Working on My Rifles In My Happy Place

Greetings and Salutations!
So I did a bunch of work until literally 0300 last night on the Donor Rifle (DR for brevity from here on out).

I had to wait until I got some equipment to get started when in reality it actually arrived waaay earlier this week. I just was not in the mood to face MAD Cosmo man…

Last night though I put on the Big Boi Boxers and started in on the disassembly and bathing the pieces-parts in my tank o’Anti-Cosmo. I of course started up on the bolt and magazine respectively:

I had to scrape in just to get the bolt to open, as well as the magazine to release.

The Funk Is Real here folks…

I got the two primary pieces out that I wanted, namely the mag and bolt, and on inspecting them, BOTH surprising the Hell out of me seem to be in great shape. The mag has NO obvious defects (outside of being marked “DP” and painted as such) and the bolt appeared to be in one decent piece, namely the pieces-parts on it look like they’re all there and possibly functional:

Like I said, a lot of Cosmo-Funk going on there. There isn’t much bluing left on the bolt either, and the mag from what I can tell is also painted with the protective “BritBlack” paint.

Either way, I had one other part I wanted to get off, and that’s the nosecap. With that part? You thought the receiver and chamber area was nasty? Try this:

It looks like somebody melted caramel onto the nosecap…

I removed both retaining screws and still needed a hammer to beat the nosecap off the mounting area as the Cosmo was a wee bit solidified and as you see thick as Kim Kartrashian’s ass.

A couple of soft strikes with my trusty gunsmith plastic wrapped mallet and viola:

Once that was off, all three of my primary parts went into the Witch’s Brew-Bath. It’s Xylene, Metal Blast Rust Remover, Acetone and Birtchwood-Casey Degreaser/Cleaner. Potent nasty shit. Melts gloves like you read about…

I left it overnight.

In the meantime I got a text from Gretchen as this A.M. she got to see the Lil Booger when DF brought her to the hotel they’re staying at to go to the pool. She shot me this pic:

Ugh
Love her to death, the both of them (Gretch and Addy) but man I’ve been emotionally intentionally -distancing- myself to save on the hurties. I know I’m glad I’m not there or there’d be me in jail and a stack of burning corpses ALLLLLL over that fucking county I swear.

Anyways…
Back to my ‘happy spot’

This Afternoon when I actually got out of bed (around noonish) I went a recovered the parts in the bath. I didn’t bother with a picture as literally the brew was so discolored and I ended up using a pair of channel-locks to ‘fish’ that parts out by feeling, because as I said, this brew practically slags gloves within a few minutes of getting soaked with it.

It did its job however, as seen here:

Yes, those are the parts I dropped into the tank for an overnight soak. Here’s a few close-ups:

The Mag:

You can see the “DP” stamp on there and some shades of red in there where the red paint was in the ribs of the mag itself. That’ll resolve when I do a deep strip using the bluing remover in the next phase. Overall though, I like how it came out with minimal effort.

Then the bolt:

Not bad at all. I have to tear it down completely to do a full inspection, but I’m pleased with the progress so far. Again, on the knob you can see the “DP” marking.

As an aside: Any time they turned a rifle into a “DP” rifle, which stands for “Drill Purposes” they marked ALL the significant parts “DP” so they could not be reutilized in a functional service rifle. It was considered to be “DeMil’ed” which stands for de-militarized, i.e. can’t be made to shoot again. And because of this, a Drill Purposes rifle was to only be used for literally Drill Purposes forever only and that meant ANY and ALL parts on it were to never (by British Army Regulations) be reutilized again on a functional rifle.

Of course that was then and this’s the now.

Especially since there’ve been no new manufactured parts for this particular rifle since the mid 1960’s.

I mean the stock(s)? How is the wood ‘terminally compromised’ so to speak? Just short of a termite infestation maybe? Or how about a screw or whatnot? I can see the bolt or maybe the bolt head, but there are (and I perform) checks and tests to insure that the parts I’m utilizing or I should say reutilizing are good to go.

So yeah, that’s why I’m using a $99 dollar Donor Rifle as opposed to buying a $300 set of replacement wood, and gaining more spare parts while I’m at it. Anything that doesn’t ‘pass’ MY Q.C. I just shitcan outright.

So anyways
Lastly, we got the nosecap:

What a major difference Aye?
So that’s where I’m at.
Ignoring the Tennessee Stupid Two Step up there…
Just working on my Rifles

So that’s tonights fun.
More Later
Big Country