Recent Arrivals - One day

It is one day later and a lot was accomplished yesterday.  I started off with a few pictures today and if they are awful... well I am no photographer.

First all the metal parts got removed cleaned.

The bolt and takedown tools got an ultrasonic cleaning in the small ultrasonic machine I picked up a year ago, and I used some specially made cleaning solution mixed 11:1 of water to solution.  I made sure to get the bolt thoroughly immersed so that water was all inside it and then turned it a few times during the process to get rid of any bubble build-up.  That was a fascinating process to watch as the cosmoline was coming off as white strands as surface cavitation was getting bubbles into it so as to lift it up from the metal surface.  I confirmed that after a five minute cleaning by feeling one of the strands and it was a greasy light mix showing its origins to be the cosmoline.  The solution was milky white and since the formula is safe for disposal it went away, being all biodegradable and stuff.

I applied WD-40 to parts that would take a few minutes for me to get to while I disassembled the bolt.  There were some milky white pieces to get off the interior, but they were no longer adhering to the metal, just sitting on it.  The bolt was in fine shape with no pitting or other marks on it, smooth to the touch and thus needing some Militec-1.  A drop or two spread around via a rag is all it takes and then another drop or two via pipe cleaners to get at the hard to reach parts, a dot of the Militec-1 grease (that I have in these lovely syringes able to get a tiny dot of grease out of the end) was put on the threads going into the bolt or any other high wear areas.  A bit of struggling to get the bolt reassembled, due to the spring more than anything else, and that was that.  Next was the drop of magic metal protector on each of the take-down pieces and cleaning pieces and I was ready to go after the buttplate, magazine and receiver.

Now with all of that stuff spread out before me I started using some of the all-natural, won't harm a natural finish on wood and will clean metal antique restorer sparingly on everything.  By sparingly I mean a clean rag folded over four times and you slowly wipe over the surface of the wood or metal, flipping to damp clean surface as the one you are using gets junk built up on it.

The left rag is a small projects rag that started out about half-dirty, the one on the right was a clean-up rag that started out pretty clean.  These have both gotten the quick one-minute hand washing with gentle dishwashing liquid then rinsing and drying.  Any first application of this stuff will pick up all sorts of surface grime and generally get dirty quickly.  That left rag was initial wipe down of practically everything from the inside of the stock (particularly the  magazine area where cosmoline will find a way to build up and get into the chamber if you don't get it very clean) then the exterior, then across all the metal on the exterior of the receiver, screws, magazine, butt plate... if it has cosmoline on it, it gets wiped.  And you don't use much of this stuff, either.  I used the blemish remover on the butt plate and wood there as the cosmoline was caked in and just awful.  That sucking sound getting the butt plate loose was cosmoline unwilling to release its hold.

By the time you get everything dampened its about 5 minutes and time to wipe over all the areas you just hit with a clean dry rag.  That is the right hand rag and the stuff that came off with it was not nice, particularly where there was some carbon build-up in the cleaning rod channel.  I actually did a re-application there as chunks of carbon came off to reveal the finish and wood underneath...

During this process the first rag, the one I wetted down a few times, was getting that lovely orange to yellow-orange color of cosmoline on it.  So was the dry rag.  The photos were taken before I used a dry rag on the stock today, and it was getting that light coating of cosmoline on it, too.

All of the metal got the Militec-1 wipe-down after I did the stock wipe-off.

Total time to get things where they were in the photos was about 2.5 hours, not counting camera time.

From that I got to see some areas of wear that were covered over yesterday.

One of the benefits of the antique restoring liquid is that on metal it starts to break the cosmoline down, beyond lifting it off the surface, meaning that my standard cleaner/de-greaser KG-3 can get rid of it.  Normally I can't do that to cosmoline all that well with that stuff, but after one wipe of restorer, one wipe to remove it and one spray and wipe of KG-3 I am down to metal finish.

Today was stock wipe-down #2, putting all the fabric goods into a batch of liquid de-greaser and then rinsing it, and doing a cleaning of the bore starting with the antique restoring fluid, KG-3 and then Militec-1.  Nice, shiny bore!

The next few days will be restorer wipe-down/wipe-on/wipe-off until there is zero cosmoline on any of the rags.  As the restorer adds some oils into the wood surface to help close up the pores, it will take some days to finally get the cosmoline out, but well worth it.