Big Country Expat

Greetings and Salutations!
Well this was an annoying day.
Two days ago, I got my new ATM/Debit card. This was like #2? 3? in oh so many weeks. The whole thing is just so exhausting when you get compromised like that. The only good thing that comes of it is I’m less apt to spend monies I don’t have, as not having a card is a pretty good ‘preventative’ so to speak.

So now new card showed up two days ago.

I did a beer run and come home and find the email “… your balance has dropped below $100….”

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

To which my reaction was like “I know I got at least $400 in there.” and ” I know the beer wasn’t that much!” So of course I open up the app and…………
Ugh.
Looted.
Again.
Not that it was a lot, but dammit, I just went through this a couple of times… I mean dammit… go steal from a motherfucker who, you know actually has money!?!

So I go and dial up and get back on the fon with the Fraud Department at Ye Olde Bank again, shut down the brand new card… again and get new card sent out again.

Wash, rinse, & repeat.
Repeatedly apparently

It’s getting to the point I need to have them on speed-dial I swear. I can’t even get angry really. First World Problems right? Funny story that ties in:

2005. Home on one of my first R&Rs.
I was out w/the family doing 4-H ‘stuff’ when the wife-of-the-time asked me to jump down to a corner store and get a bunch of cold drinks for everyone. I remember it was a bitch of a hot day, and we hadn’t planned on being out in the heat for as long a we’d been so far that day.

So off to the corner gas-n-go for Cold Drink(s)
I buy a bunch of Gatorade and water and whatever, and pay w/my ATM card. Then, back to the 4-H fun.

Later that night on the way home, I tried to get us some Mickey D’s for dinner… and my card got declined. I had no idea what was going on, so wife-of-the-time tried hers, and she had the same issue (we were on what we called the ‘family account’). At the time, I hadn’t downloaded the bank app as well… in 2005, apps were a ‘new thing’ on the phone, so yeah, I downloaded it, set it up and logged in.

Turns out I was over-drafted by like $4000 and change.

Sheesh.

I got it squared away within a few hours, but it was hilarious as when I called in, it hit me that I had just gotten back to the states after like 9-10 months overseas and now I got hit with all sorts of financial Identity Theft?

I had been using that ATM card in some of the Shadiest Souks this side of the Persian Gulf and not once did I ever get scammed by the Hajjis. Not even once which struck me as absolutely hilarious at the time… You would have thought that I would have been getting screwed over HUUUGELY by Haji and his boys… but nope.

Only in the FUSA amiright?

So that was my minor annoyance for today.

The next level annoyance?
Well, out of all the news out there the story about that piece of shit, that MS-13 Burrito Goblin Kilmar Abrego Garcia had an interesting encounter a ways back in Tennessee of all places.

The article is HERE

It fills in some ‘blanks’ that we haven’t been hearing too much about. The news already came out that he was a serious wife-beater, as well as an illegal alien who as far as I’m concerned means he has no rights in this country under any circumstance.

I’m pretty sure that Maryland Asshole Fucktard Senator Traitor Chris Van Hollen (Van Hole-in-the-Head would be more appro IMO) didn’t know about this part… but then again maybe he did. It would explain a lot of why he (Van Hole-in-the-Head) seems oh so concerned! over this fucking scumbag being thrown back to his home country…

Seems that back on December 6, 2022, Garcia was pulled over with a van full of Burrito Goblins, for a total (including himself) of 8 fuckers in the vehicle. No reason given, but knowing the Tennessee Highway Patrol, they probably saw a car full of goblins, and decided to check it out. Now for the TL;DR crowd, essentially the point is that the THP trooper called this shit into the Feds…

Specifically the F.B.I.

Who in turn said “Take pictures of everyone, and cut ’em loose”

Now reports are conflicting.
One said that Garcia was on the Terrorist Watch List
Another said he isn’t.
Either way?

The very fact that the F.B.I. knew something about this fucker and gave orders to cut him loose? Yeah… like ALL THE REST:

As I’ve said before, there’d be zero terrorist activity in the United States without the direct assistance if not the direct control or behest of the F.B.I. It also makes you wonder what they (the fibbies) ‘got’ on Van Hole-in-the-Head to have him utterly nuke his political credibility for this asshole…

Any bets that Garcia has dirt/is important to running some F.B.I. operation that’s probably designed to hurt OrangeManBad and/or disrupt the basic running of this country? The Magic 8-Ball says “YES!” in a big way. I mean if he IS the headman of the MS-13 gang here stateside, well… that’s a pretty powerful dude in his own right. That kind of power and money has enough ‘yank’ to get a Untied Staatz Senator to jump on a plane and fly to Central America apparently…

I want to know what’s going on in the background.
Or maybe I don’t.
Too much weird shit going on on the daily that makes me feel like I really just want to stay in bed sometimes. “Stop the world Mom, I want to get off!”

Add on the blatant stoking of a Race War…

I’ll just say that like MOST normal Whytte Peepul, I’m absolutely done with nigger narcissism (N2) and Perceived Victimhood. That fucking piece of shit ‘Karmelo’ needs to be dragged from his new $3900 a month crib, and hung from a tree. There’s literally zero question as to his guilt in this. The fucker confessed while sobbing like the cunt he is mind you. I don’t care about the circumstances. I don’t give a fuck if the Whytte kid full on punched the thieving fucking nigger in the face… there’s NO reason EVER for him to do what he did.

In fact the ONLY potential excuse that I’d accept from that fucking slack-jawed ape-looking moron is that if he admitted to being a full on nigger with a serious Lack of Impulse Control.

And the rest of his utterly contemptable fucking family?
They’re fucking scum
Every. Last. One. Of. Them.

I swear, it’s time to roll the clock/calendar back and have the trees start bearing ‘strange fruit’ again. They ALL need to die. Painfully IMO. In fact just for naming the kid “Karmelo” deserves a death penalty. Who the fuck thinks naming their kid after a shitty candy bar is a good idea?

God I fucking loath niggers.

So…

Back to the guns…
Always a more pleasant subject.
I worked on the 2A1 this past evening, and tonight as well. I did some work on the nose piece for it and well… I’m not happy with how it turned out honestly.

Now, the Ishapore 2A1 has a different nose piece than the MK3 which the rifle is based off of. The ‘normal’ Short Magazine, Lee Enfield (MK3) has a flat faced nose piece and ’rounded ears’ so to speak:

That’s a spare that I’m not using right now. This is the face:

The Hindu Version on the 2A1 has squared off ‘ears’:

And the face of the 2A1 is squared off as well:

Now, I stripped it down completely to bare metal. It took a while and a LOT of work to be honest. I wasn’t sure why at the time, but I think I figured it out by the time I got done. With it stripped bare:

LOTS of soaking and sanding.
I then went and did a couple coats of the bluing:

Mind you, I wasn’t digging the outcome.
Now I don’t have the ability to do ‘how bluing’ in the traditional way. I have to do a shitty cold-bluing, that I have a few tricks which help a wee bit in making it look good. One of which is to lightly heat the part with my blowtorch as I’m working.

