I got started on the STUPID project and the first thing, of course, was to remove the cosmoline and get her all cleaned up. Now, there are so many different methods out there and I don’t pretend to know the best. For the metal parts, I use a heat gun to soften most of the congealed surface crap and then wipe it off with a shop towel. I follow that up with a hot water bath and Dawn dish soap. As long as it’s a grease cutter type soap, it should work well for you. I then scrub the snot out of every part, rinse and dry in direct sunlight and q-tips for the nooks and crannies. For the stock, I use the car trunk hot day method to get most of it. I didn’t spend too long removing the cosmoline from the stock due to the fact that it needed a lot of surface refinishing, contouring and will be eventually re-painted. I was super pleased with this cosmoline removal job, it’s better than my other M-44. I wanted to just clean her up and get her in a shooting condition yesterday, but I got a little ahead of myself and started to remove parts for the final product. I took off the bayonet, upper hand guard, rings, sawed off the fore-end, and re-contoured it. I sanded most of the stock to bare wood, leaving the butt untouched because I’m going to chop it off anyway for the folding stock. Here’s some pictures of my process.
I’m very happy with how pristine the bore is, shot very little and no signs of pitting. The stock is coming together nicely and I’ve managed to shave 2 lbs off of her already. I’ve decided against mounting an optic and I will be welding/brazing the existing front sight to the barrel once I cut it down and put the muzzle brake on it. That will be matched up with a Mojo rear sight someday, but that will be one of the last things I do. That’s all for now, I’m off to the range for function testing.
Dive! Dive!
bubbleheadgunnut 