Well I received my Israeli K98 on Friday , first impressions........PUTRID!!!! the type of rifle you want to put down and go and wash your hands with sanitizer .
Anyhow it came home with me ,it cost me $15.00 so what the hey, first thing I did was take some happy snaps of it , then I was into it ,I can guarantee you it had not been out of the stock since it was rebuilt back in December 1957 going by the barrel date. Anyhow , stripped all the metal off the wood work and started scrubbing with detergent degreaser ,the tub it was in turned a funny shade of brown but the grease and dirt remained in all the nooks and crannies despite the tooth brushes and plastic scourer pads so I tried again with caustic soda , this time it was clean and it no longer smelt like the back end of a camel ,left it in the sun to dry and it started bleeding oil
,so I left it there and gave it a wipe over with a rag every 20 mins or so . I haven't finished with it yet ,it's got more oil to bleed so it could take a couple of months for that to work itself out.
The metal !!! the receiver is a post war BRNO with the
Czech
lion on top of the barrel boss, internally it's fine but the exterior looks like it was finished with a 9" angle grinder by the most junior apprentice , the barrel did not look at all promising ,the black hole of Calcutta is an apt description , so , I started scrubbing the barrel out , it felt rough ,after a heap of scrubbing with a bronze brush it still didn't look good so we filled it up with foaming bore cleaner which was left overnight ,the following day we put the brush through it again ,it was better but still had some issues ,there was only one way to fix this I thought and scraping up some of my "best"
ammo I headed for the range ,I started with 3 rounds of 243 I found lurking in my ammo chest ,I used these in the hope the high pressure / velocity gas would shake some more rust out without the projectile being tight enough to do any damage, it did make an improvement . I scrubbed with a bronze brush again , then loaded up some Indonesian Pindad rounds that were just laying around waiting for just such an occasion ,after a couple of these rounds the barrel was much better ,another 10 or so rounds and the barrel was looking good . I tried for a group with some
Australian MF rounds, we got about 1 1/2 inches at 50 yards ,not bad for a barrel that the day before looked like crap.
The rifle had been parkerised or some type of phosphate finish applied ,it has a green hue to it although it has worn off on the edges and is thinning on the exposed surfaces ,not very many Nazi parts ,I have found WaA's on the magazine/ trigger guard which is the milled type and the rear sight base , the bolt stop/ejector box may have a very indistinct WaA ...can't really tell ,most of the small parts have no markings , and the stock is an Israeli replacement. All in all pretty good ,I was beginning to think it was going to cost more than it was worth but with the barrel saved the project is on track.
Originally Posted by Calif-Steve
Does anybody know where this shipment of Israeli Mausers is coming from? I think a pile of these things got shipped off to Central America. Maybe coming out of there. Tough climate for rifles. Also: I have exactly one German Kar98k
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