Thread: Gave the Lithgow No1 Mk3 a good clean today...

As part of my Kiwi collection, thought i had better start looking after them.
So instead of going to the Motorsport at Puke, or doing house work i decided to clean my rifle.

RIFLE:
Lithgow, 1942 No1 MkIII SMLE, 303 British.

It was a basic strip down, with wood off... the trigger and safety remained together.

WOOD:
For the wood i just used lots of elbow grease with thinner on clean rags, that removed most of the dirt.
I was amazed how much crap came off. After that i quick wipe down with Meths to give it a final clean.
The some raw linceed oil was used to bring it back.
I was going to use boiled linceed oil but there was still lots of colour letf in the wood, so did not need the extra depth boiled linceed offers...
After a bit i followed it up with another quick wipe, this time with thinned linceed oil, about 50/50 with turps.
Then left it a bit, and wiped it down.

STEEL:
For that was mostly oil soaked steel wool, some parts needed a good scrape, but nothing to drastic.
Again i was lucky that little corosion was there, just a lot of crap built up over the years, and what rust i found scraped off easily and disapeared under some lite oil...

All done.


Before the clean, 77 years of grease, oil and grim...