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I recently picked up this Australian SLR cleaning kit with, apparently, a tube of grease in it and no oil bottle. Is that what Australia did with later issue of these cleaning kits, replace the oil bottle with a tube of grease, or has someone else put the grease in the cleaning kit, post military service, please? Many thanks for any replies and information.
From experience when I was issued with them as late as 1992 they had a black plastic oil bottle. I have several kits in my collection and they all have the plastic oil bottle. Yours is the first I have seen with the tube of grease.
The original cleaning kit as supplied from the Lithgow Small Arms Factory with each rifle was the Cleaning Kit Roll, Combination Tool, Tube of XG340 Graphite Grease, Cleaning Brush, 4x2 Flannelette. The Oil Bottle and Pullthrough were to be carried in the Butt of the rifle, but over time these were moved to the cleaning kit roll replacing the Graphite Grease and Flannelette.
Here in New Zealand the Graphite Grease was removed from the cleaning kits as it was easier to find Oil to refill the Oil Bottle and flannelette was just placed inside the cleaning kit roll and not inside the pocket.
---------- Post added at 06:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:05 PM ----------
Here's a variety of Grease Tubes, both British and Australian
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../mGEr6yh-1.jpg
That's interesting, I'd always thought the grease was required for the sand cuts to work properly (with the idea being the grease captured the crud, and the cuts channeled it away from the working surfaces).
There is also what was termed the 'Section Cleaning Kit". These usually ended up with a member of the machine-gun group. This had a multi-section steel rod, brushes / jags and a ruptured-case extractor. For the keen, the NSN for the cover, at least, is; 1005-66-100-2017.
This, in turn, is not to be confused with the Australian cleaning kit for the M-60 GPMG. Whilst being a similar "tool-roll" design, with rod sections, bore brushes, etc., it also had a (or SHOULD have had), a nifty brush for cleaning inside of the body. This had a mix of stainless-steel and nylon bristles and was SQUARE in cross-section, to better clean out the various "channels" in the receiver body. There are a couple of "used / pre-loved" ones in the "random cleaning stuff" box, as I don't own an M-60, nor could I afford to run one if I did.
Australian CLEANING KIT, 7.62 mm Rifle, Mk. 1 (1005-66-100-2015) "Section Cleaning Kit"
Early
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../zGmjU4M-1.jpg
Late
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../T9lZkIF-1.jpg
Australian CLEANING KIT, Accessory, 7.62 mm Rifle, Mk. 1 (1005-66-014-9252)
Early
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../4dqShrJ-1.jpg
New Zealand Made Roll
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../y6LXQuE-1.jpg