T-53 Update

Remember my Chinese T-53 in THIS post?  I got some finishing parts in todays mail.

 The spam can of ammo was purchased with the rifle

 The stripper clips were not and they plus the sling, cleaning rod, cleaning kit and the new recoil pad came in to day.

 With this recoil pad in place the rifle actually shoulders right for me.  Before it was too short and I couldn't get a proper cheek weld with the comb of the rifle.  If I had tried to fire it before I probably would have hurt myself.

 The lips in the receiver for the stripper clips needs to be cleaned up a little with my needle files.  The clips fit in very tight, not at all like my old SMLE clips did.  And in the picture you see a "CLIP"  in the top of the rifle, the "MAGAZINE" is at the bottom.  Pay attention it matters.  A "Clip" holds the rounds so they can be fed into a "Magazine"  Either through the weapon itself such as many older military rifles, bolt actions, and some semi-auto rifle and handguns employ, or through an adapter which can be attached to the magazine feedlips.

Saturday the boys and I will be taking this one over to the other property to pur some rounds through it to check it's function.

The test of it's accuracy will have to wait until I can get better access to a proper range.

Fire Lapping a Gun Barrel

Since I got my Chinese T-53 from J&G Sales, the bore is very dark.  At my Ex Father in Law's gunstore we lapped barrels of the custom black powder rifles built there is the shop.  We would use a Minie ball of the appropriate caliber, instead of grease we would use lapping compound in the grease grooves, and run 4 Minie Balls of each grit.  We wouldn't fire them though.  We would use the power feed on the lathe to force the Minie balls through the bore.  This was before we cut threads for the breech plug.  It also allowed us to exactly control the feed and the amount of force used to lap the bore.

Now I'm considering lapping the bore of my T-53, but I don't have a latch and I'm also a little impatient.  So I'm going to look for someone who reloads 7.62X54R to load me up  some cartridges based on the following article.


Fire Lapping a Barrel by Roy Seifert

The part down at the bottom, where you just run a bore mop soaked in the lapping compound and a lower power round.  I don't want to ruin the throat of this rifle which I hope to use for Deer hunting next year.

So if you know of anyone who reloads 7.62X54R please ask them to e-mail me.  I'd like to get 20 rounds of lower velocity FMJ's loaded up.

Chinese T-53

I got most of the cosmoline out of the stock of the Chinese T-53, a copy of the M44 Mosin Nagant and put it back together.

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.

An easy way to remove cosmoline from a wood stock

I picked up a Chinese Type 53 from J&G Sales and it was just fouled through and through with cosmoline.  The action and receiver I finally boiled out with hot water.

However I can't do that with the wood stock.

At first i used a flat head screwdriver to scrape out what I could in the inletted portion, but this stuff is in the grain of the wood.  So I laid out some newspaper, taped it together so I would be able to roll the stock up in it.  Then I added cat litter, making sure to get it into the inletted parts.  The I rolled it up and taped it all closed.

The stock then went out into my suburban which sits out in the hot sun, day after day.

I figured it would be a few days and the stock would have sweat out most of the cosmoline.

If it had stayed sunny, it might have done just that.  Mother Nature didn't oblige and started some scattered showers and lots of cloud cover.  Sort of ruining that plan.

However, I live in the sticks, and I have PVC of various sizes and rating lying around for and from various projects.

So I needed a way to heat the stock up enough to melt out the cosmoline so the cat litter could absorb it.

Simple.

Some 6" Schedule 35 PVC left over from a septic tank repair and an electric space heater.

Put the wrapped and kitty littered stock parts inside the PVC pipe and point the space heater on the low setting down the pipe.

I pulled the stock out a few minutes to go and on the outside of the stock which was tacky and gooey with cosmoline, it is now mostly dry with a light coating of clay dust from the litter.  I scraped out a little bit more from the inside then re wrapped the stock in more paper and put it back in the tube with the heater blowing through it again.  I'm thinking, by tomorrow, I should have enough cosmoline melted out of the stock, that I can go ahead and put the rifle back together and take it shooting.

If Mother Nature cooperates. 

Which she hasn't done today.  Another .08 inches of rain according to my neighbors rain gauge.  And I really don't want to use 4 Wheel drive to get over to the other property to shoot.

I need a new turkey fryer pot now

aka I hate Cosmoline.  I picked up my Chines Type 53 aka M-44 Mosin Nagant from my Sooper Sekrit Gunstore today, that I ordered from J&G Sales.  Since this is an old surplus rifle it is "packed" with cosmoline.  I got it home and ran through an entire can of brake cleaner and over 20 patches run through the bore with my jag on it, kept pushing out cosmoline.  Finally I said the heck with it and got out my turkey fryer pot, filled it with water and fired up the stove.  After the water came up to a full boil, I put the magazine/trigger guard housing in the water with the bolt and stirred it around.  After just 8 minutes the top of the water was layered in floating cosmoline.

After I got the magazine housing and bolt out and dried off I put the receiver into the pot and propped it up.  In just a few minutes even more cosmoline came out.  I let it sit for a few minutes then grabbed a coffee cup and flipped the rifle over, over the top of the pot and started pouring boiling hot water down the bore.

After running about 9 cups of boiling water down the bore , the receiver was just too hot to hold anymore even with an oven glove.  So I laid it down on the counter then ran 2 patches through with my jag.  The first patch was just covered in cosmoline, the second was actually pretty clean.

Right now the action is sitting after being sprayed down with Breakfree CLP.  Tomorrow I will go back over it on a detail clean with my dental tools and tooth picks.

The stock is also just filled with cosmoline and it is getting it's own treatment.  It is now filled with kitty litter, wrapped in newspaper and is on the dahsboard of my suburban.  With our forecast for tomorrow saying we can expect 90 degree temps, it should get rather hot in the burn tomorrow to melt out a lot of that cosmoline which the kitty litter should absorb.

I'm hoping I'll have this rifle back together and I'll be able to shoot it this weekend.  I hope.

But we will see.

As long as it doesn't rain before this weekend, the other property should be dry enough for the kids and I to go over and get in some shooting.  I got them a hundred rounds of .22LR and I still haven't shot the Franken-15 yet and I have 200 round for it's initial test.

But now I need a new pot for my turkey fryer.

ETA: 2 pics of my cleaning earlier while the sun was still out.

The barreled action draining after half a can of brake cleaner

The magazine housing/trigger guard after the other half a can of brake cleaner.