the internals for rust. Everything else internally looked okay with the exception of a small amount of rust on the carrier, which raises the cartridges from the magazine into the chamber. I was able to clean that up with a small amount of sanding. BTW, both of the parts mentioned were also stainless steel. I cleaned the barrel by running a couple of patches coated in Kroil followed by a few patches with JB Bore paste and then more with Kroil. If you look at the picture of the gun you can see that for some reason(aesthetics?) they decided to leave some parts blued. While I had it apart I thought I'd order some of those parts in stainless steel and change them out. So I ordered the forend tip, both screws that hold it on, a spring loading gate and a rear swivel stud, all in stainless steel from Midwest Gun Works and should have those on Monday. With time to kill I polished up most of the internal parts using 320, 400 and lastly 600 grit wet and dry sandpaper. I smoothed out the sharp edges of the lever and also the inside of the opening for the loading gate so it's less likely to scratch the cartridges up when they're loaded into the gun. I also noticed that like most stocks they didn't bother to finish the stock parts that aren't exposed so I gave them a coat of black paint to match the stock's finish. I may at some point order a new grey laminate stock to replace the painted hardwood. I checked Brownells, Midway and Midwest Gun Works and no one had that buttstock. I really like the Skinner peep sight, but I don't know how my eyes will do with it until I can shoot it. I don't want to put a scope on it, but I will if I feel I need it. Now I can't wait to get it back together and get to the range.