Not too impressive looking!

However, by the end of the day it should look like this is everything went according to plan.

First item of business: PUT ON THE RUBBER GLOVES AND THE APRON, (trust me.) Then cover the work area & it’s surrounding floor space with the newspaper. I thought the worktop was plastic & used to slime & a scrubbing brush, not so, when the wrap got away from me at one point the top & surrounding floor became a Cosmolene magnet!

The layers will vary for soft & sticky to hard & brittle, depending on how the storage has affected the moisture content of the paper, which is saturated with decades-old Cosmolene. You’ll need to carefully evaluate how to remove the layers without damaging the contents. This is where we come to the first big No-no. Do not cut from the outside with a knife! The thickness & texture will vary & you’ll almost certainly nick the rifle at some point. I used a non-pointed knife blade from the inside cutting outwards. If you peel as you go, slitting from either end you should be able to get most of the wrap off with minimum cussing & swearing. I started from the muzzle end as it had been opened before I got the package. Look for a loose spot & begin there, as you’ll need to get the knifepoint inside the wrap to begin. The paper will be glued to the rifle in places, some of this will have set pretty hard.  I carefully ripped round these “scabs” leaving the remains still stuck to the rifle. (We’ll come back to them in a bit & remove them without cutting or gouging). Don’t try to cut the string off of the arsenal tag (The little one by where the front sling swivel is), instead cut round it. Again we’ll deal with this a little further down the road. You might also want to peel off, or cut round the package label, as it has some information about the rifle. The big label attached to the trigger guard is just an auctioneer’s lot tag; it had nothing to do with the rifle, so I just cut it off.

I put this in a Ziploc bag right away for reference purposes. The arsenal tag will be added when we get it safely removed.

Here’s what is lurking under the wrap. Lots of gummy Cosmolene, with a rifle buried inside somewhere. (I did say you’d thank me for the tip about the gloves & apron.)

By the time these pictures were taken I’d untied the string for the arsenal tag from the front sling swivel, which was uncovered during the unwrapping.

Don’t get disheartened by the volume of Cosmolene you discover. It is there to protect the contents forever & ever, so the more the better.

This is one of those “Stop & think!” points!

I decided to do the cleanup in these steps. Planning ahead here is a huge help in getting a smooth process running. You need to decide on how you’re going to treat what you’ve found. Wood needs one cleaning process, & metal another. Do you want to just go ahead & clean the exterior of the worst gunk right now, or strip the components as they are & remove it separately? You can’t really decide till now as you don’t know what surprises there were under the wrap till this point.

I decided to do a first cleanup all together, then separate & treat as different parts.

I pulled the bolt, & magazine, so I could get to them later, & put them in a foil pan. Then I sprayed them both liberally with WD-40. WD-40 isn’t a great lubricant, but it does a great job of softening Cosmolene.

My technique is a bit unusual, I admit. But it worked so well I’ll share. Usual things like separating wood first & boiling in hot water & “Simple Green”, Dish detergent, and so on (Or just flinging it all in the dish washer! REMEMBER TO TURN OFF THE DRYING CYCLE IF YOU GO THIS ROUTE!! STOCKS HAVE BEEN DESTROYED BY FORGETTING THIS STEP) are really hard on wood. This leads to lots of raised grain, & sanding down later. Oven cleaner is dryer, but harder to clean up, and needs really good ventilation as it makes some funky fumes you don’t want to breathe, so I went with something based on making spray-on case lube for reloading.

Case lube is based on the same ingredient as Cosmolene, lanolin. Lanolin is natural oil from sheep, and dissolves almost instantly when mixed with alcohol. I used this trick when the local store ran out of spray lube, so I just diluted case lube with enough alcohol to allow spraying. Based on this I tried using a cloth saturated with a 70/20 alcohol & water solution in one small area. (Hint: test any new process in a small, hidden area first.). It dissolved the Cosmolene instantly! Plus there was minimal wetting of the wood, and fumes were minimized.

A bit of digging round revealed that this was the recommended military commissioning process, almost. The military in the U.K. used big boiling vats of “Methylated Spirits”! The closest thing to methylated spirits in the U.S. is denatured alcohol. This may be due to prohibition leftovers, as methylated spirits is 100% grain alcohol. In the U.K. it is dyed with a horrible tasting dye to stop serious alcoholics from drinking it.

Following the de-greasing they were dipped in linseed oil for 5 minutes then drip-dried & wiped down. Boiling alcohol must have been fun stuff to work with in large quantities, as well as highly flammable.

I found some commercial pre-soaked alcohol cloths, but you can make them yourself. Use Johnson & Johnson “J-cloths” & saturate them as needed. J-cloths are perfect for this. They are synthetic, so they have no lint, & they are highly absorbent.

