wartime Russian wood finish

[mike radford]

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 German 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? https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...la_SVT40-1.jpg
again stealing pics from wikipedia :P

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

I have been in a bunch of Russian Museums. The Soviets refinish pretty much everything, including most of their museum pieces. They want them to be pretty and impressive. My pictures are on a dead computer about 3 or 4 back from this one, 2002,2004,2006 trips of 16-21 days. Most of the pictures are not so good since almost everything is behind glass or plexi.

This subject was beat to death on gunboards. The evidence that an oil based finish was standard until post war and Shellac was the norm upon refurbishment, even on guns that need next to nothing. A few of the PUs imported are largely original, matching original numbers, except maybe a scope change but almost all got a coat of shellac. The shellac is often on lots of the metal too.