Also MULTIPLE coats help.
NORMALLY I should say.
In this case?

Not a fan man.
That’s after six ‘dips’ so to speak. It literally became BLUE! and not in a good way. I checked the various boards, and yep.

Metallurgy.

It’s the metal itself. Seems that the Indian/Hindu made Ishapores have some deficiencies in the manufacturing process. The metal is NOT up to snuff so to speak, or at least NOT up to traditional Lee Enfield pieces-parts. Now mind you, from some of the articles I read, the metallurgical deficiencies are MOSTLY on ‘non-critical’ parts… meaning I’m not potentially having a failure that could kill me.

The most common problem is that getting a nice finish on the rifle, using traditional bluing methods? Yeeeeeah… Notsomucho Man.

So because of THAT particular wrinkle, I’m going to see about using a Parkerizing Colored Coating on it. I’ll update y’all with pictures as I go.

So More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Sorry for another down day. I had a CAT Scan (w/contrast) on Wednesday and for whatever reason, the contrast made me ill. I’ve never had a negative reaction to it in the past, but for whatever reason, this time around I ended up with a mad skull splitting migraine and man…

I only just now got the taste out of my mouth. If you’ve ever had a CAT w/con, -sometimes- you can get a wee bit of a taste of it in the back of your throat… a gross medicine-y taste. This time it was all encompassing, which makes me wonder if it was too strong or the right ‘stuff’ in the bag when they I.V.’d me.

Either way if they did fuck up, I’m fucked as it’s the VA and no way to hit them with malpractice.

All of the recent MRIs and work I’m having done is for some potential carpal tunnel surgery. The nerves in both arms/hands and even my neck have been getting progressively worse, so I need to have something done sooner rather than later.

So two days of Ugh! and I’m back.

One of the things I watched on the YewToobs however caught my eye. Pissed me ALLLLL sort off too. Liberty Doll a guntoober of some repute posted a new one today that sent Ye Olde Blood Pressure into the red zone. Here it is in it’s entirity:

Oh yeah
That’ll do it.
Made me mad as fuck to watch and hear the bullshit excuses that they made up, and how they ultimately cleared the fucking trigger happy asshole cop who not only is a coward, but apparently completely incompetent.

Not for nothing, despite throwing at least 5 rounds at the dog, he only managed to get three in the target, all of which were non-fatal. The only other positive aspect to this travesty was thankfully due to his incompetence, at least he only wounded the mom, and didn’t put a round in the 4 year old little girl.

I couldn’t afford much, but I did donate $10 to the fundraiser. The link to that is HERE Seems the dog, despite the best efforts of the cowardly 2G swine survived catching 3 rounds, and has a lot of medical bills.

I cannot stand shit like this.
So I’ll throw it out there to y’all as every little bit helps.
Otherwise
Gretchen is spending the weekend up at her Mom and Dads place to get a little ‘headspace’ room for us. Things have been a wee bit tense lately, and yeah, it’s b/c of DC and her antics.

It is what it is I suppose.

So I’m going to get re-caught up on my working on the weapons. In particular the 2A1 Ishapore. BTW: To Reader Bill: I got the extractor and spring good sir! I’ll be working that into the bolt and sizing everything up as part of the fun this weekend. Again, I greatly appreciate donation and yep. It’s a goodly bit longer than the standard extractor. It’s going to be interesting to do the kitting out if that.

I also plan on getting a fresh gallon of the acetone to soak the ‘failed .45’ with the bogus hydrodip attempts. Get it back down to bare metal, and start over. So keep your eyes on it, I’ll be poasting pics and maybe even video over the next few. I’m also hoping to get some more recoil therapy in, provided that The Good Lord shines down on me, and keeps the weather tolerable.

So More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
So yesterday was a work/pleasure day with Gretchen. She wanted ‘date-day’ and I obliged…

With stipulations.

As the past few date-days/nights have all been ‘her’ wants/needs/desires and this time? It was my turn. So that meant range therapy.

It was also a biddness decision as I need to sell one or more of these Lee Enfields and/or auction them off. Now I know ALL of them are safe to shoot, however, I needed to ‘print’ a target at 50 yards and 100 yards respectively for two of them to make sure that they could actually hit what they were aiming for.

The results were less than stellar.

First, the good: The 1939 SMLE, my first restoration does actually group within a 5 inch circle on both targets. Both at 50 AND 100 yards. The 100 yard hits were truly a bit more spread, but I’ll take it. The problem is that the bore is at best ‘fair’ as ALL of the rounds were keyholing like a mother, which means when I start casting and ‘rolling my own’ I’m going to have to look at paper-patching to increase it’s accuracy.

It’s not a deal-breaker however.

On the other hand, the 1942 Canuckistan Longbranch?

Sheesh. This things ability to accurately hit a target is as ugly as Glen Filthie’s drawers after a drunken night of Taco Bell and Pabst Blue Ribbon. I.E. flat out stinky/shitty. As in ZERO hits out of 20 rounds thrown at the 100 yard target. I was actually a wee bit surprised it was that bad, as the dirt and sand was kicking up in clouds ALL around the target. This led me to believe I was hitting ‘something’.

When I actually policed it (the target) up?
Not so mucho.
Now, to be fair, it gets one moar chance, as I did not get to try it at the 50 yard target. Gretchen was cranky, hot and tired (menopausal like you read about there) and I didn’t necessarily want her getting pissy and pissed off on the range with live rounds. SO I cut MY test(s) off early.

We had started by having her fire her .357 Taurus revolver that I had bought her waaay back when we were living in Tennessee and working for that Lawyer-Bitch. She’d never actually field tested it, so this was the day that she got to finally crank some rounds through it. I started her off w/some basic .38 Specials, and worked her up for 12 rounds of the expensive .357 158 grain Hydra-Shok ‘combat rounds’ if you will.

