Maintenance and the Collecting of Milsurps

[22SqnRAE]

I write this thread with the aim to learn and understand. Your input and views will be helpful and may assist others, so please share your thoughts.

Recently I’ve bought several items from collectors, to improve my collection. Mostly rifles, but other items like bayonets.

Being a little mechanically minded, inquisitive (and frugal,) I will strip, clean and inspect every item I receive. Inspection may reveal repairs or replacement parts required and that will initiate that maintenance task. The replacement part may be a 2 week or 3 year search. It’s part of the game. I must disclose a technical appreciation of mechanical things and have employed it, in particular a detailed working knowledge of rust control and effects, for several decades, as a professional.

What strikes me as confusing, is the common condition of almost every artefact I’ve bought from another collector. They’re dirty. Filthy in some cases and certainly questionable as to their serviceability. Caked in old grease, crud, dirt, mank, grub, goo, unidentified stains etc… Certainly not the condition that a soldier would present the said item to the staff at the Armoury or Q Store on return.

As an ex-serving member, it was drilled into me that every returned item was to be stripped, cleaned, lubricated and reassembled prior to handing back. Even unused clean things received the same treatment. I believe this was always to ensure that soldiers never had that rare commodity called ‘spare time’ where they might get up to devious behaviour, like relaxing, or worse still, thinking.

So my question to the entire audience is: why is it that the majority of collectors, that I’ve come across, are immune to the concept of preventative maintenance?

The thought of not pulling a rifle (or any mechanical artefact) apart on receipt, stripping to base workshop level and cleaning, inspecting, lubricating and reassembly is quite foreign to me. It’s an essential element of understanding the artefact you have and the condition it’s in. As a collector, it’s a requirement to properly preserve the artefact in a suitable and sustainable condition. The belief that evidence of some ‘cosmoline’ on the artefact means the whole steel assembly is consistently covered, protected and in good order is quite at odds to reality, to me.

The statement that “…that’s a nice patina…” always irks me to no end. That patina is simply the product of rust, which is a chemical degradation of steel back to its constituent elements. In other words, patina is a sign of loss of material and degradation of the artefact in front of your eyes. No museum accepts unchecked rust on an artefact, as they know well that rust never sleeps and will destroy the artefact in time.

I’m not suggesting that an aged artefact, say an 1882 Martini-Henry rifle, with signs of localised rust attack should be bead blasted, polished and reblued. Not at all. I’m suggesting that for artefact preservation, all active rust needs to be passivated and/or removed, to ensure no further destruction of the artefact occurs from rust. The preservation of the original condition, and removal of degrading or destructive corrosion seems to me, to be a self-evident requirement.

Let me know your thoughts I really am curious to understand why some people seem to think that evidence of progressive deterioration is attractive and do not wish to prevent further loss of the original artefact.

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