Seems to be the issue with the soviets - we can never find historic documents detailing what was used

by oil finish you guys mean linseed right? it would explain the variation in colour seen in the two rifles in my first post - linseed darkens with age and holds onto dirt and crap. the front rifle looks very minty. Reminds me of a number of pictures of Germanicon troops carrying mausers (which were typicaly treated with linseed) of different shades in the same photograph.

perhaps the wartime finish is the dark spots one sees on your typical refurb - looks almost as though the Russians did a **** job removing the original finish then slapped some crap over it.... another sign of this is that the dark spots are most present in the low spots - like the finger groves on the forearm....anybody have any idea what the dark spots could be from?
again stealing pics from wikipedia :P

anybody got any photos from russian museums? I'm sure they dont have refurbs in their collections