She did really well with that, and then I got to test my Christmas Present from last friggin’ year… not 2024 mind you, but 2023 if you can believe it. The weapons in question:

Gretchen’s Taurus 605 .357 and my Girsan Regard Turk M-92 Clone. And NO I don’t want to hear ANYONE talk shit about the Girsan. I’ve had ZERO issues with it, and have had it going on 4 years. I just have NOT been able to try it out since Sapper got me the Holosun that I added to it:

It performed wonderfully.
Once I dialed in the Holosun, I was really impressed. The mount for it needed quite a bit of work as it was designed for the Beretta, but a couple of hours of ‘shaving/filing/measuring’ it got mounted, and as you can see, after about 60 rounds of 115 grain FMJ, the sight is still on there, and kept it’s reference/aiming point. There’s a lot of negative ‘stuff’ out there about mounting a Holosun with this particular mount, but I made it work rather well… nevermind about the Girsan brand…

And speaking of which, The Turks take a lot of shit regarding their weapons quality.

That’s fine.
I go by Personal Experience.
For one, there’s “That Guy”, Guntoober James Reeves who spends an inordinate amount of time shitting on Palmetto State “Poors” and Turkish weaponry. All I can say is it must be nice to be part of the Great Gun Grifters Club and get paid to shit on lower-priced but acceptable firearms for clout/money/fame. Much like that degenerate Garand Thumb who does the same exact thing. Shitting on good and functional weapons and try to shame people into buying their sponsors overpriced bullshit.

I mean c’mon.
The whole “poors” thing infuriates the ever loving fuck out of me. Part of the reason is that cockfags like Garand-Douche who actually served in the DotMil used weapons made by the lowest fucking bidder.

THAT is what “MilSpec” is…

The cheapest deliverable line item/NSN unit at cost that the DotMil can get for the lowest price, quality be damned. Add on that I highly doubt that, despite the most sincere masturbatory fantasies of the various Prepperbois out there, the odds of ANY of us #/normies getting into a full on running gun battle to the point we have to worry about ’round count’, overheating and throat erosion plus barrel wear is Infinitesimal Smol.

And as a side note: If you find yourself in such a situation like that, something, somewhere, has gone absolutely and catastrophically wrong in your life and with your life choices.

Plan accordingly.

90% of the time, provided it’s not complete crap, the average Turkish weapon, be it a handgun or shotgun is just fine.

If not even BETTER than the average.

My 12 gauge semiauto Boomstick is a re-worked Black Aces Tactical that I’ve tweaked out to having an 8 round mag and added the bayonet lug to, and put OVER 1000 rounds of slug/double aught and even a lot of bird shot (when I didn’t have the shekels to blow on combat rounds for practice) through it w/out any mechanical failure or parts failure. It’s my go-to for CQB Killing if needed, as 12 gauge doesn’t over-penetrate.

It irks the shit out of me honestly.

Reeves has consistently said NO Turk semiauto shotty can make it past 1000 rounds and survive. MY experiences prove otherwise, which is why I consider him an overpaid Guntoob Grifter.

Anyways.
Gretchen’s rifle?
A Basic AF M-4 Clone w/a 16in Barrel.
It does however have the “Hair Diva” touches:

Yep.
Pink Furniture ALL over.
The biggest problem outside of her trying to get a good sight picture was her fucking manicure. $75 worth of nails getting waaay in the way of her being proficient the way -I- want her to be.

The sight picture thing I’m going to have to work on here at the house as she suffers from the same thing a lot of new Privates in the Army do at BRM (Basic Rifle Marksmanship) school. She doesn’t understand that SHE has to conform to the rifle and not vice-versa. Her posture purely sucks, and as you can see, her nose is no where near enough to that charging handle.

<Le SIGH>
Looks like I have a few days of retraining to perform with her to get her a wee bit better. Meh… It is what it is. I mean her first AR was something I made on a bet. Mind you THIS ‘new one’ has been a safe queen for the better part of three years, as getting Gretchen to the range is like doing a root canal without pain meds. The pink rifle is supposed to be her ‘duty rifle’ if we ever find ourselves in such a position that everyone needs to be armed with a long rifle 24-7.

However…
Her first rifle was actually a pistol.
I was futzing around in my pieces-parts bins and fiddly bits when I realized I had literally enough ‘stuff’ to build another AR of some form or another. I remember the conversation, as Gretchen had just moved in, and she was questioning the ‘why’ of my need to build another AR?

I put it on her and said I’d do her a custom rifle or pistol.
She immediately came back and threw the gauntlet down, and told me she wanted a “Hello Kitty” AR… pistol or rifle… it didn’t matter to her.

So….
Challenge Accepted:

Yep.
I might have gone Full Retard-Gunsmith on that ‘un.

She of course positively loves it
She also gets ALL the chicks at the range all excited and jealous when they see it. They ALL want to know where she got it, and to be honesty I do enjoy in basking in the accolades for having done such a thing.

Even Liberty Doll on YouTube got a kick out of it when Gretchen sent her pictures of it. LD did a video on something that Gretchen just had to send pics of the Hello Kitty pistola, and she got a reply-email from Liberty Doll all digging it and asking where she got it?

Myself?
I sent some pics into Brandon Herrera for his “Cursed Guns” series on Youtube, and got back a cool email from him (theoretically) complimenting me on it and the build… he said it wasn’t a “Cursed Gun” per se in that the “…only curse this thing would have is getting you a lot of pussy on the range with it!”

So yeah, that was the weekend roundup.
Let me know your thoughts on the various fun times and weaponry. I’m always liking the comments.
More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
I’m taking a few days off from doing ‘gun stuff’ as my carpal tunnel is really bad right now, and I need a literal physical break to recover. I appreciate all the input regarding the potential causes for the failures on the hydrodipping, and I –think– I have it narrowed down.

It’s not contamination.
It’s my timing
As in I need to be a Hell of a lot more accurate on setting things up. I’ve been too laisse faire in regards to the setup and activation. Sapper is going to literally be running a stopwatch tomorrow when I do the other side of the frame to see how it goes. A wee bit of precision might be the answer.

If not?
Well I’ll just keep trying and learning, which is what the experiment is about. So because of the break, and because of what I read, I just have to throw my two cents in. In this case? A story out of New Yawk Fuckin’ Shitty.

Now not for nothing, I usually utterly refuse to listen to the various Leftist NPCs running around giving off airs of superiority. The natural inclination of the Leftist Limousine Libtards and their elitist outlook on life and their propensity to look down their patrician noses at us ‘normies’ just doesn’t normally matter to me. They and their opinions matter not… they’re NPCs and ‘background noise’…

The near continual drone of how SUPERIOR New York Fucking Shitty < HAAAAWK Spiiittoo! > is to the rest of the ‘flyover areas’ and how much BETTER and SMARTER they are than the the whytte-trash hillbilly bumpkins who inhabit said flyover zones does become wearisome over time. They need to just STFU IMO.

Well… I’d say that now, and forever more, with this particular story? Them fuckers need to keep their fucking cockholsters C-l-o-s-e-d for good. My reasoning?

………….
………………….
…………………………

WHAT
THE
LITERAL
FUCK!?!

