Greetings and Salutations!
Busy bluing the internals.
Busy-Busy tonight.
Only thing of note was I ‘punched’ the barrel today. OMFG was that nasty!!! The ‘bleech’ that came out was a solidified pile of melted Cosmo and rust. Made a BIG stain on the garage floor (just to add one on there… why not?) even after I -tried- to mop it up.
The gas worked like a charm. I went through 3 bore brushes though. Not even going to try and recover them, not when I can get 20 for $6.
Then!!!
The Critical Party Challenge
Ran a check on the bore… the rifling was even better than I expected. Like NRA G-VG, leaning more towards VG. The Bore is pristine.
So of course I scoped it. Still got a lot of built up crud, but that’ll be gone when I’m done. I figure two-three rounds will blow out the ‘crap’ post-haste.
Oh yeah… I gauged it.
It’s perfect.
It even feels right. The bolt has that nice ‘crisp and brisk’ closing and opening with the gauge in the chamber, and cycles nicley. Sapper was highly impressed himself when he got home and tried out the action… He was like “Dayyyyyum! That’s exactly how a good action on a bolt-gun should feel!”
I concur.
So, for tonight’s job is to start the many pieces-parts and fiddly-bits of the internals. I figure probably by mid-next week I’ll be done. It depends on the receiver and the bloo-job that I get done on it. I’m going with the Birchwood-Casey “Super Blue 2x” which is supposedly better than the regular Perma-blue I’ve been playing with.
And if it looks shitty, I’ll get the chemicals to do a hot blooing, as I got the recibe from a forum about SMLEs I’ve been reading for refurbishment tips.
And so for y’all I took a pic of a ‘mock up’ of it…. sort of what it’ll theoretically look like when completed:
Mind you, nothing screwed together, just things clamped that could be, bolt racked, and parts set to give you an idea of what I done dood. That’s MUCH improved from it’s original condition when I got it:
Got a ways to go…
Ain’t no rush.
Nothing else going on. More to follow as we go, in particular the news as we’ve been hearing. ALLLLLL my focus is on this project right now, as you can imagine.
More Later
Big Country
From 1962 to 1977, the passcode intended to keep any trigger-happy members of the Air Force from launching a nuclear strike was perhaps too easy to guess: 00000000
So basically if you had 2 crazy guys in the missile silo, they all KNEW the passcode, could turn their keys and start WWIII.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14178895/america-nuclear-launch-code-cuban-missile-crisis-cold-war.html
Austrian painter desktops are fun when someone says that is a nice painting and I say the artist is unknown.
It would blow away some banana taped to a wall any day.
Itta so bad in Gotham, Luigi a kill a the CEO!
Did you notice one photo had no unibrow while Luigi has the Uni?
Word of yid tunnels in that area as well.
Bolt action, you have chosen wisely.
I’ve got a couple of the Forbidden Philosopher’s paintings in my home.
“That’s a beautiful painting!”
“Yeah the guy who did it was refused entry to art school, but he kept painting anyway…”
The lee Enfield is the pinnacle of bolt action battle rifles and you can’t convince me otherwise.
It’s a very slick rifle. That action really can’t be beat for speed.
Very partial to the SMLE, but hanker for an M1917 Enfield. Maj Gen Julian Hatcher’s recommendation. I wonder if he ever investigated the Swiss rifles…
What gets me about those older rifles is how heavy they were, and back then guys were a lot smaller, meaning they were humping a huge load proportional to their body weight.
“Best battle rifle”, not the finest finish, strongest action, most accurate. 10 rounds, the FASTEST action and good enough everywhere else. Best battle rifle of WWll. Set the record for “Mad minute” back around 1914, if I recall correctly. Still holds it for bolt action.
I really like the gun metal grey of the receiver. Looking good.
Heavy rifles? Heck yeah, but at least the extra mass kept it’s recoil from breaking the shoulder of the guys that got to carry them.
About the gauging… If I recall you said it was a field gauge. What I remember is that on such rifles,,if it closed on a no go but not on a field then it was still safe to use in battle, but if it closed on a field then it needed to be re-head spaced. I may be misremembering but it was a long time back that I was told this as the gunsmith I used to check an old Jap pick-up a set of 3 to use on it. Go, No go and field. closed on field,so sold it for parts for more than I paid for it. You may know more, just sayin.