Watch: How to Jewel a Rifle Bolt

Back when I overhauled an old rusty Spanish Mauser rifle, I jeweled the bolt. This helped dress it up a little, but the main purpose was to hide the old rust pits on the bolt, and it worked.

In this video, Larry Potterfield shows how he does jeweling, and it’s no surprise that his method is a bit more elaborate than mine. For example, I didn’t pre-polish my bolt before I began jeweling it, and instead of an indexer, I just rotated the bolt manually about as much as I thought I ought to.

Each “jewel” is nothing more than a circular polished spot; making many of these which overlap is what creates the jeweled appearance in the finished product.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.