My first reaction to that particular dreadful, nay horrifying headline was that someone had to be pulling a late April Fools Joke… I mean as the J. Jonah Jamieson meme goes:

“Seriously!?!”

I mean…..

The story as it goes:

“…authorities say the suspect engaged in sexual misconduct with the corpse of a homeless man on a southbound R train near the Whitehall Street station around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, according to ABC 7.

Investigators believe the victim died of natural causes prior to the incident and that the suspect did not know him. The suspect was last seen wearing a blue baseball cap, black hooded jacket, yellow hoodie, jeans, red and white sneakers, and carrying a backpack.”

The link to the story is HERE on Zero Hedge.

And mind you… the Ministries of Lies and Propaganda? Nary a fucking peep from them about this particular depravity. Mind you this’s a newspaper that’s more like a Daily Mail tabloid, and has such wonderful sidebars like this:

Rape, Murder, Mayhem…
All part of the NYFC ‘experience’ I suppose…
With the exception of this case however.

Guess when it gets to where even the tabloids don’t want to touch this kind of story with a 10 foot pole. And to add to the fun, I checked around, and it appears as I stated before, our National Propaganda Organs have left this one alone. I did find on the Brit rag, The Guardian that

“…alleged that investigators had probable cause to arrest a 51-year-old man identified as Carlos Garcia – whose last known address is in the Bronx – on a count of sexual misconduct of a dead human body.

Gothamist, citing police, also reported that the man identified in the wanted poster as Garcia could be seen on surveillance footage taking items from the pockets of the dead person before violating the corpse and fleeing.”

Wow.
Any bets if good ole Carlos might be an illegal?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Not that we’ll ever get any confirmation of that.
The Memory Hole is going to be fast and deep on this one.

Jes’ Sayin’

Now mind you, this happened after the poor dead fucker was robbed by a female 2G (thanks to Art Sido of that term). Again, per The Guardian:

“…At about 10.48pm on Tuesday, police said a woman approached the late man, removed unspecified property from him and then left.

Police released surveillance images of a suspect in that initial robbery, which showed a woman wearing a yellow hooded sweatshirt, black pants and a black baseball cap.”

Again… What the fuck.

She looks nice.

It reminds me of that Sam Kinnison Act from back in the day:

The man was a visionary… taken far too soon sadly enough.
And man, I saw that bit when it was ‘live’ on HBO.
MomUnit almost peed she was laughing so hard.
I think I broke a damned rib I swear.

Like I said… the Memory Hole is going to go hard, fast and furious. Some poor homeless bastard dies, and then a thieving fucking nigger loots the dead guy of whatever pathetic valuables he may or may not have had, which shortly after that barbaric act, a Goddamned Burrito Goblin rapes the aforementioned dead guys face.

Talk about nuking the ‘narrative’ Aye?
So much for the theoretical superiority of NYFC.

Yepper.
I never want to hear just how much better NYFC and it’s denizens are as opposed to us undereducated flyover folks. I mean even Floridaman doesn’t go that low. I mean yeah, he might try and fuck a dead alligator, but compared to literally skullfucking a dead hoomon?

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah.
All Sapper said when I gave him the details of this degenerate mess was “Nuke it from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”

No doubt.
So More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Still tired. Worn out to be perfectly honest. People’s Glorious Tractor Factory as of late has been an exceptionally hard grind. Your favorite blogger (moi) has been busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking contest as of late.

I mean it’s been paying off, as the quarterly bonuses were announced the other day, and I was ‘on the list’ so I got a nice minor ‘bump’ in the pay bucket, which these days is ALWAYS a most welcome thing. $300 isn’t a lot but hey… that’s this months groceries if I play it right with going and utilizing the “BOGOs” at Publix and some of the other sales out there.

That or another gun.

Of course that would get me deeply in the soup w/Gretchen.

Decisions, decisions.

Now, ANOTHER reason I’m tired is I’m sort of bent out and pissed off as to how some of my projects have been going. One of them being the 1911 Hydrodip Project. I showed the one pic before of the pre-dip pre that was going on:

I had stripped it down completely , and had gotten some bamboo rods to secure the frame and slide for the actual dip process.

Over the past few nights, and forgive me but I forgot to take pictures, but I finally completed the sanding, stripping and taping of the two main parts. I then used the ‘etching base coat’ to paint over everything in preparation for the dip itself:

It took about 3 days to get everything taped up properly. I’ll be honest, that was a bitch. LOTS of scalpel work to get all of it done ‘right’.

Now in this case (last night) I actually DID remember to take some pictures. I prepped the dipping pan:

And made sure the water was at 90 degrees which is the required temp to do a proper hydro-dip, hence why it’s on the stove to keep the heat up while I monkey-fucked with getting the film in place:

Everything seemed to be going along spiffily.

I laid the film down perfectly and I used juuuuust the right amount of activator… Then, I dipped the slide… Everything looked good until I pulled it out…

Fuck.

Not sure what went wrong, but this is what I came out with:

Not exactly the best views. I mean it WAS past midnight when I took those pix, so hey…

Today I got better shots, and I’m hoping some of you Wile E. Coyote Motherfuckers (Super-Geniuses) in the audience can offer some insight, as all I have are YouTube Vids to tell me what’s happening, and in this case? None of them offer up any explanation for the weirdness that happened in my particular instance.

Better pics:

As you can see, parts/areas of it, especially in the middle look like it came out perfectly, and then on the ends? Not so fucking mucho.

Any clue gang?
Anyone?
Anyone?
The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act?
(huh… how topical LOL)

So yeah, pipe up in the comments.

I’m going to try the frame tonight, and -try- to replicate the same, except maybe I’ll let the activator sit a bit longer? I’m thinking that maybe I didn’t let it activate long enough, which would account for some areas being good and others being not-so-good.

The nice thing is an overnight bath in pure acetone should remove all the crap and get me back to bare metal. And even then, I got steel wire brushes to deal with what doesn’t want to come off.

Like I said, it’s a learning curve here.
So your ideas and thoughts?
More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Here’s one from the waaaaayback machine. Namely a post from my first and original blog called, appropriately enough, “The Intrepid Reporter”. As of late, I’ve been so damned busy, it’s insane. Trying to take care of the household with 2x members down, as well as my own snivvle-factor of the worst allergies I’ve had in 20+ years.

Sapper’s been up and down with a really bad flu… the one a lot of y’all have described. Lots of mucus and nasty, coughing and feeling generally listless and shitty. Gretchen OTOH has been having severe digestive issues. She’s got IBS and apparently ate -something- that damned near crippled her, as well as allowed her to destroy the head on a regular basis.

Thank God this place has two shitters.
Jes’ Sayin’.

