Greetings and Salutations!
SO I got approved yesterday at noon.
It was an interesting experience as GunGirl had given me the phone number to call and try and find out WTF the delay was. I called the very next day after the initial delay (as the process didn’t ‘clear’ and it was too late to call about it that evening.
The next day was also a bust. I got a hold of a guy who told me “More research was necessary.” To which I queried “Well why the fuck did my last 9-12 purchases over the past couple of years not need ‘MOR reeeserch'”? Oh course he had no answer. I even went as far as to get ALL 12 of my approval numbers from GunGirl.
When I called and gave them those, they were like “Unfortunately, the law has us ‘wipe’ any information pertaining to those transactions.”
How convienent.
So I had to be patient
And yesterday I was rewarded.
First:
All I can say is “Euuu!!!Euuu!!!Euuu!!!” with the amount of Cosmo on the donor rifle… There’s a reason that it came mummified in a plastic sleeve/bag.
Unwrapped from it’s protective cocoon, the Ishpore 2A1 in .308 was not so imbued with ‘crap’. The rifling is NICE and crisp and I was pleasantly surprised to see the rear sight slide on there, as well as the trigger pieces/parts. Seeing that it was supposed to be completely stripped, it looks like someone got lazy. Here’s a few more pics:
It’s missing the front sight blade, but no issue there… for reasons you’ll see. The rear sight is in pretty rough shape however:
That’s a whoooole lotta nasty and rust. I -should- be able to recover it. If not?
Gloves were/are mandatory with handling this thing…
Now this is a “D&P” rifle, which means it’s a Drill and Practice ‘toy’ essentially, hence why it’s going to be a donor. They drilled a hole through the chamber, and then stuck a metal rod through it, and weld that in place. I’ll show that after it gets cleaned up.
You can see that round metal circle at the front of the chamber. That’s the insertion point on the rod cutting across the chamber where they drilled through. The heavy paint markings are what shows it to be a drill rifle. As you can see, for the most part, the wood is in really good shape. This as opposed to the MK4 I did the last time around. It is however positively encrusted with the Cosmo.
Its rear sight is in really good shape as opposed to the primary.
Got Cosmo?
Yes.
Yes I do.
You can’t really see it, but Hooo boy.
The front sight is a solid block of it all packed up in there. It’s gonna be a stone bitch cleaning this thing up. The action is also pretty funky:
Oie-Gooey with LOTS of Cosmo Goodness for All!
Also, because it’s a drill rifle, the mag doesn’t have any internals, and as I’ll show you later, the shell is actually worthless, as a full lip that normally holds the rounds in the mag is sheared off, whether intentionally or not I have no idea. It does make it absolutely worthless to me, so that’ll be getting trashed.
To be honest, that’ll save me some time on the cleanup by not worrying about it. That and also, the .308 2A1 takes a completely different mag, with a sharper incline to it, as the rounds are much different. .303 being a rimmed cartridge and .308/7.62 not so much.
I did check out the wrist of the Primary:
RIFLE
7.62mm 2A1
R.F.I.
1966
The donor rifle is from 1944, but I haven’t dug through the grease yet to get a full read. I’ll follow up as I go with that. The First Step is to get the chems together that I’m going to need, and then tear this sucker down, and then see what I have to play with.
So here we go again
Same Old Shit Again
More Later
Big Country
Hey BCE – this is a bit out there but I read in some novels that ultra old school cosmo removal was done by soaking in gasoline. I have done the old scrub a dub on an old Mosin cosmo cake but never had the “courage” to soak stuff in gas. With my luck it would create a flammenwerfer….
Cool project!
Gasoline and diesel, as well as mineral spirits, are solvents for cosmoline.
And, as you said BCE, the magazine is NOT correct for a 7.62 rifle. I’d absolutely triple-check that it’s a 7.62 NATO conversion.
Finally, it looks like it was used to stir shid on the street. Bobs and vagene.
If you want a chemical free way to get rid of the heavy cosmo, line a locker or long wooden box with foil backed foam insulation and hang the rifle and a heat lamp inside and bake it off. Takes a few days, and mandatory being outside, but no chemicals.
Geez. Maybe you should fabricate a section of house gutter to make a soaking bin. A small 6 ft section and 2 end caps are relatively cheap, just clean well and JB weld the ends on and crimp 3 spots to hold while it sets.
Drop that whole rifle in kerosene and let it soak a week.
My Moisin arrived so caked in cosmoline (or whatever the russkies used back then) I used this method to get most of the gunk off. And please, DO NOT use Gretchen’s bathtub for the job, you won’t survive.
And no using the dishwasher UNLESS!!! (sshhhhh…..)
You have the time when Gretchen WON’T be around, and you can babysit beginning to end, put ‘er in, wash, pull ‘er out, no leaving alone longer then a bathroom break.
My Dad told me they would boil M2’s in water to get the cosmoline off. They welded two 55 gal barrels together lengthwise and lowered the 50 cal into the water with the engine hoist they used for B29s. He was up in Alaska at the tail end of WW2. After the war they went through all the gear that was staged up there for the invasion of Japan. They would scrape the cosmo off the top of the barrels, collect it and re-use it.
I’ve used kerosene to get cosmoline off. It’s pretty effective, not too stinky, not too flammable.
https://youtu.be/RKo5o_YdUak?si=QNqCpWvdnTA9iK71
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transcript:
Benjy Mileikowsky (street name ‘Bibi Netanyahu’) “My people, the jewish people, emerged from the depths of Hell!”
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Sxnagxgxe Of Sxtxn.
Back in the olden days we used to get a paper called Shotgun News. There were always ads for gun dealers that dealt with anything from English shotguns to places that sold SKS carbines by the pallet. My brother was going for a run to Versailles, KY to pick up some mosin-nagant carbines, so I had him get me 5 Ishapor 308 enfields. Kept the best one after getting the gunk off of them, the chamber must be out of round though. When it is clean I can get 2 shots out of it, after that you have to kick the bolt handle to get it to eject.
Have you checked the extractor? The 2A1 uses a different one (longer-ish) which I’ll be poasting about when I get to the converting the MK3 bolt head from .303 to .308.
Somebody has to keep the ATF busy.