1943 US made Enfield

[Seaspriter]

Bruce, this whole

Just a couple of caveats on the use of steel wool, of any grade.

1. Always work WITH the grain.

2. Beware "lost" fibres caught on grain "run-outs" in the timber. little fibres of the steel wool will be "detached" by the woodwork, no matter how careful you are. If left in place, they will eventually RUST and start to leave nasty discolourations on your nice furniture, be it rifle or "domestic".

Get yourself as powerful a magnet as you can find (and handle easily) and wrap it in a couple of layers of soft cloth ("cheese-cloth" is ideal). Try those "super-magnets" the kids get from novelty shops or one from the back of an old "high-output" loudspeaker for bigger jobs.

Run this assembly LIGHTLY from one end of the timber to the other. At the end of each pass, inspect the cloth for "fibres" of fine, grey steel. Remove these from the cloth and repeat the exercise. Tedious? Yes, but better than watching strange purplish-brown stains appear on your carefully oiled woodwork.

Bruce this is an excellent piece of advice. Highly recommended. I hadn't heard of the magnet idea -- thanks for passing it on.

Your observation of the nasty lost fibres is soooooo very true. This is why in wooden boat restoration steel wool is a no-no. In a salt environment only a day of exposure and the black marks of rusted metal on wood are evident. And they are extremely hard to remove, except with oxalic acid or intense sanding. Boating stores all sell bronze wool for this very reason -- bronze doesn't leave black marks.

In the same vein, I concoct a mixture of 50% bees wax 50% petroleum (mineral) jelly (a formula taken from the 1931 Enfield Armourer's manual) and coat the all wood where iron/steel contacts wood (drawers, barrel channel, butt plate screws, etc.) not only to prevent the black plague stain but to keep screws from rusting in the wood and becoming neigh on to impossible to remove years later. It also acts as a barrier to prevent gun oil from invading the wood and creating spongy oil rot (especially important in the drawers). (as a double entendre, this wax balm is great for furniture drawer slides, better than soap or candle wax).