That all being said, I went back to see just -what-0 was going on in my life back in the day. Specifically in my blog from back then. I can tell you one of the things (to me at least) that stands out is my ability to write a much more coherent and descriptive narrative was far superior to my current endeavors. And I realize it’s not laziness, but the Traumatic Brain Injuries I incurred after the fact.

I took a lot of severe head trauma in 2010/2011

It’s kind of obvious.
But I hope you enjoy:

“Monday, April 6, 2009

WTF? Home? Iraq had less problems…

OK Dear and Gentle Reader, The Intrepid Reporter is back and has all sorts of ‘fun from the home front’ stuff going on. Needless to say, I made it home for my well deserved R&R (Rest and Relaxation to you civvies) or my historical fave, I&I (Intercourse and Intoxication) both of which I’ve been attempting at a new land-speed record. Household Six and the Chilluns have been thrilled to have me home, but nonetheless, there have been a few ‘wrinkles’ in an otherwise pristine time.

What? Problems you say? Problems? Aye… A whooooole LOTTA identity theft of the I.R. and specifically my bank/debit Credit Card. Seems that for the past 5 years I’ve been bouncing around the Middle East and dealing with “The Ali Baba Credit and Trust” banks of the area. The Baghdad International Federal Credit Union issued me a personal draft good up to 40 Million Iraqi Dinar (which is worth about 450 pesos or 12 US Dollars when rounding up on the centavos, ‘course if I get it in Canadian Dollars, we’re talking enough to get a 12 Pack of Molson lite!)

So anyways… here’s the ole I.R. on vay-kay and I go and use my debit here stateside. Now the only issue I’ve ever had was ye Ole Bank of America sometimes freaks when my location changes, as in at 9am US Time I charge something in Kuwait, and then 10 hours later, I’m running a bar tab in the airport at Dulles. Usually a 2 minute call to the security folks is good enough to wrap up any questions, but this morning was a special case.

Now those of you following this here reportage know that I’ve discovered various watering holes in and around Baghdad. Another sure sign of a building economy is the “Intrepid Reporter Economic Progress Theory of Bar Expansion and Alcohol Availability.”

This Macroeconomic Theory dictates that the Success of an Economy can be Measured in A) Quantity of Boozing Locales and B) Quality of Beverage Available. The more places available = the more money being spent on booze and the quality of booze available = the more money people are willing to spend to get the “good stuff.” Kuwait being a prime indicator of the facility of B) in that a bottle of Johnny Walker Black runs $200 a liter.

But anyways, It’ll need work, but suffice to say, I’ve been drawing $$$ USD specifically from the various ATMs and kiting checks through the on post exchange to insure a steady cash flow to insure proper lubrication of my synapses. In kiting the checks, I’ve been monitoring my check flow thru the web on a daily basis to insure that I don’t bone the check cashing ability in that if you ricochet one with AFFES, you lose the $100 daily ability they provide.

Imagine my shock this morning when on opening the account, I find I’m in the hole over $300. This from a balance of over $2K.

Looted you say?
Aye I say…
Yeah… Howabout them fuckin Apples?

I spend years all over the world in the Center of Shady Central and I get ganked here in the Homeland? Fucking nice huh? Needless to say I went into “Red Alert: Money is missing” mode and called everyone and anyone and rifled through 40 different fraud departments and got damned near 80 % of the bogus charges KIA’d before they got spent out. The only problem was they wouldn’t tell me who specifically or where specifically said bogus calls/charges came in from.

I do KNOW that it’s in Massachusetts from where one person slipped, but they did say I’d need a subpoena to get said info. Unfortunately, that’s not a good idea in that my way of dealing with this would be the $99 flight into Boston and show up whatever Ghetto these scumfucks live in, and give them like 30 minutes to shit say, $50,000 USD or I’d have to kill them. Yeah, extortion and hell, considering how they pissed me off, I’d kill them out of hand anyways.

Eh… the only thing that’d be bad is having to dispose of the corpses. In Iraq, carcass-disposal means leaving a body in an orange jumpsuit minus a casaba. The Military and Dirty Haj take care of it from there. The military cleans it up, and the Dirty Haj take the blame, gleefully from what I’ve seen. Those assholes even tried to make a claim on the mass shooting at the Immigrant Center in New York….

Silly Haj, Massacres like that are done by homegrown psychos, not radical Islamic Wierdbeards. The average “wants to get into Paradise” fuckhead understands that if they WERE in fact to go after a ‘soft target’ like a mall or something “Mom and Apple Pie” like that, that we’d be all out in a bloodfest against them.

THATS why I think they haven’t done anything like that. Fact of the matter, the reason they DON’T go for the soft targets is that, besides the “Blue States” that generally are filled with their “Hug a Fucking Commie” filthy Anti-American bastions, the only thing left are Pro-American Red States, and the odds of them getting to cause mass mayhem are pretty slim, as generally the gun-toting folks (like myself) are armed to the teeth, and would live for a chance to slowly shoot one of the “Allahfucks” to pieces.

I know I would.

If they DID go after a Mall, in say Brookline MA (home to one of the LARGEST Jewish populations outside of NYC) then the People of the Socialist Republic of Taxachusetts wouldn’t be able to wring their collectivist hands at the oppression of the Hamas and other such things…. Killing Liberals only makes other Liberals into Conservatives, and we can’t be having that now, Achmed can we? After all, the old saw of “A Liberal is a Conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet.” stands hard on that.

SO! More later… I watch the unfolding “Mad Minute Massacres” nationwide with both horror and a sense that we’re only seeing the beginning. Keep your powder dry and remember that I told you here first that this’s only the beginning of the “Summer of Madness”… More later y’all!”

LOTS of memories there…. wish I still was as literate.
Hope you enjoyed!
More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
Wow.
Again, another long day that wouldn’t end.
Although having gotten there, the finale of the day was well worth it. Gretchen had made me an appointment to get my hooves worked over, i.e. a pedicure with ‘her girl’ last week.

Don’t laugh man… been getting pedis ever since I hooked up with The Hair Diva. OMG is it wonderful to get them taken care of! So at 17:00 right after clocking out of People’s Glorious Tractor Factory #666 at 16:30, I S-3’d and went.

S-3 being “Shit/Showered/Shaved” as I get might Hobo-Looking after a while. The toenails were starting to approach ‘tree climbing mode’ so Gretchen made me an appointment, and told me to be ‘presentable’ i.e. somewhat human. When I got there, she had surprised me by meeting me there to pay for it!