CAUTION: this mix is flammable, & so are the “old, dirty” cloths. Take reasonable precautions making, using, storing, & disposing of them!

I’d originally planned to do the first cleanup with the cloths, and do detail cleaning later with spray bottles (outside), but the alcohol cloths worked so well I never did use a spray!

All I did was to make firm passes along the whole rifle, discarding cloths when they became loaded with Cosmolene. Areas like the trigger guard, magazine well, & action “innards” take a little inventiveness, but just keep swabbing & you’ll find all the surface stuff is removed leaving relatively clean metal & de-greased (read bone dry) wood. Once a cloth gets loaded up with brown gunk, just replace it & use another. Keep going till a fresh cloth is not discolored, then you are ready for the next step, dismantling what needs to be removed to get to the inside of the stock, bedding areas & so on. By the time I had everything I could see, or get to stripped I’d used 2/3rds of a pack of 50 of the 8X8 pre-treated cloths. If you went with the bigger “J-cloths” you’ probably use about ½ of that & a pint or so of alcohol/water.

The next thing is to remove the hand guards & front end of the stock. This will gain access to the barrel channel, and trigger assembly & magazine catch. It will also let you get at the parts of the receiver hidden under the wood.

There are slight differences between the #4Mk1, Mk1*, & Mk2 stocks, and that means different details in the removal. The biggest thing is that the Mk2 stock has a cross-bolt, just in front of the back of the wood, above the trigger guard. It will have to be removed to get the stock away from the action. The Mk1 & Mk1* do not have this bolt, there is a riveted metal reinforce instead. This can be left in place. The trigger is attached differently as well.

Where there are differences (& I have a specimen to take pictures of) I’ll try to show them.

To remove the stock’s front end & hand guards you need to remove several screws. This is where the holding rack is so handy. It allows support  & rotation, as well as a brace for putting heavy pressure on tight screws without slipping of the bit.

As each sub-assembly is removed I suggest cleaning, wiping with oil & hand-tight re-assembly. It’s a lot easier to figure out where each screw goes later if it’s already in there!

Starting at the muzzle. First the front sight protector “ears” need to come off, they are held by a single bolt running thru the band, just above the barrel.

(TIP: start using the right sized screwdrivers right now so you’ll get into the habit!)  I have replaced the cheap plastic butt-end of my interchangeable bit screwdriver with an epoxied-in place brass-plumbing fitting. This allows me to use a hammer to lightly tap while twisting to get stubborn bolts started off & break the seal.

The most common “bad” thing about home gunsmithing projects is messed up bolt heads. So this is a quickie on how NOT to do this.

Make sure the bit is the right size, not just how wide it is, but how thick as well. A correct sized bit will be the same, or slightly smaller across than the width of the head slot. It will also be a snug fit for thickness. Too thin, or too thick bits will slip under torque. I’ll bet that ½ the torn up heads have been caused by tip thickness, not width!

Use more pressure than twist. If the tip isn’t firmly wedged into the slot the chances of slipping will be much higher.

Keep square on to the head, & support the item directly, right under where the pressure is being applied.

If the bolt won’t turn try tapping the end of the screwdriver handle with a hammer while holding steady pressure to unscrew. The shocks will jar the bolt & free it up some.

Don’t be afraid to use penetrating oil & patience in equal amounts. Penetrating oil is great stuff, but only if it has time to penetrate! You can go work on another bolt for now & come back to the stubborn one later, or after a cup of coffee, or even to-morrow! Time really is you friend with penetrating oil.

Once the ear bolt is removed the sight protector ears will slide off towards the muzzle. Now wipe clean, re attach the bolt & oil & store.

Next is the front band.

This is held with a single bolt on the “tabs” under the stock. It may have a stacking swivel, sling swivel, or nothing, between the tabs.

Before removing any swivels note which way round they are installed. There is a slight angle to them! Also note which side the bolt heads face, there’s little more annoying than re-assembling the whole rifle & finding the bolt heads go left-right-left! The band is held between a couple of pairs of rivets in the metal end cap & upper front hand guard. Once the bolt is removed just spread the ears slightly & slip off towards the muzzle. Again clean, oil & re-assemble.

Now the front sling swivel band comes off. (It’s actually the middle band.) The technique is the same, undo the bolt, spread gently & slip off over the muzzle. At this point the front & rear hand guard halves are completely free. They can be lifted off. The rear one is hooked into a ring at the breech end, slide forward, & lift to remove. Don’t just pivot up. The wood is real slim here & it’s easy to crack the wood by torquing on it.

This is how everything should look once the hand guards are removed. (They are reversed in the picture.

