The cleaned up action. The cosmoline was so bad I literally had to boil the rifle in my turkey fryer pot.
Bayonet Extended
Bayonet mount and locking mechanism
According to my receiver marking and 7.62X54R.NET my barrel and receiver were manufactured in 1953.
However my bolt doesn't match but it also has what appears to be a 1953 Serial number.
The bolt was almost the death of me, considering how much cosmoline was inside of it. Boiling it got it all out and then my only problem was properly lubricating it.
Once again according to 7.62X54R.NET this is a round low wall receiver.
If I hadn't boiled the rifle, I doubt I would have gotten all of the cosmoline out of the magazine and it's spring.
In THIS post I showed you how I used a large piece of PVC pipe and a space heater to get a bunch of cosmoline out of the stock. I then resorted to using a heat gun to get some more "hard to get" cosmoline out of the stock and the handguard.
Even after 30 hours in the PVC with the heater going, there was still quite a bit of cosmoline in the inletted portions of the stock and the top handguard.
After 90 minutes of using the heat gun and wiping it out and scraping all the nooks and crannies, the kids and I finally got it to the point where I think it should be ok.
I'm probably going to refinish the stock to make it a nicer looking rifle and to better protect it. If this shoots decent this will be my newest deer gun. With the feral hogs we have down here in Texas, I don't want to be limited to 1 shot from my .50 cal muzzleloader if a hog decides to investigate my kill, so having 5 easy rounds available are a comforting thought.
Hopefully it will quit dropping water long enough for my family's other piece of property to dry out enough I can go fire off a few rounds to see if it functions right.
5 comments:
Nicely done Sir! :-)
Thankee sir. Trying to get everything done. If I just had enough hours in the day and didn't have to do stuff like sleep or eat :)
Why would you buy an old beatup bolt action rifle that needs so much work when you have a good semi-auto AR?
I have several rifles. I have several semi-autos’, a pump action rifle and a single shot rifle in addition to a black powder rifle. I enjoy shooting all type of rifles. And just because a rifle is almost 60 years old and is a bolt action doesn't mean I can't enjoy shooting it.
I have owned several bolt action rifles. My first was an old Stevens single shot .22 that my uncle "Gave" me. It was mine when I was on the farm; the rest of the time it was his truck gun for dealing with pests that raided his garden. The very first firearm I ever fired was actually the same 1903A3 my uncle carried as a Marine in World War Two. That big .30-06 that I couldn't even hold upto my shoulder properly and knocked me over exhilarated me. After I fired that first shot and I was smiling so big my uncle decided to let me shoot the Stevens, as the ammo was much cheaper. Imagine an 8-year-old city boy on a farm in Arkansas who went everywhere with a Steven .22, a fishing rod and a small sheath knife his uncle made for him out of an old corn knife. Once a week my uncle would take me the 22 miles to town where he would give me .50 cents so I could go over to Western Auto and buy 2 100 round boxes of Remington .22 shorts. I took my rifle and fishing rod with me there too. Walking around the Town Square I wasn't the only young man walking with a rifle slung over my shoulder by a piece of clothesline. The sheriff gave all of boys the same lecture. We better keep our rifle unloaded and slung the entire time we were in town, and if before we entered a business we should ask if it was ok to bring in our rifles. This was the early 1970’s and except for the hair salon and the Ag office every business on the square would let us bring our rifles in. At the library we had to turn them over to the librarian and he would put them behind the desk and we could get them back after we checked out our books.
Now here I am almost 40 years older, and I still love an old wood stocked bolt action rifle. It might not be as pretty as a Model 700 or any of the other. It might not even be as pretty as my old SMLE, but over time it might be. Every ding and dent in it’s wood stock and it every bit of damage to it’s bluing tells a story. I may not every learn the stories behind those imperfections, but each one speaks to me. If I go on to refinish this rifle and really make it mine, any further dents dings or scrapes will be yet another part of its history.
And it will become part of my history. A history I will share with my kids. Hopefully they will come to love this old rifle as they help me clean it, restore or refinish it and shoot it.
Yes I have a nice AR. But to me an AR while it’s a nice shooting rifle, is just a collection of parts for the most part. It doesn’t have the smooth curves, the way the receiver blends into the wrist of the stock. They way the wrist swells out into the buttstock to the buttplate. This may sound weird but to me, a finely finished rifle is more than something to look good on the wall. When you shoot it, you caress the wood and the metal; you feel the rifle’s soul and if you let it, you and the rifle become connected. The smoothness as you pull it up to your shoulder, how it feels just so as you put your cheek to the stock and the sights line up perfectly. As you slowly squeeze the trigger you feel the smoothness of the trigger, the break as the rifle fires, the push of the rifle recoiling into your shoulder, the feel of the bolt as you open it and eject the spent shell and as you push the bolt closed loading a new one.
You feel all that. You are more connected to the rifle. With the AR or any other modern semi-auto that feeling is missing. I’ve always felt slightly unattached to the rifle. And while I hit my targets it’s not really satisfying to me. I don’t have to reset after every shot. Get the rifle just so in the pocket of my shoulder. Get my cheek to just that spot on the stock to line up with the sights.
It may seem strange, but I enjoy that. It shows me truly if I am a good shot. If I can operate the bolt and get back into the proper groove for each shot. It’s a challenge. And for most semi’s, that challenge isn’t there.
So that, I guess is why I bought an old bolt action rifle that may or may not be as accurate as it used to be. But for me it’s a challenge.
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