She had been busy-busy the past few days, and today in the early A.M. she had to jet up to the Villages to assist with Mom and Dad. No issues per se… just an assist that Mom needed her hair colored and whatnot. I figured she’d be gone all day as her Mom in this day and age can be a bit much… she also had a bunch of gigs and some DC biddness to deal with… nothing bad, just ‘normal mother/daughter’ stuff.

The less I get involved, the better.
So she surprised me, and I got my tootsies trimmed, and massaged and all the good stuff to include hot rocks and towels and whew…. my legs from the knees down are the ONLY part of me NOT in pain I swear. THEN after, she surprised me by taking me to a lil Japanese Steakhouse next door to the nail salon.

GREAT CHOW!!! A bit price-ish, but not really. Not for the portions I swear. About $20 each, with an app each, and a main meal. I had the Pork Goyoza (dumplings) as an app, Gretchen had OMFG Good Shrimp Tempura that was so hot and fresh, she had to let it sit for a while. For the main meal I went with Korean Beef Bulgogi and Gretch went with the Sesame Chicken in sauce.

I’m still full-full.
No dessert or afters for me thanks.
Gretchen took like 1/2 or more of hers home.
More for breakfast/lunch tomorrow I’d hanker.

So one of y’all commented about the bog issue. I had absolutely blanked on that… namely the history of tonks getting ‘swallowed up’ by bogs over the years. One in particular that was documented to the extreme was one found in a bog in Estonia in 2016:

The link tot he story is HERE

Also, when I goolaged the “tank in a bog” the AI came up with a LIST of tonks that over the years that have been discovered. Seems a LOT of them went ‘swimming’

And a LOT of them when pulled out had the crews bones still on board where they didn’t make it out, much like /ourguys didn’t.

In fact, the Soviets came up with a vehicle to move on bogs specifically to assist in recovering Cosmonauts IF they should have come down is seriously fucked up terrain. It was a screw-Driven Rescue vehicle. The one minute video for your perusal:

In fact, in one shot (at 12 seconds) shows one of these things in a bog, and it looks like it’s actively recovering a Cosmonaut, as on the right, it’s definitely a Soviet Space Capsule:

So yep.
Gotta watch them bogs man.

Now… as far as the update to the Enfield 2A1. I’m sort of at a ‘stop point’ right now as I need and am actively waiting on some pieces-parts and fiddly bits. I did 2nd Day Delivery, and the shop got them out on time, but UPS (Big Brown, AKA Shit Service) is alllll sorts of fucked up. The stuff was supposed to be here on Wednesday.

I got a bunch of emails since stating first that my delivery was on the way and would be there early Wednesday. Then I got one rescheduling to mid-afternoon Thursday. Then today? Next fucking Monday!!!

Motherfuckers.

I need these parts to do a lot of fitment. The bolt head for one. I need a new one. I also need the proper extractor as the regular extractor is too short and not designed for a rimless round like a 7.62. The 2A1 extractor is longer and has a slightly different fitment. Then the nose cap. The 2A1 has a squared off set of ‘ears’ and nose, and the part will need to be fitted to the barrel, as well as both stocks.

And I can’t do shytte until it gets here.

Grumble Grumble…

And then I positively have to do a Substack. I’ve been so overwhelmed and busy that’s been on the back-burner…

However: Sapper is helping me with this one, and it’s going to be a doozy. Like it has… shall we say? Potential REVOLUTIONARY IMPACT for a group of people, places and things eh whot?

I’ll give you a clue as to the basis and idea that I have… if this actually goes full viral as an idea, I might get in some serious trouble in certain parts of the world…

The clue:
The Battle of Agincourt, (October 25, 1415)

It’s time to bring back the ‘good old days’

Let me know what you think, and what in particular in that battle might be worthy of revisiting in this day and age.

For now, the only OTHER thing I’ve gotten done is I finally got the dowels in that I needed to do my Hydrodip for my 1911:

The dowels are needed to ‘roll’ the part in the dip tank when I lay the film on it. For whatever reason I brain-cramped and forgot to order them… then they were backordered… they came in yesterday, and I affixed them. Took a wee bit of wood carving.

Now I have to finish taping up the areas I don’t want dipped, and then I’ll do my first (hopefully) successful Hydrodip. As an aside, I’m doing it in Multicam.

Because why the fuck not?
Also, the Joe-Chink Rat below them? I’ll be doing an meet/eat/greet with that down the road a bit for y’all. Bear with me… I have a full platter, nevermind plate.

So More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
It’s been one of ‘those weeks’
The kind when you look at the clock and the calendar, and realize it’s only Wednesday and OMFG… it was 12 noon 30 minutes ago or more… how da fuq does the bloody clock say it’s only 12:02!?!

12:02 was hours ago I swear!!!!

Time Warps -do- exist apparently.

So… moving on… I’ve got a bunch more work done on the Enfield. It’s mostly cleaning and refinishing of the wood. I’m stuck ‘mechanically speaking’ in that I need pieces-parts and fiddly bits in order to do the fitment before I can get things moving again.

I did however, as stated get a lot of work done on the stock parts. They’re looking pretty damned good IMO… this’s pre-sand/post soak:

Then we have the post-sanding pics:

As you can see, all the crap, and paint is gone-gone.

And as I said, the butt seems to have a much lighter grain of wood to it. Not sure what exactly the wood -is- per se, but as you can see, it’s really pale compared to the other parts.

Speaking of which, here’s the main lower before pic (I forgot to get the other side in my haste, so sorry!):

….and the ‘after’, both sides:

I started with 180 grit sandpaper, and worked my way up to 1200. Let me tell you, my paws and fingers were worn the Hell out by the time I got done. It took off the paint, and a lot of the scarring on the wood. As this is NOT a ‘battle rifle’ so to speak (i.e. used in combat), but as a defensive weapon for the Hindu DotMil, I have no problem restoring the stocks to “as-new-as I can get them to” mode. The sanding almost crippled me I swear…

It was, as you can see, well worth the effort.

The other two upper parts came out pretty damned good as well. In fact you can see the repair channels on them, as well as the brass pin that they used to repair some cracking at one time or another.

and here’s the close up of the repair near the ‘ears’ of the upper:

From what I can tell, a brass pin as well as a metal ‘staple’ of some form. None of which were visible before I stripped and sanded them.

The smaller part of the upper came out like this, before and after:

Pretty neat how it cleaned up right?

So after taking care of the soaking, cleaning, scrubbing and then extensive sanding of the wood, I then went on to just doing MULTIPLE COATS of Birchwood Casey’s “Tru-Oil”.

This essentially is like an oil with a sealer on in. The more coats, the deeper and cleaner the finish. The results speak for themselves:

That’s one Hell of a difference from the start of this project agreed? That’s about 7 coats of the Tru-Oil on each piece. I have a few more to add, then one last sanding at 2500 grit, one final coat, and the wood will be done except for the fitting.