At this point turn the rifle upside-down. You need to undo the cross bolt if one is fitted to your rifle. There is a small nut on the opposite side to the bolt, take care not to loose it.

Now unbolt the small screw that passes thru the rear of the trigger guard, securing it to the receiver ring.

At this point the stock is only held to the barreled action by one big bolt in front of the magazine well. This is called the “king bolt” & is the most important one in the rifle’s wood-to-metal attachments. Und screw this bolt & pull up & slightly forward on the trigger guard/magazine well rim.

Tip: there is a metal spacer hidden under the plate, don’t loose it. If the stock is re-attached even just once without this it can be cracked badly!

The entire front wood can now be removed from the action body (Britspeak for receiver) & barrel. Pull it straight off, up & away from the metal, don’t hinge it off, as you’ll damage the inletting for the receiver if you do.

This is what you should look like at this point. (This was taken after cleanup; yours will have lots of Cosmolene coating everything) DO NOT START TO REMOVE THE COSMOLENE JUST YET.

Removing the butt stock is (for me) optional. I chose not to this time round. There is very little inside there, unlike the barrel & for end. You may decide differently. Depending on how you clean the wood you may have to remove it particularly true if using dishwashers, or boiling water for cleaning.

This is the second of those “Stop & think!” points!

I take a good look at the inside of the wood, both handguards & the barrel itself right here. They have quite a bit of information that will help you out later, especially if you think you might have bedding issues.

Looking at the barrel first, check for impressions in the layer of Cosmolene, these are contact points between the wood & metal.

Then do the same for the bottom of the action, particularly in the circled area. This fits into an area of the stock called a “Knox Form” this is THE most important bedding area. If this isn’t just right nothing else will be!

Next take a good look at the inside of the handguards & stock. The area round the action, recoil lug, and barrel channel will have lots to tell you if you know how to read the evidence there.

The action & first 1 ¼” of the barrel should be bedded firmly & evenly to the stock. This cutout area is the stock’s “Knox Form” that was mentioned as the vital area for bedding. Where there is contact there will be marks, in this case black finish from the painting process of the metal parts.

The contact should be even & centered on the centerline of the wood. It should stop at the same point as you look at the sides of the channel.

The barrel channel itself should show similar points of contact, and the alignment should be the same, on the centerline. There is a lot of debate (some quite heated) on where the barrel should be bedded. Free-floating (zero contact) thru 3 point bedding are the common versions. Accurized rifles frequently have contact at the middle band (front sling swivel) and at the muzzle (end of the stock) standard rifles frequently are free-floated.

You may also find evidence of stock work done previously, such as wood being removed to eliminate unwanted contact points. Usually contact points will be dark & shiny where the wood has been compressed by the bolting of the stock, but relieved points are frequently lighter & show more grain structure.

Removed wood, no contact. These are not necessarily on the centerline, as the wood is removed where there is contact only. The one on the left is off center as the unwanted contact was off to the left. The one on the right is centered as the contact was centered.

This is a contact point, at the muzzle.

If you decide to remove the stock it’s fairly easy to do.

First undo the 2 screws at the top & bottom of the butt plate, and then gently tap from the edges till it separates from the wood.

Under the plate there are 2 holes, one shallower than the other (using a flashlight lets you peek down those holes) At the base of the deeper one is a screw head, there should be a donut-shaped felt washer sitting on it covering the edges. You need a long rod with a hook-shaped tip (Coat hanger wire works well). Pull the felt washer out & undo the bolt with a long screwdriver. The stock will come right off.

Here’s what you should be seeing at this point, looking at the action & trigger mechanism areas.

The difference being you will have a LOT of Cosmolene in this area.

Now it’s just a lot of scrubbing, wiping & peering into odd corners till you’re sure there is no Cosmolene left.

Don’t forget the bore, chamber, bolt raceway, safety mechanism, bolt release lever & recess in the breech for the extractor. Once you think you are done I rotate the rifle & peer into all the nooks & crannies I find with it left side up, right side up, upside-down, end on and so on.

Remember one thing here. Every part of the wood & metal will be 100% oil & grease free, the down side to this is that it will be prone to external moisture (read rusting metal) I very strongly suggest that you wipe down every part with an oily rag if you have to leave it for any period of time.

This is where part two ends; I’m still working on writing & illustrating part three, “lubing, wood finishing & re-assembly.”

So far Part four is planned to be initial testing, zeroing & correcting issues. Part five will be improving accuracy beyond the average battle rifle.

I’ll also cover working on the bolt & magazine there, as this part is getting HUGE! For now lots of alcohol, or spray cleaner, oily rag wipe & hold.