Some time ago (okay it has to be at least 5 years), I bought a military surplus Mauser 98. It was a Turkish Mauser [which in all effect meant it was made in Germany before the war and sold to the Turkish Army]. The main point here is that when I bought the gun and before I could even fire it, I had to clean the gun up. It had been stored in a thick grease that was everywhere. As I cleaned it up, a poor idea entered my head, and I decided that I should take it apart give a deep deep cleaning and re-blue all the parts to protect against rusting and the such. [F.Y.I. blue is a controlled oxidizing of the metal in such a way that it darkens the metal and protects it from the air and rust.]
Great idea when it was had and I spent a couple hours taking it apart with some help and carefully cataloging where parts came from and grouping things together so that I wouldnt loose anything.
Over the last five years when I was bored and I remembered that this giant ammo can I had contained all the parts minus the barrel and stock, I would pull out a set of parts, clean them up, and then re-blue them. Each item that was blue was coated in oil placed in a new bag with a towel soaked in oil and returned to its place in the ammo can. All was said and done to prevent a lost part.
On Monday, Jordan and I met up with Jared to go shooting. It was a decent shoot. It was more muddy then wet. We probably would have been out there longer had it not rained. Somewhere in all of that I decided to bite the bullet and finish working on the last few parts of the Mauser and then take on the barrel.
Upon getting home from running around with Jared, I brought out all my tools and dremel and began the arduous task of cleaning small parts. After each part was cleaned and prepped, I blued them and put them them away. After every part was blued short of the barrel, I got online and found a schematic so I could be sure on how everything was to be reassembled.
This became a moment of insanity for me. I carefully pulled out the trigger assembly and put it together and placed its spring on the desk. I did the same for the bolt and it's action. I took the trigger guard/magazine for the rifle and began reassembling it. I got to the latch for the floorplate. I inserted the spring and then got the pin in place looking for the latch...nothing...couldnt find it. I made sure everything was out and accounted for. I made sure I carefully combed the floor and inside the ammo can. I checked the inside of bags and towels. I checked everywhere. There was no latch.
So I jumped online and began to search. I went to everyplace I could think of to find a latch. After about 2 hours of searching I found a company that sold the part. It was a dollar part. I was made. And then I went to order it and ran into my second problem of the day, I had to order at least 10 dollars of parts for them to process and order. So I started looking at what they had and what I needed in order to get the order up to 10 bucks. I looked at the springs on my desk and decided that I should order replacement springs for all around. Yeah that got me to 7 bucks and then I still had to find things to add to the order. I searched and searched, finally settling on the pins for the gun. Only thing was they only came in a set, so i got the set. After 11 bucks, I now get to wait for the parts to finish putting the Mauser back together.
I wouldn't say it was a bad thing. It just was frustrating. So I need to jump back to barrel. When I disassembled the gun so many moons ago, I did so because the bore of the barrel was packed with a grease that I am told is designed to protect it for long storage, and it is not uncommon for these rifles. Well, when I went to clean the gun, I couldnt get the barrel clean on how packed the barrel ended up being. So understanding that diesel tends to break up grease I built out of PVC a tube for the barrel to be submerged in diesel until I could get to it.
On monday I opened that tube and pulled out the barrel short of some concern spots on the barrel all of the grease was floating on top of the diesel. I began the work of taking off as much of the remain blue on the barrel. I am almost done with that part, which will leave the re-blueing over the next couple of nights. I am not looking forward to that.
~u