The only other part I did was the buttplate.
It got the brasso.

That was the ‘before’.
Here’s the ‘after’:

A couple of dings and whatnot, but again, in pristine shape for it’s age. Who knew all that time in Basic “doing my brass” would actually be used this late in life Aye?

Now I’m just stuck on waiting for parts to be delivered. Once I have the parts, I can then go full throttle on doing the fitment.

The reason being is I need the nosecap, the bedding, the bolt face and new bolt head for that matter. The Ejector… a lot of smol parts that I don’t want to get ahead of myself and have to re-do after the fact.

“Measure Twice, Cut Once.”

You know the drill.

Now, as far as news? As stated, this’s MY take on what happened in Lithuania. Mind you this’s based off of my own experiences in similar areas, but mind you my experiences were 25+ years ago, long before all the Gee-Whiz-Bang “Kid Koolio Kits” that the DotMil just seem to be in love with, i.e. Blue-Force trackers and GPS and all that jazz.

LOTS of people out there on the intarwhebz talking about mad conspiracy stuff… that the 4 dudes were actually killed in the Krain, that the Byelorussians kidnapped them… like I said, all sorts of weird shit…

In this case?
That Occam’s Razor holds up best.
Meaning that when faced with multiple explanations for a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is usually the best.

Which means that mine might just be the simplest one.

While stationed in Hohenfels Germany w/the OPFOR in the early 90s, one of our M998 TOW vehicles (a HMMWV) had a very similar issue. I.E. almost wasting a crew by drowning during a training exercise. It was (like this) an accident.

We (the TOW Platoon) were ‘sneaking in the back’ on a underused goat/boar trail to get to the rear of the BLUFOR to fuck them up.  This was a common tactic we used, as being the OPFOR, the “Bowl(s)” meaning the maneuver area was our home turf, and we knew ALL the back ways and byways to bypass enemy stronk-points. In this case however, one of our trucks got too close to a bog that we had mis-identified as solid ground. It WAS winter, and the snow cover didn’t help. The way a bog is and looked at the time, between the grass and snow, well, the grass had grown OVER the swampy wet part, and looked deceivingly like solid ground. 

Our guy drove too close, the edge of the “solid ground” collapsed and the truck went in QUICKLY into the water on it’s side.  Thankfully the water there was ONLY 4-5 feet deep, and the crew bailed but got SOAKED in the process. 

It actually took a pair of M88s to recover the truck as it kept settling into the soft-assed mud. Now mind you this was like in February, so it WAS a big deal as getting bone-assed soaked was a danger…

We ended up calling an ENDEX (End Exercise) and had the recover vehicles come out to retrieve our now-half drowned M998.

These issues also used to happen in Baghdad a lot too, where the Bradleys got too close to the edge of a canal and WHOOP! into the water! 

It got so bad that some units started making sure that the tracks had those emergency SCUBA tanks called “Spare Air” for every member of the crew, as well as dismounts after they had a bunch of guys drown in I want to say 05?

I scored 4x of them tanks when they turned in their tracks in Kuwait.  Neat lil toy.  6-8 minute of O2 which gave the grunts enough time to evacc if they went into ‘submarine mode’

So, if the crew wasn’t paying close attention and the M88 was travelling at speed, and they didn’t see/realize that it was a bog in front of them?  Yeah, it probably got ugly real quick.

Especially since a M88A2 weighs in at fucking 70 tons.

THAT amount of weight would ‘torpedo’ that track and all aboard to the bottom of whatever bog it was in like 0.5 seconds, leaving like ZERO possibility to bail. Especially if they were in their gear, which wouldn’t have helped in performing a quick evac.

ALL this talk of conspiracy and whatnot is pretty much a cope. To me? This was, like oh so many before, a tragic unavoidable accident. Of which the Active Duty Army seem to have faaaar too many of…

May God have mercy on them, and give their families Peace.

So, on that fucked up note,
More Later
Big Country

Greetings and Salutations!
What a busy weekend! Like non-stop ‘stuff’… meeting and making a new fren, meeting up with a old fren and HIS new female fren, and a whoooooooole lot of gunsmithing in between.

Sleep? What is this ‘sleep’ of which you speak!?!

Friday right after work, I had to do a bunch of pressure washing as the HOA assholes were up my ass about dirt on the side of the house. That’s the major issue I have with this place is that the X bought it in an HOA Area… I had no idea until after it was a done deal. At least right now, the old bitch we used to have is retired now… I purely wanted to stick a spear up her ass, and feed her to the Gators up off of CR 452. The new chick at least is nicer and more accommodating. After 2 hours of shit-work, I came in, made dinner and crashed the hell out.

Starting off with Saturday, as I said I went to bed waaay early as I had to go an have a meetup with a ‘fellow traveler’ if you will. He’d DM’d me and let me know he was going to be in town, and could we do a face-to-face meetup?

To be honest, this guy? Been around a while and is sort of in ‘lurk mode’ regarding his online presence. Not sure if you know about him/of him, but this’s a clue:

One of the “O.G. Right Wing Bloggers” Karl Ushanka!

Like Hells YEAH!

He was in town to meet up with his son, Karl Jr. and they were on their way then to meet up with another fren, and wanted to know if we could meet IRL?

Gretchen, Sapper and Myself met up with him for a (somewhat) early Brunch (10a.m. for Gretchen is like ‘zombie time’) and we then went and had a cigar for ‘afters’… and as you can see, he knows of my propensity for hats, and gave me both a sample of his ‘signature hat’ the Obama Ushanka, and his book. I in turn gave him a copy of my Charlie Mike Comic. I feel honored to have met him. As I said, after brunch, we went for a chill at a local Cigar Bar.

Well Sapper, Karl, and Karl Jr. had stogies… I settled on a beer… and no joke a very hard to find beer here… namely a Costa Rican beer called “Cerveza Imperial” or just Imperial:

It’s a really great brew, only outdone by the Imperial Silver.
It’s like the national beer of C.R. I fell in love with it when I was down there visiting with the other Countries who live there. I also found it quite humorous that the Eagle on the can has a distinct ‘Germanic Quality’ to it… and according to Wiki

The Imperial logo was designed by the brothers Enrique and Wolfgang Hangen who, at the time, were owners of the advertising agency “Casa Gráfica.” The brothers also created the logo for other Costa Rican beers, such as Pilsen and Bavaria drawing inspiration from the iconography of their native country, Germany.

Huh.
As DeadDad would have said “Where were YOU in ’42 there Herr Wolfgang?” In all seriousness, it WAS brewed by a transplanted Kraut, however that was in 1924…

We had a very productive and enjoyable time.

