Most disgusting Mil-Surp you've cleaned

[bennadatto]

Funny that there is a similar post on this topic!

Before yesterday, I thought my SKS was the nastiest clean-up on a mil-surp I've done. There had to have been a gallon of cosmoline in the wood and in every nook and cranny in that rifle.

However, yesterday I started cleaning up a no4 mk1 Lee Enfield, and I have to say it is the dirtiest most disgusting rifle I've ever cleaned. When unscrewing each screw, a ring of dirt would come out behind the screw head. And after about 45 minutes of working on the barrel, it is still FILTHY! I'm not entirely sure this thing will ever come clean!

So what about you? What's the dirtiest mil-surp you've dealt with?

 

[Claymore1500]

Also, my #4 Mk1, I had to take the gun out of the wood, then took it to work and soaked it in the solvent tank (used for cleaning truck parts, I'm a mechanic).

After it soaked for about 30 minutes, I pushed a 30 cal. cosmoline worm out of the barrel, then scrubbed it down with mineral spirits and shot two cans of brake cleaner all over the gun, also had to use brake cleaner on the wood.

 

[rust collector]

1938 Turkish mauser

Chock full of nasty petrified cosmoline, although no hair or sand as reported by others. Stock wept goo for weeks while in my solar oven. Cleaned up to be a nice old gun, but not before chiseling, blasting and melting of much cosmo.

My #4 mark 1 had been powerwashed in a high pressure car wash, I suspect, as the stock looked like hairy driftwood. Good shooter, though, and I think I can sand, fill and finish the wood to overcome the sandblast effect.

That's one of the fun bits of milsurps. You never know what you will exhume from a smelly block of petroleum byproducts.

 

[CTW]

Indian Ishapore enfield was my nastiest one so far.

 

[markallen]

+1 On the "Ishy" being dirty. I thought I'd never get the barrel clean.
Oven cleaner spray worked on the stock.
As for the black train engine paint on all the metal
But once the paint was gone, there was a very nice parkized finish that appeared.

 

[az_imuth]

#4 Mk 1 here also, and it was the gummiest cosmoline I've ever run across. I didn't think I'd ever get that stuff off of there. I have a Greek return M1903 that was drowning in axle grease when I got it that would run a close second place. My Yugo SKS was pretty nasty, too.

 

[BCCL]

An SKS...it was so heavily caked with OLD cosmoline, that I stripped off all the wood and just dropped in a bucket of kerosene and let it soak on the back porch for 2 days.