[Nestor]

Just finished cleaning all the metal. Active rust was present on every part of the rifle except inside of the barrel. That's why I like to take them apart, inspect everything and address any issues before it will be too late. BTW I keep cleaning the bore and the patches are still coming out dark greyish/blackish, yet the thing looks shiny and almost perfect. I will try to repeat this process throughout this, coming week while the wood is drying after a mix of the linseed oil and turpentine was rubbed into the stock on top of the pine tar stain applied couple of days ago. Hopefully by the end of the week, the bore will be finally cleaner and the wood will be dry. I may follow up with two very light coats of the BLO on the stock before final reassembly.

 

[Nestor]

I had to move the wood stock from the basement upstairs as it's still pretty cool down there and the oil doesn't want to dry just yet. I'll just keep it in the warm room for another week and that should do. Continue to clean the bore and it's still pretty messy. Black patches and some copper are coming out. I have time. C stamped barrel indicates that the steel came from the steel plant in Northern Italy (can be also German and Czech). There is barely visible "PB" stamp on the wood which (I believe) means that the rifle went through Pietro Beretta factory (perhaps refurbishment) despite being made at Terni.

 

[Nestor]

I have north of five hours in bore cleaning alone now. Finally the patches are coming out light greyish and no longer black. Serious copper fouling too. This bore wasn't properly cleaned in a long time. I also keep finding cosmoline oozing from small crannies here and there (today it was coming out from under the rear sight). That's the effect of using a lot of penetrating oil). I could swear that the rifling inside the bore is getting more pronounced and sharper as the cleaning process continues. Wood is still drying and the weak, spring sunlight is my friend today.

 

[Nestor]

I was using a slightly oversized .270 bore brush on this rifle. When I started getting cleaner patches I switched to .30 brush...and ohh...man! Yes, it takes some effort to push and pull that brush down the bore, but the patches are coming out completely black again. This is one, dirty bore.

 

[Nestor]

Pile of dirty patches is growing, but the rifling is getting more pronounced and sharper too. While ago I've read that Carcano had deeper rifling than most rifles, but when I got mine I couldn't really see any evidence of that. I guess now I'm starting to see it.

 

[Nestor]

It's been snowing the whole last week non stop. Probably a similar weather to that faced in Russia by the Italians. Anyway. I was finally able to do the third coat of oil after waiting three weeks for the second coat to dry. Third one is the purified raw linseed oil mixed with pine tar. Which made the wood more brown and in-line with the original stained look. I keep cleaning the bore. I also got pure (no chemicals added, so food grade) double boiled linseed oil for the final finish and reproduction of the sling from India.

 

[Nestor]

Just finished the first bag of 500 patches on this bore. It's still pretty dirty. I will try something else now. Used to work pretty good on the old Mosins. I plugged the muzzle and poured the mineral spirits into the barrel, all the way up to the chamber. Now, I'll wait a day or two and see how much of the carbon fouling am I going to be able to brush off next time around. In the meantime I'm going to warm up some mink oil and apply it on the sling. It sure came dusty from the warehouse, so a bit of cleaning may be required first.

 

[Nestor]

I’ll be wrapping up bore cleaning soon. Even though the patches are still coming out dark. To be honest I haven’t studied the art of bore cleaning before. Kinda did the typical stuff till the bore looked clean. Decided to dive a bit deeper into that topic and I was able to find very interesting discussion online. A fellow gun owner posted pictures of the patch that was ran through the brand new barrel that wasn’t even attached to the action and was never test fired before. After running a bronze brush couple of times through it before. The patch came out dark grey/black. I think that I may just stop cleaning it now. It’s clean enough to me. Very shiny, sharp rifling and no stains. I will see how it shoots before worrying about more cleaning.

 

[Nestor]

Bore cleaning is basically done. 800 patches and 4 brushes later there is no more copper, very little carbon left inside the barrel. I don't care too much about the copper fouling, but only if I know that non corrosive ammo was fired through it. Otherwise I want to clean the bore as good as possible to remove any fouling and address the rust that may be growing under it. There were tiny speckles of rust and pits under all the carbon and copper, but so tiny that my eyes could not see them. Only the camera was able to pick those imperfections. Anyway, it should be ok from now on. Just purchased another 100 rounds, 4 surplus new old stock brass stripper clips and also started bidding on a nice 1942 bayonet. Probably won't win the auction, but will give it a try. Wood is almost dry and will soon be ready for the BLO. Love working on those old, war horses. The smell is just so lovely!

 

[Nestor]

After all this cleaning it's time for very unscientific bullet test. Looks pretty tight even with .264 bullet.

 

[Dr357sig]

They were popular in Texas back in the early 60's.

From last year

 

[Nestor]

Never say never. Decided to change the cleaning routine a bit and used Hoppes 9 bore cleaner for a change to see if there is still something ugly inside that bore. Uhhh...it's pretty terrible. Hoppes did a pretty impressive job here. There is still copper and tons of burnt powder there. One picture is of the completely dried patches and the other shows the fresh ones coming out of the barrel as we speak.

Dried ones

Fresh ones

Hopefully 1000 patches will do....

 

[Nestor]

This may be the last surplus rifle that I bought as I can no longer justify the prices. It's very rare nowadays to see anything priced fairly and with 12 years left before our retirement and big move it won't make much sense to spend more money on that kind of stuff. I still have a bunch of rifles that are in need of cleaning and some of them I will consider trading for something else, but I'm pretty much done with buying. Saying all that, this Italian Carcano M41 is actually quite nice. I was expecting rifle that would be much rougher, primitive almost, but it's quite typical for its period. Nothing to brag about, but I discovered some nice touches here and there. Gun Jesus said that M41 rifle was a step back from his favorite M38 carbine that he considers as one of the best WW2 bolt action rifles. I have to disagree with Ian on this. During North African campaign Italians discovered that a short barreled, fixed sight carbine may not be able to reach anything past 200 meters. With the incoming campaign in Russia, where the conditions may also require shooting past 200 meters on the waste steppes the decision was made to produce those longer barreled (27.2"), adjustable sight rifles. Each of them has the battle zero, fixed sight seating under the adjustable sight, so one needs to flick it open and then it's back to the fixed sight for any close up work. Options are good, especially in the hands of the elite troops like the Italian Alpini for which this was actually designed (from what I understand). At 8.5 pounds it's not a light rifle, but it's well balanced and is decently easy to operate. 6.5x52 suppose to be a lightly recoiling, flat shooting round, so even my decreasing tolerance to recoil shouldn't be a problem here. I didn't notice a huge difference in smoothness of operation after I removed all the gunk, rust and cosmoline from the action. Which tells me two things: it's not the smoothest action out there to start with, but it's pretty dependable one as the dirt won't affect it all that much if at all. Couple of pictures to document the conclusion of my 6 weeks of work on this Carcano M41. Thanks!

 

[FullClip]

Wow! What a transformation. Another amazing restoration job.

 

[geodan]

Shoot it in good health

 

[Nestor]

Thank you Gents. I like the obsolete rifles the best. They look cool, weight quite a bit, shoot straight and smell nice. Plus it's like touching the living history.

 

[Nestor]

I will post an update from the range. If you have a Carcano carbine or rifle please remember that the Italians used a different sight picture than most. Front sight supposed to be sitting at the bottom of the V notch of the rear sight, kinda similar to the semi buckhorn sight. If you are using the usual sight picture, you’re going to hit way too high.