I look forward to meeting up again in the near future as our goals and ideas seem to run along parallel paths. Leastways I hope!

THEN it was go home and get a bit of rest and work on the rifle before the next adventure. I really didn’t do a lot… I mostly pulled the pieces-parts out that I had started the day, day before on. I’ll get into that in a few, as I don’t want to stop the narrative.

After a bit of a kip, Gretchen got herself changed up, and I put on some ‘going out’ clothing, and we then went to a Bar in Apollo Beach, and met up with Cowboy and his new girlfriend. We went to meet up, but also to see the Soul Circus Cowboys. That’s the band that featured Cowboy in what turned out to be an eerily prophetic music video:

Cowboy is literally the Cowboy who’s the subject of the video. And as side note, the black and white horse he’s giving some loving to at 0:34+/- is Chip who was Addy’s bestie:

Leastways I think it’s Chip.
So we went, heard the tune(s) and met his new girl. She’s about a year younger than me. Tall blonde. Nice. Gretchen and I danced and had a few beers, and then off to home as it started raining, and the venue was an outside gig.

Sunday was a wash as far as any outside work went. The reason as mentioned was the rain. I ended up working on the rifle, which is slowly but surely coming along quite nicely. I’m waiting on some MOAR pieces parts, the reasons I’ll explain down the road.

In this case, on Thursday night I started the full disassembly. Let me tell you… there’s gross, then there’s DAYUM! My shooter/mechanix gloves are now black on the palms as I had run out of the nitrile, and figured I can wash them later. I started by removing the heaviest grease/Cosmo (so I could get to the screws) and went from there. The first part:

I yanked the bolt out, and gave it a rough wipe down. I then proceeded to tear it down to inspect the firing pin as well as the spring:

Surprising me, the firing pin AND spring were in perfect shape! No deformation, and the spring measured within correct tolerances! A plus as now I don’t have to spend any shekels to replace it/them!

I then pulled the mag, and as you can see, the lower left front side of the mag? ALL of the feed/retention lip is gone… Either sheared off or broken off to demil the mag itself. Bit of a pity there as even just a MK III mag shell is like worth $20…

And as you can see, the Cosmo is mighty think in there, and on the Donor Rifle off to the left… The Primary being on the right in that pic. Now.. as far as further teardown? Well here’s the trigger guard/trigger assembly after I pulled the screw and started to pull it out:

Sometimes you can just smell a picture eh? In this case Cosmoline and Curry IMO. LOTS of Cosmoline. I swear the assembly made a sucking noise as I worked it out… it was thick and tarry.

I then started working my was towards the muzzle. In this case, it was now time to check the middle barrel/wood band. On a SMLE, it’s hinged and held in place with a screw, which passes through the front primary sling swivel:

Again, that’s sealed in Cosmo… I’m sensing a trend… How about you?

However, the screw (despite it’s mummification) actually came out pretty easily, and then the hinge? Well again, I was pleasantly surprised that it too was in perfect shape:

And then:

Dirty and Nasty (like your Mom) but serviceable.
With that removed, the top fore end wood popped right off:

So of course, this meant I may as well remove the short rear wood sight guard.

I was exceptionally pleased to see that BOTH pieces of wood were, despite the grime and grease in unbelievably good condition. In fact the inner spring clamp that holds it in place was so nice and tight, when I s-l-o-w-l-y pried it off, it “Popped” off with some force, and flew across the room!

Thankfully the grease didn’t get on anything important.

Since I was on my way back to the rear so to speak, I took a second and removed the safety and pieces-parts from the left side of the receiver:

Yeah… at this point the Cosmo was starting to really get on Ye Olde Nerves. And I wasn’t even remotely done with the teardown. I ‘went back to the front’ as the last major part to be removed was the nose cap:

I’m telling you, whoever sealed this thing for long term storage went waaaaaay above and beyond… ESPECIALLY for a fucking non-shootable D&P ‘toy’. Now, of note on this particular part:
If you see that large round-ish bump to the left of the screw and bayonet lug, that’s where the ‘stacking sling swivel’ would normally go.

This particular rifle however is an Ishapore SMLE, made in 1944. The Hindu kids didn’t ‘stack arms’ like the Brits did, so they never bothered to add a hole to put the third sling swivel in. Not that you could use a sling on a stacking swivel, as it looks like this:

The purpose of this was to allow them to hook the slings to each other’s rifles, on the order of “Stack Arms!” The result looking something like this:

So the Indians didn’t have it on the majority of their SMLEs.

To continue:
I got the nose cap off, again with a gross sticky-sucking sound and it showed as such:

And the cap itself after I had chiseled out a cartoonishly large chuck of Cosmoline from between the “ears” of the sight blades came out like this:

The last two things I needed to get rid of were the butt stock and the main lower. I took the butt off first as I knew I was going to need some extra maneuverability when it came time to hammer the main lower off. I sprayed some penetrating old down inside the butt, and then after it had worked, I removed the brass plate:

…and man, I’ll be honest. That rear plate? Out of four rifles I’ve done (so far) that rear plate is in the best shape out of all of them! That scratch on the top one was my ham handed fault in trying to pry open the oiler door. It was like unused and OMG in perfect shape!

I’m sorely tempted to put that on one of the other rifles when I’m done cleaning it up. Time will tell…

Once the butte was off, I proceeded to break all the ‘seals’ of dirt and grease and 40 Years of Funk to get it fully torn down:

You have to be exceptionally gentle and patient so as to NOT damage the wood unnecessarily. I managed to do so, but it took a looong minute in doing so. The grease and whatnot was really binding the parts together let me tell you.

And there it is.
Which means it’s time for the next step:

A “Witches Brew” of Funk-Killer.

To start with, I poured a generous helping (2 cups) of the mineral spirits into the bucket, and then added the entire contents of the DMX into it. To this, ALL of the ‘fiddly-bits’ and pieces/parts went in for a nice overnight bath:

I’d manually agitate it every so often just to ‘shake things up’ and allow things to melt off.

While that was ongoing, I plonked the stock parts into another bath of -just- mineral spirits. Those only got about a 6 hour bath, as I didn’t want the wood overly done. After that happened, then I took them straight to the dishwasher, and gave them the “High Heat-Pot Scrub Treatment” The results sort of speak for themselves:

Some of the paint markings started to ‘melt’ which I’m good with. They need to be completely remediated either way, so it means that it’s within my ability to get the shit off without resorting to extreme measures that could potentially damage the wood.

The one thing I did however notice is the stock appears to be a much lighter color of wood than the rest… Not sure (at that time) what it portended, but hey, that’s part of the fun.

So tune in tomorrow for the further restoration adventures!
More Later
Big Country