It is finally finished. I spent way more time on it today than I planned and now tomorrow is going to be busy trying to catch up. I had applied an initial layer of Duracoat on the receiver yesterday then realized that I forgot to install the muzzlebrake
So today I installed the brake before putting the final coat on.
Pretty easy deal, first I installed the KA-T003 drilling jig. Putting the included 3/32" drill bit in the specified hole allows the jig to only go on the necessary .500" so that the holes in the brake line up with the divots in the barrel when installed. After positioning the jig so that the holes ran horizontally across the top and bottom of the barrel, I tightened the two setscrews to keep the jig from moving or rotating.
As soon as the jig was secured I pulled the drill bit out and chucked it in the drill and punched the two divots.
The jig was then removed and the KA-1230 brake/suppressor was slid on and the holes and divots were lined up. I then tapped in the two included 3/32" hardened dowel pins.
Now that the brake/suppressor was installed I finished Duracoating the parts and let them cure for a few hours. The receiver, magazine, and bayo latch were done in matte black, the bayonet and the stock furniture were done in matte stainless.
After staking the furniture back into the stock I reassembled the rifle and buffed everything clean and enameled the lettering on the receiver and rear sight in gloss white.
On a side note, I took the advice of some internet Mosin-Nagant 'eggspurtz' and buffed the copper plate that they insisted was cosmoline off of the bolt because MN bolts are extremely corrosion resistant and were never plated (according to these 'eggspurtz') because they didn't need it. Also, I've never had to use 400 grit sandpaper and a Scotch pad to remove cosmoline :roll: . Well, I went to put the rifle together today and look what I found....
Wow, what must have been my handprint left a nasty rust patch across the bolt after sitting for a couple days here in dry AZ. Apparently this Hungarian MN wasn't made from the same type of steel as the other MN's and was plated for corrosion resistance. As I'd said repeatedly (even though the 'eggspurtz' were too busy badmouthing me to notice) we've had some MN bolts come in that were plated and some that weren't so when we do any bolt work requiring welding or exposing metal, we send them out to be plated or hard chromed just to keep this type of crap from happening to the customer's bolt in case it is one like this. At some point in time I'll add a ring safety to this next time we're doing a few and send this bolt out for hard chrome afterwards since I'm going to have to CLP this thing occasionally to keep it from rusting until then :?
