Help recognising de activated l1a1

[mrclark303]

Attachment 63800Attachment 63801On the subject of deacs....here is another ex NZ example back from the grave, it came to me in a small box with no furniture and a few other small parts missing ..... The finish was very worn indeed, some patches of corrosion, and more than the odd dent in the top cover.

Top cover, recoil springs and hammer strut replaced, restored wood fitted and a repaint..... shes a good looking wall hanger again!

[Peter Laidler]

You ought to find a small firm locally that will acid dip down to white metal/steel and chemically black the steel parts. Looks like new and FAR better/tougher than any paint. Not as robust as phosphate and hard bake spirit based paint of course but much more robust and resilient to sticky hands and fingers.

Saw a big load of refurbished Mk2 Brens done in it recently. Looked like new!

[browningautorifle]

shes a good looking wall hanger again!

Nice looking rifle again...

[mrclark303]

Cheers guys,

Good point Peter, I will look into polyphosphate finishing in the future, sounds interesting.

Thing is, I was a professional refinisher for 20+ years, so try to keep the whole possess from start to finish in house, on the grounds of cost .... and professional pride!

I employ a system utilising very careful preparation and cleaning, a black single pack primer and an excellent quality thinned out two pack matt black. This is then hand polished to a semi matt sheen, roughly approximating the original factory oil black finish (found on British rifles, I know this a Lithgow, but hay ho). The result is extremely hard wearing with excellent heat resistance, at least plenty good enough for my deac rebuilds and my live L1A1's!

[nzl1a1collector]

Great looking rifle, it looks like a post 1970 finished rifle with the later Lithgow paint over phosphating finish

[mrclark303]

thanks for the feedback guys, I do enjoy working on these fine riles, getting very hard to find suitable L1A1's to rebuild now though as their value rockets up, even for really rough old spec deac examples. A 1964 BSA
is next into the workshop.

[Peter Laidler]

The factory finish wasn't oil black but hard baked at high temp SUNKORITE over phosphate. I can't understand why noone has started decanting sunkorite into large useable aerosol cans. Make sure that it's REALLY well shaken/stirred first though. I had some cans done locally a couple of years ago and it seemed OK. We also had some sunkorite golden yellow done the same (for local application on BFA's). It lasts a couple of weeks on BFA's but to be fair, they do tend to get hot on GPMG's

[enbloc8]

Attachment 63800Attachment 63801

How did you get the furniture to clean up so nicely???

[mrclark303]

Morning Peter,

Interesting that one, I can only assume the British rifles left the factory with different finishes at different dates. I am probably using the the wrong term in "oil blacking", so lets say a very thin chemically etched finish seems to be what they left the factory in.

I base this purely on my own observations, so I could well be wrong, but the current crop of Straight pull L1A1's coming out of Suffolk Rifles for instance have the thin worn chemical grey/ black finish on the receivers and TMH (the parts kits have their origin in the sold off War Reserve rifles I believe), this finish is not newly applied and not Lithgow type parkarising ..... nether is it a sunkorite paint finish.

My cutaway BSA L1A1, also appears to have the very same thin black/gray chemical finish, again without sunkorite.

I assumed (probably wrongly) that the Sunkorite was applied during base workshop refurbishment ??

[mrclark303]

How did you get the furniture to clean up so nicely???

Morning, it all goes down to what I have to start with really, everyone seems to hit wood restoration from a different angle, this is the general system I use, or elements of it depending how far gone the wood is.

On this particular occasion, the for-end parts were from my spares box (after checking for the usual cracks) they required adjusting on my workshop L1A1 deac to ensure both half's perfectly mate on the rifle, there is usually a big difference between them in fit to start with!

When everything has been check fitted to my satisfaction, I carefully clean the woodwork, steam out light dents, then a light sand if necessary (retaining original manufacture markings) with 180 then 400 grade Mirka ambanet pads and a soft block, moving on to wet then finally dry 3M red scotchbrites to remove any dirt from the grain of the wood and allow the oil to evenly penetrate the woodwork.

Then oil with a 50% mix of Raw linseed and white spirit, this is allowed to fully draw in before numerous coats of neat raw linseed over a couple of days. When this has finally stopped being absorbed, the excess is removed and the wood work buffed with a micro fibre cloth to bring out a lovely semi matt shine.

This is the system that works for me anyway, I am sure there are better ways, but it works!