War Horse Refurbishing tips

[Shemp]

So I am finally getting around to working on my rusty old M1917 Eddystone. I got the gun apart with no real problems and am now left with a filthy,rusty, greasy mess.

I have scrubbed the gun down with mineral spirits and gotten a lot of the surface crud off but there is still a lot of work to be done. The stock pockets under the barrel are FILLED with grease.....I'm scraping as much out as I can but it's slow going.

Anyone have any good tips for getting all this grease off the gun/stock without spending hours with a rag?

Also, does anybody do sandblasting here? I want to get it sandblasted and re-blued at some point in the near future....

 

[Hayata]

Heat gun?

One of the tricks with old cosmoline filled mosins is to wrap them in a black plastic bag and let it sit in the hot summer sun...I'm guessing you don't want to wait six months...

There's also videos showing hot water and krud cutter.

<---- never done anything like this, so...

No idea on a sandblaster or re-bluer.

That should be a fun project bringing that ol' girl back to life!

 

[georgia357]

Maybe oven cleaner?

 

[KGmade]

Once I get setup in the new shop in Kennesaw, you could bring it by and I can ultrasonic the metal and glass bead blast it for you.

 

[Shemp]

Well I spent a little more time cleaning today and got the barrel about as clean as I could get it without a sand blaster. I'm still working on the bore as it was packed with grease. However, After what I found today I question the useability of this barrel. The action and bolt are solid, but this pitting on the barrel is a bit worrisome.

Is this barrel still good? Or did this just become a wallhanger?

 

[Shemp]

@Balthaz

 

[Balthaz]

Pitting looks a little deep but you could Bungie this thing to a Table tie a string to the trigger get way back behind something and try light hand loads in it and work your way up to Full Loads.
The areas you show are thick for a reason but these rifles were built withstand a lot of abuse.
Look at some of the modern rifles in the same caliber and you will see barrels thinner than this one in larger calibers with higher pressures.
I have seen rifles with worse than that hold up just fine.
Now with that said what would I do personally, I would just re-barrel the receiver and go have fun with this rifle (safest thing to do).

 

[Mac11FA]

You can pick up a sods blasting kit off of Amazon pretty cheap.